NieR: Replicant and Experimental Narrative

The video game medium excels at defying expectations

There’s a moment in NieR: Replicant where the screen fades to black. Your protagonist and his sassy, floating-tome friend trek through the Forest of Myth, a surprisingly small area of deceptive verdant glory. Something is wrong with the dreams of the denizens — their dreams are infecting them, changing them, taking them outside of themselves and pushing them into another place. As Nier and Grimoire Weiss voice their disbelief at such a thing, a change occurs. The game begins to read you. Lines of white script scrawl across the screen and narrate the actions of protagonist and tome, much to the chagrin of both. They argue against the game, they assert themselves. They assure you, the player, that agency is being maintained even as this outside force attempts to arrest control of what is happening in the narrative.

Still, the screen fades to black. White lines of text continue to unfold across an empty black pane, and before you are entirely certain of what’s happening, the game has changed. It’s a visual novel, a minutes-long dive into an entirely text-focused narrative that takes the reins of the story and guides them into another, different form. The Forest of Myth is more than a diversion from the action combat and quest grind, it’s a diversion from the…