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Sunday 23 September, 2018
A story of machine and humans, told in three parts. Part three:
So good news and bad news. The good news is that not all the machines are heartless monsters out for death and destruction. Some of them are peaceful. The bad news is 2B is still emotionally deficient and hasn’t experienced another glitch in her matrix. This is demonstrated twice in my play time. Once when 9S invites 2B to call him Nines, like the rest of his friends do. Then again, later, when 2B has the opportunity to reassure her operator in a time of need. Both times she uses her brain to speak instead of her heart. Sad day. That’s not to say she will stay this way forever. I’ve decided the creators designed her this way so as to prolong the story and give her more depth. What would be so interesting about an android who immediately went against her protocol, after all? Nothing! At least not for me. As I’ve said previously, it really bothered me that she was so quick to worry about 9S in the first place. A gradual change of heart is so much better! It also gives the player time to explore and discover as the story unfolds.
As for the machines, they’re not as evil as previously assumed. At least not all of them. Even before you enter the Amusement Park you face passive machines who’re just happy to wander harmlessly about. Only when you attack do they reciprocate. This begs the question, just how dangerous are they truly and why did they attack the humans in the first place? Could the androids understanding of them be completely skewed? I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to think so. In any case, the Amusement Park is where things truly start to get turned upside down. The machines are welcoming and even give you gifts. Many dance and sing, and throw confetti. They aren’t evil. They aren’t broken. To 2B and 9S, though, it’s all wrong. As they make their way through the ominous and creepy park, this unbalance in their understanding is amplified by everything they see and do. Clearly the creators wanted to put the player off their groove and make the protagonists question everything they’ve ever known about machines.
Of course, a single area full of “weird acting” and “weird dressing” machines doesn’t immediately change the protagonist’s views. They still have their doubts. They also have conflicting emotions about machines and the possibility that these said machines have emotions. With every new interaction, you can tell 2B and 9S are getting uneasy. Why? Does having emotions suddenly make murder wrong? Is it because having emotions means you have a conscious or do the two protagonists simply hate the idea that they’re actually hurting someone? Ethically, this matters. To hurt another human being is wrong. To hurt an inanimate object, not so much. It is still frowned upon, because it is considered vandalism, but you’re not judged as harshly. Why? Is it so necessary for an object to have emotions or will anything with an essence be considered precious? I think perhaps, this here, is exactly what Nier is trying to teach. Murder, in any form and towards anything, is wrong. The fact that you as a player and the protagonists do so without all the information in the beginning, is even worse.
Given this, what then could be said about killing your comrades? What if those comrades were trying to kill you against their will? Technically it's still wrong in my opinion. Your comrades cannot control what they are doing and would likely not kill you otherwise, thus you should not kill them. Despite this, that’s exactly what the game makes you do. I find this distasteful. It would have been better for the creators to allot you the chance to avoid their attacks and still go after the boss. Likewise, having the androids die in conjunction with the boss felt like an injustice to me. At least give 9S a chance to save them! But no. It’s better to give the player a lesson then to spare the innocent. This lesson just happened to be in correlation with the protagonists’ entire meaning in life. See, the androids hacked and held captive were only kept alive for one purpose: to kill their enemy. Sound familiar? If it does, then you’ve been paying attention. This ideal is exactly how the protagonists operate when it comes to YoRHa. They are made for YoRHa to be used by YoRHa for only one true purpose: kill their enemy.
Thing is, what happens when there is no more enemies? My guess is that there will always be an enemy. Right now it’s the machines, but later I think it’ll be other androids or even humans themselves. I’m rooting for it to be the humans. If only because I do not trust that these particular humans are actually innocent. In fact, I think they are the whole reason for any and all misunderstanding that lie between the machines and the androids right now. We’ll only know for sure, however, the more 2B and 9S learn. I just hope that what they find is fully laid out for the player to see, because right now the one sided story crap is annoying. I want to know why the machines are here, why they feel and act like humans, and why they have any reason to hurt humans in the first place. But, as a wise machine once said, “the only way to understand someone is to get to know them.” So that’s exactly what I’m going to make my protagonists do.
Here’s to a future of machines and androids. May they all get along!
Kia
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