It is one week after the game's release. At this point in time, shops throughout the country have sold out of NieR Replicant and a cult movement has quietly built up around the game. In an out-of-the-way nook in Shinjuku, a small banquet table has been prepared. How were NieR's mysterious world and its gripping, heartrending, yet beautiful tales conceived? Tonight, with three of its key creators in the same room for the first time, the whole story will be told.

So NieR made it out the door, and seems to have found quite a warm reception.

YT (Yoko Taro): To be honest, we're completely shocked here on the development side, as we had not expected the game to be received this well.

JE (Jun Eishima): Personally, I was certain Ending D would get a lot of controversy and Yoko-san would end up back in that locker.* [laughs]

YT: Oh, I was fully prepared to get sent back to the locker. [laughs] I saw NieR as being so crammed full of different things that a lot of it would come off as unpolished. Even as its creators, we were aware of various rough spots during development. But we knew that if we stopped to fix them all, it would take so long that the game would never make it out. So there were a lot of parts where, with apologies to our audience, we just said, "Eh, this'll have to do."

Even including the rough spots, most of the players seem happy with the total package.

YT: You think so? To be honest, I don't have a lot of faith in that. I still think there's something fishy about this so-called positive reception.

JE: Why must you always use pessimism to protect yourself like that? [laughs]

SN (Sawako Natori): Our attitude had been "If we can just satisfy one person in ten..." but it looks like the ratio turned out a little better than that. [laughs] Or perhaps it's just that reading lots of manga to research conventional storytelling techniques paid off?

As the publisher, how do you feel about its reception?

USEMR (Unnamed Square Enix Marketing Rep): We didn't anticipate this level of excitement either. After all, Yoko-san's games tend to be fairly unconventional, and their target audience skews older. However, we saw a significant increase in visitors to the official website just before the game's release, and there was an increasing surge of inquiries about it as the release date approached. We increased our shipments with cries of delight, but it pains me deeply that we weren't able to fully meet the demands of the game. It really does.

YT: It was a completely new IP, after all. No one expecting much from it must have been the key to its success!

JE: That's one way to look at it. [laughs]

SN: That may have been a factor. [laughs]

When we published articles about the game in Dengeki PlayStation and Dengeki Games, the weapon stories and short stories got a particularly strong reaction from our readers.

YT: Well, Eishima-san really overdid it with those.

JE: What are you talking about?! It was your idea to have young Nier be engaged in prostitution. I wrote it a lot more mild than you suggested.

So originally it was... more explicit?

JE: After getting the job of writing the short stories, I naturally played the game and talked extensively with Yoko-san about the lore and setting. Whenever I'd get an e-mail from him about it, I'd just sit there frozen in front of my computer and cry out, "WHAAAAAAT?!"

I heard that same cry coming from our editorial department.

YT: Myself and the scenario writers—Kikuchi and Natori-san here—felt Nier would need to do that in order to earn enough money to survive. It seemed like a fairly natural part of the backstory. Right?

SN: Oh yes. Perfectly natural. [smiles]

JE: Uh, yeah. That sort of thing does happen... I suppose? But writing it into a game's backstory and then announcing it publicly in a mainstream video game magazine was way too much. The original summary I received from Yoko-san even said "Nier earned money by spending the night with people regardless of their gender."

That sounds so sad.

JE: And the portrayal of it he sent me was just awful.

YT: What? It wasn't that bad! It was just like, he would be staring at the ceiling and doing everything he could to endure some miserable experience, and then the next day we would depict it hurting for him to sit down or something.

JE: I mean, as inexplicit as that is, it's still too explicit! [laughs] Although in the end, we somehow managed to get everyone on board by making it so that after that night, he starts tying up his hair.

You could revisit the "explicit" part with this book if you wanted.

JE: I don't think it would quite fit—in numerous senses of the word—so we'll pass. [laughs]

On the topic of the short stories, Natori-san's story about Kainé was rather shocking as well.

SN: That was inspired in part by Eishima-san's story. If we're going to do that for Nier, then maybe there's something along those lines for Kainé too? [laughs] To her, what she's doing is normal. But there are some who are unable to perceive it that way, and I thought I'd write about her interaction with a person like that.

She's consistently depicted as female in the game, so there must have been a lot of people who were surprised to see this very male side to her.

SN: The fact Kainé is intersex doesn't come up very much in the story, so I wanted to write more about it somewhere. The game really only touches on it in the context of her being bullied as a child.

Was it an intentional decision not to do more with Kainé being intersex in the game itself?

YT: From our perspective, we didn't put too much importance on Kainé being intersex. After all, there are intersex people going about their lives in the real world, and we simply don't know about it. I was actually quite surprised how much attention that aspect got after the game was announced.

Kainé may have been a focus before the game's release, but once it came out, Emil's feelings for Nier also got a lot of attention.

YT: I thought I'd made it pretty obvious with things like Emil's thoughts on finding a bride, but apparently that didn't come across so clearly.

Well, there was also a popular interpretation that fusing with Halua gave him feminine feelings, and that's why he was interested in Nier.

YT: No, Emil is gay!

JE: I'm glad you answered that so definitely. I was wondering if it was just my own dirty mind that had made me perceive him that way. [laughs]

USEMR: I thought that maybe Emil fell in love with Kainé after all the camping they did together and he meant that he wanted to be her bride.

YT: Our intention was that Emil would see shades of Halua in Kainé and come to view her as more of a big sister he could always rely on.

Characters with atypical sexual orientations appear so frequently that they're considered almost a staple of Yoko Taro games.

SN: For our part, when we're creating a world or story, we're just trying to make it resemble reality.

YT: It's a question of what you perceive as being abnormal, right? If we were to look around us, homosexual people may be relatively few in number, but they are there. We're not trying to make a point that "You shouldn't discriminate!" or anything like that, we're just saying, "There are people like that here, too. That's the kind of world this is." People draw distinctions between what's "normal" and what's "abnormal", but whatever the group is, the only real question is one of quantity. Some are more common than others, but they're all here in the world with us. Our intention is not to depict them as being somehow special because of it.

It was clear to me as I played the game that both Emil and Kainé were in love with Nier. However, the game never seems to make it clear who Nier is interested in.

YT: We didn't want to muddle the main theme of the story. Fundamentally, it's a game about a brother striving to save his sister, and we wanted to ensure the drama inherent in that premise made the biggest impression on our audience. After that, if players are interested in details about the world and the quirks of the characters, we're happy to have them discover these things. But we made a decision not to include much about Nier and Kainé's relationship so as not to take the focus off the main theme.

But Kainé does love Nier, doesn't she?

SN: In the first half of the game, she was glad she'd found someone she could trust, and as his companion she felt feelings of friendship toward him. But when she woke up in the library, she realized her feelings were changing. We tried to make a lot of things really hit home in that scene.

And surely Nier became aware of that over the course of their journey?

SN: Nier's heart is completely preoccupied with Yonah, and filled with desire for revenge on the Shades. He's not paying any attention at all to these subtle feelings from Kainé and Emil. [laughs] And for her part, Kainé doesn't possess the skills to communicate her feelings, so she just wants to feel needed by him, even if it's only to help him get his revenge. That's why she says the "I'll become his sword one last time" line.

YT: Incidentally, Kainé only fully becomes aware she's in love with him during their love scene at the Shadowlord's Castle.

???

YT: That scene where she kicks him in the stomach.

JE: Their "love scene"? Are you sure that's how you want to describe it? [laughs]

YT: That's what it is! She kicks him in the stomach, and when she's about to punch him, she realizes "Oh, you know what? I love this man." And she pulls back in this very feminine way.

It's a great scene. You can really see Kainé's thought process clearly. [laughs]

YT: I think it's the sexiest scene in the game.

SN: When I was working on the game's story, I remember several times where I had Nier and Kainé on the verge of a romantic moment, and then being corrected by Yoko-san saying, "That's not what I want to show." He always wanted it to be focused on their relationship as friends and traveling companions. That's why it's limited to the subtle performance in that love scene.

But the subtlety also made some players feel the events of Endings C and D came out of nowhere.

YT: The choice there isn't about Nier's relationship with Kainé so much as it is the player's relationship with Kainé. If after a couple of playthroughs you really like Kainé, you can sacrifice yourself to save her, and if you don't, you don't have to. We didn't want to shoehorn in a love story to make the player feel obligated to save her.

I see. But then Nier's "someone I love" line feels even more abrupt.

YT: Well, that was just for effect, you know, Nier saying something dramatic in the moment. [laughs] Regardless, I'd like people to view the choice in terms of "does the player love Kainé or not".

So don't think of Ending D as the "true ending" just because it comes last, but that whichever one you choose is your true ending.

YT: Yes, that's how I want people to see it.

JE: That said, for a gamer, it's game content—you have to get to Ending D, right? I mean, you can't just skip it! [laughs]

This conversation makes me realize how in my own head, I approached that choice from the perspective of "because this is a game..." Saying you're supposed to make that choice based on your true feelings for Kainé? In a way, I think that's a pretty high hurdle for the player.

SN: I think Ending D fits in quite well. Nier is someone who feels strongly for his friends. For example, I think he might have made the same choice if it had been about Emil. To him, only Yonah has a special place in his heart, and I think he values everyone else equally.

I guess I could see the perspective that he'd be happy so long as the people he cares about are able to live on, Yonah included.

JE: Ending C struck me as being the Father Nier choice, with Ending D being the Brother Nier choice.

Why do you say that?

JE: Well, a father has a responsibility to his daughter, so I don't think he can just erase himself from existence. He kills Kainé because he feels he has to be there to raise and protect his daughter. But as brother and sister they have more of a codependent relationship, so Nier might find it easier to erase himself and be freed from that.

SN: Interesting...

JE: Endings C and D are particularly open to interpretation from the player. That's why for me, I see NieR as a game that in that sense has wide appeal. People often say it's not a game for everyone, but it's not like it forces a certain answer on you.

YT: But make no mistake, this is a weird game.

Looking over the production materials in this book, there's a lot that wasn't revealed in the game itself.

YT: You're right. Things like Project Gestalt barely got explained in the game at all.

Was that an intentional choice?

YT: We don't explain everything because that's how the real world is. We wanted to capture the same shaky sense of reality, so I didn't make an effort to include clear explanations for everything. Also, I wanted the core story to be as simple and easily understood as possible, so I tried to cut out all the information beyond what was necessary to get the player emotionally involved.

There's something refreshing about that, but it also leaves players with a peculiar aftertaste.

YT: Ultimately, I just want to create strange, peculiar games. Or maybe it's just that those are the only kind I'm capable of making.

Would you mind if I asked some more specific questions about the game's lore—particularly to you, Yoko-san?

YT: Sure, I'll answer what I can.

Were Project Gestalt and the Replicant System ideas you came up with on your own?

YT: I proposed the broad strokes, after which the details were filled in by the planners and programmers at Cavia, as well as Kikuchi-san and Natori-san, who each added their own ideas.

The game beginning midway through the 21st century—with it snowing during summer in Shinjuku—was quite a surprise to me.

YT: Oh, that wasn't snow. It was salt. Corpses throughout the world that had undergone white chlorination were breaking apart, and the salt is entering the atmosphere and falling back down.

Because of white chlorination syndrome.

YT: In the year 2003, Caim and Angelus come to this world, battle the Giant, and are shot down by self-defense forces, which releases Maso particles from their bodies. When humans come in contact with this Maso, they're entered into what's called a "pact" in the Drakengard series, but it's really more of a curse. The pact is with the Gods: You become their servant and work to destroy this world that defies their will—becoming part of the Gods' Legion. If you decline the pact, you turn to salt (chlorinate) and die.

Either way, you can't live on as a human. So to protect themselves, humanity came up with the idea of "going Gestalt" to avoid it?

YT: Going Gestalt involves putting your soul into a "yorishiro"—a totem of sorts that was created from the body of the Dragon. Drakengard-style pacts involve an exchange of souls, but in this case your partner is the soulless "Dragon". As there's nothing to exchange, your soul is then safely transferred into the yorishiro.

And this protects you from white chlorination syndrome?

YT: Since your soul has been separated from your body, the pact/curse doesn't take effect even if you come into contact with Maso.

And that soul can be reunited with its body later.

YT: It's possible. But while the soul lives on without aging, it's a different story for the body. Hence the Replicant System, in which androids placed in contained regions oversee the creation of bodies devoid of consciousness and create them anew each time they die. Being immune to white chlorination syndrome, Replicant bodies would also be designed to destroy the Legion and unlock the mysteries of the syndrome. In the meantime, the Gestalts would stay asleep until everything was resolved and they could once again return to their bodies and resume their normal lives. They pinned all their hopes on Project Gestalt and the Replicant System, and that's how it was supposed to work.

JE: This part is so complicated that you'd never understand it without asking Yoko-san. When I was writing the short stories, I asked a lot of questions myself.

YT: Having learned from the Dragon's remnants how to fuse science with magic, humanity successfully developed the Gestalt process—but it had some serious defects. For one, Gestalts were weak to sunlight. For another, after a certain amount of time, souls that had gone Gestalt would go crazy and attack other people, or even just die.

And those are the "relapse" cases—Shades that attack Replicants.

YT: Nier and Yonah were about to be part of a Gestalt-process experiment, but Nier grew suspicious and the siblings fled the facility. Nier must have realized how dangerous going Gestalt would be.

After Nier is attacked by those relapse cases, he reluctantly forges a pact with Grimoire Noir and goes Gestalt, gaining magical powers in order to save Yonah.

YT: That's what's being portrayed at the start of the game. Yonah also touched Grimoire Noir, going Gestalt herself, but due to her sickly constitution, she begins to relapse immediately.

And Nier doesn't relapse at all?

YT: Nier underwent the Gestalt process fully expecting to relapse. The reason he didn't is that he just happened to possess an inherent stability that wasn't vulnerable to degradation. The reason for it isn't clear, but he was the only subject of any experiment before or after that day not to relapse—and the World Purification Commission used him because of it. But since Yonah had relapsed and it was only a matter of time before she died, they convinced Nier that if he provided Maso to stabilize the other Gestalts, they would eventually find some way to save her.

And he ended up doing that for over a thousand years?

YT: He did. That's how he came to be regarded as the "lord" of the Gestalts (the Shades); if it wasn't for Gestalt Nier, they all would have relapsed. However, the promised cure for Yonah didn't arrive, and Gestalt Nier eventually realized it never would. So he decided to return Yonah's Gestalt into her Replicant—and himself into his own Replicant—so they could live out the rest of their lives together.

I understand Gestalt Nier's goals, but why were Devola and Popola supporting him?

YT: Having been programmed to serve humanity's interests and complete Project Gestalt, Devola and Popola intervene. Their goal is not to make the Shadowlord happy, but to complete the project. They know the Shadowlord taking matters into his own hands could lead to the failure of Project Gestalt, so in order to stop him, they hurriedly attempt to engineer the fusion of Grimoire Weiss and Grimoire Noir, which will immediately reunite all of the Gestalts (souls) with their Replicants (bodies).

We learn in the short story "And Then There Were None" that Grimoires Weiss and Noir have Gestalts sealed within them, but what exactly are they?

YT: They're part of a program that utilizes magic. By activating Grimoire Noir, all the Gestalts can be returned to their Replicants, and this world of Replicants can become a world of humans. The keys needed to activate this system are Weiss and the "Sealed Verses". The reason the Sealed Verses function as combat magic is because they were intended to be used for battling the Legion. You need Grimoire Weiss to activate Grimoire Noir, and you need the Sealed Verses to activate Grimoire Weiss. Effectively, it's a two-stage lock that's been designed to avoid premature activation so that the overseers can trigger it when the time comes.

And when does the time come?

YT: When the Legion have been wiped away and white chlorination syndrome is no longer a concern. However, Gestalt Nier—the Shadowlord—becomes aware he's being deceived.

Because Yonah's relapse shows no signs of recovering, and he's been doing nothing but providing Maso this whole time.

YT: He's frustrated that nothing ever changes, so he's resorting to extreme measures. He's trying to steal Yonah, his own Replicant, and Grimoire Weiss. This shakes the system to its core, so even though the time has not come, Devola and Popola—its overseers—try to restore all the Replicants to their rightful owners before everything is completely ruined. However, Grimoire Weiss has lost his memory and has begun to see himself as a companion to Replicant Nier. Also, so much time had gone by that Replicants had started to develop sentience. The android twins are revising their plan to match the changing circumstances and have tried to manipulate the Shadowlord in a way that will salvage things, but Replicant Nier has his own agenda, so it doesn't work out. And that right there is the story of NieR.

Hearing all this has made me pretty confused.

YT: I bet. To be honest, it feels confusing even to us, and we're the ones who thought this all up! [laughs] But I don't think knowing anything we just discussed is necessary to enjoy the game. It's all just irrelevant background lore.

It doesn't have anything to do with the player's quest as Nier.

YT: There's all sorts of things going on in the world, but Nier was just fighting Shades to protect Yonah. One of the things I wanted to capture was how similar that is to the sorts of things that happen in our world. Like, people are born into countries that are at war for whatever reason, and they don't really understand what the long history was that led to the conflict. It's like that.

So let's say Replicant Nier didn't kill the Shadowlord, allowed his body to be taken over, and Grimoire Weiss and Grimoire Noir fused. Would peaceful human society have returned?

YT: If the Legion were gone and the white chlorination syndrome was under control, then yes. But even if it did happen that way, it wouldn't do anything to cure Yonah's Black Scrawl. It wouldn't save her.

Huh.

YT: Yeah. No matter what they do, no path remains that could lead to Yonah and Nier living together for long.

And that's true even though Replicant Nier rescues Replicant Yonah in Endings A, B, and C?

YT: Replicant Yonah and Nier may survive, but because Replicant Nier killed Gestalt Nier, there are no more stabilizing Maso particles, meaning the Gestalts will all ultimately relapse. That will make it impossible for their corresponding Replicants to be reborn. Not to mention, Devola and Popola have also been killed, and without them managing the system of death and birth, all the Replicants in their region will die out within the current generation.

So ultimately Yonah can't be saved?

YT: Yonah's Black Scrawl hasn't been cured, so it will continue to progress until she dies.

[everyone falls momentarily silent]

Well, then... In Ending D, what happens after Nier's existence is erased?

YT: Well, first of all, the Black Scrawl hasn't been cured, so of course Yonah will die.

And what about Kainé? She survives?

YT: She doesn't die right then and there. But without the Replicant System functioning, she'll die eventually.

When you put it like that, it's like nothing Replicant Nier did accomplished anything at all.

YT: Correct. [laughs]

JE: I guess it's true what whichever ending you get, it's always the same progression. First Yonah dies, then everyone dies.

SN: Yep. Welcome to Yoko Taro's World. [laughs]

JE: As you can see, we've brought back the Multiple Bad Ending System once again. ♪

USEMR: You all seem so happy about that.

JE: Well, you wouldn't expect a story from Yoko-san's team to end cleanly and neatly. If anything, I only felt things were wrapped up neatly when I first heard the full explanation you just did.

SN: No matter how heroic a story's protagonist is, you only ever get happy endings because the story cuts off when it does. Everyone dies in the end, and that includes all of us sitting around this table. There's nothing unusual about it.

This took a pretty heavy turn.

Even among all the short stories collected in this book, I think the most shocking one is "The Lost World", which chronicles what happens after Ending D. I'd like to consider that Ending E.

JE: I imagine people who were left feeling brokenhearted after Ending D will enjoy it.

So what's going on in this Ending E?

YT: In the story, after the Shadowlord is slain, a program that reboots the Replicant System is activated in the Forest of Myth, and Kainé destroys it.

Why does Nier return in his younger form?

YT: Because he was remade based on the "memory" of the first time he visited the Forest of Myth. Also, as the writer, I wanted to insert the element of "let's start over from that time when we were all having fun adventuring together". That was another part of it.

It made me wonder what would happen if he came back in his older form and things went well with Kainé.

YT: If it was Gestalt, he'd get to come back before he got the eyepatch! Then things might go well for him!

JE: Hmm, an age-gap couple is fine, too, but that's an interesting idea...

Kainé could have Emil turn her to stone for another five years.

SN: Emil has four arms now. I'm sure he could do that in his sleep! [laughs]

JE: But after five years, the Replicants that have Gestalts would probably be dying one after another from the Black Scrawl... [faraway look]

YT: Even without the destruction system, sooner or later they're all gonna die... [faraway look]

SN: They are. [smiles]

How cruel.

YT: You may say I'm cruel, but I actually cut several scenes from the game because I found them to be too cruel or emotionally intense. There were a lot of scenes I cut from the parts Natori-san was in charge of writing, too.

Can you give me an example?

YT: Personally, I can't handle scenes like the one Natori-san wrote in "The Narrow Gate", with Emil and Kainé outside the town. They're so painful to see.

Emil's easy smile in those situations somehow makes it even more sad.

YT: Exactly. And that is such a quintessential Natori scene. There were some scenes she wrote between Nier and Yonah that were so true to life that it was just too realistic, and I couldn't stand to read them. It made my heart hurt.

What sort of scenes?

SN: I remember writing one scene where, early in the game, Nier is feeling especially burdened by Yonah and just kind of snaps and says something with a nuance of "If only you weren't here" that really hurts her. I felt that especially at his age, his emotions would get the better of him sometimes and he'd lash out at those closest to him.

YT: And to me, that was just too true to life, too painful. So I didn't approve it.

JE: I wonder if scenes like that had been in there, it might actually have made Nier seem a little less pitiable? When I was playing it I felt irritation and even anger at Yonah for being so beloved by everyone and never scolded for anything. [laughs]

Eishima-san, I wonder what your impression was of the game's story when you first read it.

JE: To be honest, at first I was surprised at how conventional it was for a Yoko Taro project. I'd heard he was aiming for something more like a conventional boys' manga, so I thought, "Ah, I guess that's what this is." But the more I read it, the more strange and uncomfortable I started to feel. That's why I really agree with what Natori-san was saying about the lack of realistic scenes. None of the characters ever do what you would expect a normal person to do in their situation. Everyone just accepts what's happening. So when you look at the story as a whole, you may feel that something is off.

YT: Isn't that typical of manga targeted at teenage boys, though? Full of just the "good parts" and all sorts of things feel off.

JE: No. I'd say that boys' manga tends to proceed along a much more predictable structure. In a sense, NieR feels odd because it neglects those structures. There's something strange about that.

SN: Looking back at it now, I think Yoko-san was correct not to approve those scenes. If you want to make a game that feels strange, you can't include situations that are so true to life.

YT: No, I'm telling you, it was just because I couldn't handle reading scenes like that. It has nothing at all to do with wanting to make strange games!

It's been speculated that since Replicants aren't real people, the way they express emotion might not be entirely human.

JE: That could be one way to frame it. I think the character who comes off as being the most human is probably Popola, who's supposed to be an android.

So to summarize the conversation, NieR's world ultimately lacks the reality of the normal human world. Without that, it's left with a strange, dreamlike sense of reality. And that might be what delivers the sort of story that role-playing game fans like.

An intersex heroine is something you don't see every day. Is it safe to assume Kainé was intersex in her original human form?

YT: No, in our lore she was born intersex due to an error that occurred in the Replicant System after it was running for many long years. As a human, she was a woman with a partner she was supposed to marry.

Is the Shade Tyrann not her original Gestalt?

YT: No, Kainé has a proper Gestalt elsewhere. Tyrann is a normal, non-relapsed Gestalt who's always loved killing and is trying to take over Kainé's body. He enjoys the agony he's causing her.

When Kainé goes berserk in Endings C and D, Tyrann and Nier work together to save her, but by what mechanism is Kainé saved at the end of Ending D?

YT: ...The player's love and passion!

Would you all share your favorite characters with me?

YT: I think mine would be Number 7. I loved him from the moment I saw D.K's character design, and used it with almost no changes.

SN: Kainé is my favorite character. If I was in school with the cast of NieR and I saw Kainé standing there all alone, I'd want to go over and talk to her.

JE: Without a doubt, young Nier.

YT: Eishima-san is obsessed with young Nier's zettai ryouiki (exposed thighs).

JE: I wish I could have played as young Nier forever. But really, I think of every other character besides Nier as a heroine. Even Weiss ultimately confesses his love to him.

YT: What?! When?!

JE: When they part ways and he says he's grown to like the name "Weiss".

YT: Only in your brain could that be interpreted as a confession of love. That's incredible. And terrifying. [laughs]

JE: Come on!

Weiss and Number 7 seem to have become popular among women as "mascot" characters.

YT: Emil is naive from having been sealed up in the mansion for so long, and he stopped growing when he became a weapon, so he's perpetually young. How can you not love a dumb guy?

JE: I laughed so hard at that last scene in Ending B. I really had a lot of fun writing the short story about Number 7's solo adventures. [laughs] I think that's why I can't beat the DLC. I just can't bring myself to cut those Emil bullets!

YT: Those were pretty easy to make and turned out to be quite amusing, so I liked them a lot. They're really creepy, yet every woman on the team thought it was so cute. That Emil guy's really paying dividends.

Looking at it in a certain way, you could say Nier's a pretty popular guy who's surrounded by charming characters.

YT: It's a harem all right.

JE: Except there isn't even a single nice, normal girl.

YT: But he sure is popular with non-humans. And yet despite all his options, Nier's just obsessed with his selfish little sister. What a jerk! [laughs]

YT: I really like all the scenes that Yonah is in, but I especially like the scene where Kainé leaves in Ending A. When I asked Natori-san to write that scene, I think all I wrote in the request was "a final scene that ends beautifully with them looking up at the sky". And then she comes back with Yonah yelling "Hey, look!" at the worst possible time. I was like, "Oh, wow. This scene is just savage!" [laughs]

SN: And it was totally intentional on her part. They're brother and sister, but she's just a little girl and he's her protector, so I totally believe that Yonah would be willing to stoop to that.

JE: That scene really surprised me. The way she timed that, I could totally see that in a father-daughter situation; that's the prerogative of a girl who has a monopoly on her father's heart. But for a sister to do that to her brother... That's just heartless!

YT: You have to remember that she's still mentally five years old. Not that that makes it okay. [laughs] Somebody chide her already!

Do you have any favorite scenes that you could share with us, Natori-san?

SN: I like the scene where Kainé falls asleep at Emil's mansion and she and Weiss argue a little. When I get to write scenes like that, where the companions behave more like a family, I always think, "I'm so happy for you, Kainé." Also, at the risk of patting myself on the back, I really like the line where Kainé says to Emil, "Your eyes are not a sin." I thought Emil really needed someone who thought like that at his side, so I channeled my love for him and that line popped right out.

She really comes off as sisterly there.

SN: I guess I really do have a strong attachment to Kainé and Emil. They've just been alone for so long and are enduring so much on a physical level—even more than Nier and Weiss—that I wanted to make up for that by giving them a lot of moments where they can appreciate that they have friends now.

Eishima-san, what's your favorite scene?

YT: Eishima has always seemed to be satisfied just to watch young Nier running through the field from behind. All because of those rippling zettai ryouiki.

JE: Oh, I certainly have enjoyed watching that over and over and over again. [laughs] It's just that whenever I'm watching it and enjoying myself, my high school-age son will walk up behind me and mutter something like "So that kid's taken it up the butt, huh?"

SN & YT: [explosive laughter]

Well, that's your own fault, isn't it?

JE: It is not! Yoko-san is the one who made young Nier do those things! I just included it in the story!

YT: Oh no, Eishima-san is in this deep. She just had to go and stir up all our fans nationwide.

JE: I tell you, so much controversy around this project for things that aren't even in the game! [laughs]

YT: Somehow we managed to release both Replicant and Gestalt versions of the game, but in fact, there was a time when it looked like Replicant would be canned.

USEMR: That did almost happen.

YT: We were in development for around three years, and at some point we were called to a meeting at Square Enix's American branch to give an overview of the project and report our progress. At the time, we'd planned to release the two titles simultaneously and at an earlier date, so we were on quite a tight schedule. And just as I finished explaining that at the meeting, one of the branch executives said something like "Then why not just release Gestalt? Do you really have to make a different version just for Japan?" But, you know, in proper English. They had a point. [laughs]

And then what happened?

YT: Our producer, who was sitting next to us, gave me a look like "What should we do?" and I grumbled, "No way!" [laughs] If we didn't make Replicant, it would tank the team's motivation and, as a result, even just Gestalt would be late! Is that really what you want?! I just threatened them with that and left.

USEMR: How extremely unprofessional.

YT: From the start, this was a game about two siblings. Incidentally, at first even Replicant was going to be voiced entirely in English. We were told they couldn't make the timing work for voice recording on the Japanese side.

JE: I didn't know that! Wow, if Replicant had been in English with Japanese subtitles, it might not have blown up the way it did.

YT: Our producer, Saito-san—maybe he was being fickle, or maybe he just put his foot down, but at the last minute he said, "Let's include the Japanese voices," and managed to get the cast arranged for us.

I heard the one casting decision Yoko-san wouldn't budge on was Kainé.

YT: Originally, due to her rather feminine character design, the plan had been to go with a cute and pretty direction for her voice. But I wanted her rough image to be reflected in her voice as well, so I pushed hard for it to be Atsuko Tanaka.

SN: I think the most fun I had on this project was when I was writing Kainé's more abusive lines. After I'd write the wingdings we used for censorship (Kainé's cursing is censored in Japanese), I'd write in brackets "She's actually saying something like this" and then list all the crudest, filthiest, most lowbrow words I could think of. I really enjoyed writing those lines, so I'm glad they got recorded in Japanese, even if they were mostly replaced with beeps.

YT: Having Tanaka-san record every one of those lines, and getting to hear every one of those lines at the studio is a memory I treasure.

Tanaka-san's many fans are going to be in agony when they learn you said that.

After talking with you all today, I really feel it took a strenuous effort from many different people to get NieR released in the manner it was.

YT: That's true. I guess I consider it a fortunate title in a lot of ways. Originally there wasn't a plan for a limited-edition version either, but our marketing rep over there pushed hard and made it happen for us.

USEMR: We had to do one after how good the music turned out. I insisted that it would be worth it, and was able to get it done.

I was surprised the soundtrack came out before the game itself.

YT: I made all sorts of selfish requests to Keiichi Okabe from MONACA, and to Emi Evans, and in the end they produced a soundtrack that was even better than I imagined it could be. I can't thank them enough for that. It makes me so happy to see it be so well received, and I'm really grateful for that.

As a player, I think what surprised me most was Ending D. It must not have been easy to get approval for the mechanic used in that.

YT: I told our producer Saito-san that I really wanted that, and he worked hard on my behalf. Originally we made it so that you wouldn't even be able to back up your save data.

JE: If you'd won that battle, I think you really would have ended up back in that locker. [laughs]

YT: Yeah, it was no surprise that I lost that one. [laughs] We let players make backups, and added in lots of confirmation prompts after the choice to delete your saved data, and fortunately we somehow managed to get it approved.

If you hadn't been allowed to do it, did you have an alternate method in mind?

YT: Basically, the plan was after playing through it all once, it wouldn't let you use the name you used the first time through. After seeing Endings A, B, and C once more with your second name, you would be able to play through the short story, "The Lost World". After that, if you entered the name you used on your first playthrough, you would be able to get your protagonist back.

JE: Ooh, I'd have liked to have played that.

SN: But I feel like that's just the sort of sadistic design that would get that locker door of yours open. [laughs]

Was there some special meaning behind not letting players reuse the same name?

YT: With having you play through the game seven times, the idea was that the way we weren't letting you use your past name, even though it had clearly existed, would emphasize that the player had managed to remember who they had been. Even now you can't use the same name after Ending D, which is a remnant of that just-in-case seven-replay system.

Speaking of revisiting things, people have noticed allusions to various other famous games, beyond just Ending D.

YT: We incorporated a few similar elements of certain mainstream hits. I did choose them carefully, out of fear of being yelled at if I did it too often...

JE: Some of them aren't exactly subtle. Sometimes I wondered "Is this really okay?!"

When I carved the meat off the sheep, I found myself looking around for somewhere to cook it.

JE: I did too! [laughs]

YT: You don't want to take that sort of thing too far. [The unnamed Square Enix marketing rep] is glaring now.

USEMR: I've heard you went a lot farther in the early stages of development. Like, that when you went to the manor door, the screen cut to the door and it made a loud creaking noise. [laughs]

All: Now that's going too far!

YT: Yeah, even I thought that.

Now that NieR has drawn a lot of attention worldwide, has it affected your plans for the future, Yoko-san?

YT: We only just finished NieR, so I haven't thought about the future at all. Myself (and the company Cavia) are merely developers, so our job is to get publishers to approve a project, provide us with a budget, and then develop games in accordance with those plans. And I hope I'll have another opportunity to do so.

Any thoughts about a NieR sequel?

YT: At this stage, no. What really interests me right now is expanding NieR's lore by linking it to other mediums, like this book. That allows me to express things in text that we couldn't fully include in the game itself. I'm always looking for ways to bring better content to our fans within the constraints of time and budget limitations.

Eishima-san and Natori-san, are there still stories that you would like to tell if you're able to find an avenue to do so?

JE: I struggled with the limited word counts of the short stories, so I'd love to be able to go all-out and write something longer. The lore of NieR is deep, so I'd love to ask Yoko-san about other aspects of it and really delve into some different topics.

SN: I'd like to write the story of the wolf pack leader and the "grandfather" one day. Honestly, I love all the game's characters, so I'd be delighted to keep working with them in various forms for years to come.

Do you have any final messages for the readers of this book, Yoko-san?

YT: I cannot express how happy your warm reception of NieR has made me. I hope that next time I can once again serve up the feeling of grabbing a bit of food that you didn't expect much from and finding it to be unexpectedly tasty.