NieR Replicant Analysis: Machine, Monster, or Human?
NieR Replicant is a deceptively complex experience. The story is fairly simple, but the questions it poses are not.
Set in world shared by men, monsters, and machines, the game opens with these camps clearly identified and segregated. Those lines start to blur as the game unfolds, creating a rich tapestry of conflicting motivations and universal emotions.
Faced with so many justifiable perspectives and shades of gray, the heart becomes a more reliable barometer of humanity than logic.
Perhaps the best example are the twins Popola and Devola, who are unique in knowing the truth about their identity and purpose. But does this knowledge give them better insight on the situation?
Attempting to follow orders and fulfill their purpose, they speak in terms of cold logic before the final confrontation. But they also apologize and express regret about the circumstances. They sound more conflicted than robotic.
As Devloa bleeds out after losing the battle, she muses how soulless machines could weep at parting. It’s a heartbreaking scene, which also smacks of a rational mind trying to dismiss what the heart knows to be true.
Contrast this with shadow Yonah, who desires the body she once had, but not at the cost taking everything from another. The replicants were created for that purpose, but shadow Yonah can feel that her counterpart misses her brother. She does what she feels is right.
The ethics and unintended consequences of artificially created life are an entire genre of science fiction and horror, ranging from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Jurassic Park.
In NieR the unintended consequence is that the replicants were too perfect a copy and mistook themselves for their creators, creating a zero-sum game where the shadow humans must usurp replicant life to reclaim a semblance of how things once were.
This shift in what constitutes society echoes one of the first classics of modern horror — I am Legend by Richard Matheson. It tells of a man besieged in his home each night by vampires who have taken over his city. By day he researches what happened and destroys vampires wherever he can find them. Only at the end does he understand that vampires are the new normal, and in their eyes he is the monster that must be destroyed to ensure safety.
This is the player’s perspective for much of the game, when NieR unknowingly hunts down shadow humans who are unable to effectively communicate with him. The player initially shares this perspective, only gaining the ability to read what the shadows are saying during the second playthrough. In this respect, NieR is a journey of depth, more than distance.
Less tangible, but still very real, is the running commentary on desire and the human condition. It seems like everyone wants something in NieR Replicant, and much of the game is spent on fetch quests toward those goals.
In an extremely meta moment, Grimoire Weiss bemoans the amount of the running around, while NieR indicates it’s worthwhile to provide something of meaning for others. In this respect he’s admirably at peace with his life’s work.
Another interesting detail is that, for all the real estate Yorah takes up in NieR’s thoughts, he spends precious little time with her. This is illustrated by their vanishingly small screentime together. It’s also underscored in some of her diary entries that serve as loading screens. She’s clearly lonely.
NieR would probably be lonely, if not for a fantastic found family that’s decidedly more interesting than the Everymen who typically populate science fiction scenarios. This band of outcasts is really the heart of the story.
Kaine is a fearsome warrior, who locks away her pain and despair beneath a facade of nonchalance and obscenity. A habitual outcast and loner, she comes to trust the group and see herself as NieR’s loyal sword.
Her journey is toward salvation, by realizing she is worthy of love and has found it with her near-constant companions.
Emil, who is even more explicitly a weapon, has a sadder journey. Originally a recluse who wears a blindfold to contain his Medusa-like gaze, he becomes fused with his sister’s skeletal body. The stone vision is gone, but so is any outward appearance of being human.
Even so, this unfortunate boy is the first to recognize what the journey has given him, in the unforgettable scene where he sacrifices himself to save the group:
“You know…when I was young, I…I hated my eyes. And now that I’m older, I hate what my body has become. But there’s something else there now. Something like…pride. You know? I mean, without all this…I couldn’t have become your friend.”
French philosopher René Descartes once famously summarized the experience of consciousness as “I think, therefore I am.”
It was the starting point of his philosophy, which also considered the soul distinct from the body, but still essential to the human capacity for reason.
It’s a line of thinking that aligns neatly with NieR Replicant, a game that has virtually no human characters, yet is overflowing with humanity.
Nathan Lamb is a former reporter and news editor, who occasionally writes about video games for fun. He previously wrote about on the overarching themes of death and mortality in Persona 3 and is working on a series about social links in Persona 4.
