This is somewhat old news since I never posted about it here, but apparently earlier on May 11, voice actress Yui Ishikawa announced that she had given birth to her first child.
The other day, on a warm, spring day, I welcomed my first child into the world.
Since pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting has been a series of firsts for me, I’ve often found myself overwhelmed by how little I truly knew of this world. But more than that, I’m currently spending this time filled with such gratitude and joy that my child has arrived safely.
To everyone who kindly adjusted your schedules for me—thank you so much. I hope to continue growing through this experience to become a mother my child can be proud of.
Thank you so much and I appreciate your continued support.
This could have drastic effects as it relates to the road ahead, especially where Penny Blood is involved, but in the current state of the video game industry, although I can only see this as a positive move. If these companies can come together to support each other, I think there could be a mutually positive outcome.
With NJ Holdings relinquishing all shares in the company back to Shade, I am at least somewhat hopeful that something amazing could still come from this.
I was worried about the status of the company since their official website went offline many months ago (maybe close to a year ago?). It also seems like the company URL is currently up for grabs. I’d like to at least nab the URL for folks who might use it later, but it looks like only registered companies are able to claim the “co.jp” suffix, which makes sense… I just don’t want to see some scalper company eat it up and demand an insane amount to reclaim it.
Please forgive me for dreaming that Studio Wildrose/YUKIKAZE and the remnants of Shade can come together and make something entirely new and grow with their own individual strengths. I am only positive from this turn of events, and it makes me want to do MORE from the fan perspective, so if anyone out there sees this, please feel free to get in contact with me!!
I was recently talking with a friend about DOD3 and got nostalgic for the old displays that various stores put together. Having a look at some of my old photos, I thought it would be nice to share them again for the folks who haven’t seen them yet.
▶︎ These photos were originally posted to The World of Yoko Taro Facebook page that I managed (started out as a DOD3 fanpage and later renamed).
▶︎ October 22, 2013 – Yodobashi Camera, Yokohama
▶︎ November 12, 2013 – Yodobashi Camera, Yokohama
“Went to buy Aoi Eir’s “Sirius” single CD and had to stop by the DOD3 display again!”
▶︎ November 25, 2013 – Yodobashi Camera, Shinjuku
“More displays! This time from Yodobashi Camera in Shinjuku. The tiny display on the bottom shelf at Yodobashi was depressing.”
▶︎ November 25, 2013 – Bic Camera, Shinjuku
“More displays! This time from Yodobashi Bic Camera in Shinjuku. The tiny display on the bottom shelf at Yodobashi was depressing.”
▶︎ December 9, 2013 – Bic Camera, Shinjuku
“Shinjuku displays. Nothing outstanding, really…”
▲ Regarding the last picture in the above gallery, this display marked the roughly 2.5 month delay with the original release. SQEX Producer Takamasa Shiba previously apologized for the delay in one of the live broadcasts (October 31, 2013 → December 19, 2013).
▶︎ December 9 & 10, 2013 – Yodobashi Camera, Shinjuku
▶︎ December 9, 2013 – Yodobashi Camera, Shinjuku
“Various spots in Akihabara! Found 2 Zero stand-ups!! thanks, Chris!!!”
▶︎ December 18, 2013 – Yodobashi Camera, Yokohama
“Yodobashi Yokohama!! I asked a sales rep what they do with the stands and they said that it’s put in the trash!!!!! AHHHHH THE HORROR!!!”
▶︎ December 23, 2013 – TRADERS, Akihabara
“大発見！Found a poster in TRADERS in Akihabara with signatures from Yoko Taro, Okabe Keichi, and one–nope, three–more person. Very nice find!!!”
▲ Signed pink DOD3 poster has autographs by 5 people, 3 of which I know and 2 that are alluding me at the moment… We have Yoko Taro at the bottom, Keiichi Okabe in the top right, and Kimihiko Fujisaka to the top left of Yoko’s name.
▶︎ December 23, 2013 – Yodobashi Camera, Akihabara
“More displays and another signed poster in Yodobashi Akihabara!!”
Illustration on Page 3 of the initial NieR Plan Proposal, Grimoire NieR: Revised Edition (2021)
One of the first steps to game development is completing a plan proposal (企画書) that contains all the details about the game to pitch the idea.
Additionally, one of the first times we ever saw anything from the original NieR proposal was listed in Grimoire NieR from 2010, and again in the DOD 10th Anniversary -World Inside- book from 2013. The pages from the original release of Grimoire NieR also appear in the Revised Edition, which was released in 2021 (English edition in 2023).
If you zoom in as much as you can, you can sort of read some of the text, so here’s what I can read from the main table of contents on Page 3.
▶︎ Table of Contents
Page 02 Overview / 概要
Page 03 Table of Contents / 目次
Page 04 Story / 物語
Page 08 Characters / 登場人物
Page 10 World Setting / 世界設定
Page 12 Beasts: Gods of the Ancients / イニシエノカミ
Page 13 Game System / ゲームシステム
Page 16 Basic Action / 基本アクション
Page 18 Word System / ワードシステム
Page 20 Counter Action / カウンターアクション
Page 22 13 Grimoires / 十三冊の本
Page 24 Items / アイテム
Page 25 Other / その他
Page 28 World Map / ワールドマップ
Page 30 Other Settings / その他の設定
The recent issue of Famitsu magazine also had 2 pages worth to show the every page of the plan proposal, but the images are unfortunately too small to read any of the text.
On the Overview page, these are the general specs that they had outlined for the game:
Title: NieR
Genre: Battle Action RPG
Platform: PS3, Xbox360
Age: 12+
Region: Japan, North America, Europe
Projected Release: June 2009
What’s interesting to note here is that they were aiming for a early summer 2009 release. As you all know, the game wasn’t actually released until April 22, 2010, so it seems like there may have been some delays or adjustments made throughout the development stage.
The following is an assortment of information that I’m able to read from the Revised Edition of Grimoire NieR. It’s incredibly disjointed, but I’ll try to organize it in a way that makes sense.
▶︎ Locations
For the most part, the names of various locations remain in the released game, but some places originally had a slightly different title, as you can see below, with the main difference given to the Facade, which was dubbed the “City of Stairs”. Pretty interesting.
ニーアの村 Nier’s Village
丘の上の洋館 Emil’s Manor (Lit. Western-style Mansion on the Hill)
人魚の海岸 Seafront (Lit. Mermaid’s Coast)
階段の街 Facade (Lit. City of Stairs)
神話の森 Forest of Myth
崖の村 The Aerie
石の神殿 Barren Temple
▶︎ The 13 Grimoires
剣の書 Grimoire of Swords
弓の書 Grimoire of Bows
斧の書 Grimoire of Axes
飛の書 Grimoire of Flight
杖の書 Grimoire of Staves
槍の書 Grimoire of Spears
幻の書 Grimoire of Illusion
白の書 Grimoire Weiss *The idea of “Weiss” existed very early on.
姿の書 Grimoire of Shapes
癒の書 Grimoire of Healing
能の書 Grimoire of Abilities
術の書 Grimoire of Skills
魔の書 Grimoire of Magic
▶︎ Assorted Text
Here are just some random lines throughout the displayed images that I could read:
What’s more precious to you than even your own life?
“Even if I must sacrifice the world, I will save my sister.”
The Book of Death・終末の書（Reference to Noir?) The accursed Grimoire exists.
This is the shape of the future, a world at its end.
Connected worlds / Expanding destruction
▶︎ Kingdom of Night?
Some people were also wondering if this might be an early depiction of the Kingdom of Night, which is supposed to be located somewhere in the Americas due to the planet being tidally locked to the sun sometime in 26XX. Yoko has yet to tell us this particular part of the timeline so we don’t know the details, but the reason behind the planet becoming tidally locked to the sun could be related to whatever incident that “broke” the moon.
▶︎ Related Links
If you follow the link in the tweet below, you’ll be able to read the full interview with the devs from Famitsu’s coverage of the NieR 15th Anniversary. Of course, it’s written in Japanese, but you can easily get Google to display it in English here.
⚠️ Nothing overtly spoilerish is stated here, but you might want to be a little careful if you want to entirely avoid any and all spoilers — it’s the type that you won’t understand without the necessary context.
I have yet to read the chapters of the NieR 15th Anniversary Web novel in their entirety, but I found it interesting that the ending chapter included several of the backend string IDs to call up a specific scene. I wrote a whole thread about it, so it might be better just to read through them, but for those not on Twitter, I’ll summarize what I was talking about below.
▶︎ The Chapters
– 無ノ檻 – / Cage of Nothingness
NieR:Automata「廃棄ノ記録」Record of Disposal
– 花ノ庭 – / Garden of Flowers
NieR Re[in]carnation「覚醒ノ記録」Record of Ascension
– 禍ノ風 – / Wind of Calamity※
NieR Replicant「流転ノ記録」Record of Transmigration
※禍 may likely be a reference to recent usages such as「コロナ禍」as in the coronavirus pandemic, so the context is a little different from a general “disaster”.
▶︎ The Writers
Karin Harada (原田香林) – Square Enix - NieR Re[in]carnation scenario writer
NieR 15th Anniversary Web Novel ⚠️Discussion & Spoilers⚠️
We get a couple line callback codes from the game and are also listed in the scripts. These are the scenes that are meant to be called up at these branching points in the novel.#NieR#NieR15th#ニーア#ニーア15周年pic.twitter.com/LhujQ9w20v
I’ve edited the text in the image a little bit, as you can see below:
Chapter 6
NieR Replicant「流転ノ記憶」”Record of Transmigration”
日本語音声収録台本 ＜メインA（少年期）-1＞ Page 2
EID_0050_a0010
※ニーア（オリジナル）が雪の東京で凍える。
*Nier (original) is freezing in a snowy Tokyo.
(This is the start of the game)
日本語音声収録台本 ＜メインB（青年期）-2＞ Page 179
EID_9400_a0270
「大切な人」を取り戻す
Take back your “precious person”
(This is the end of the game, Branch E)
I don’t want to go as far as to translate 流転 as “reincarnation” at this point because it’s still many, many years prior to the events that lead into NieR Re[in]carnation, so I wanted to keep it a little unique and special even if the meaning is pretty much the same.
For greater context on the dev side, every single line of text has an ID that the game is able to callback whenever. This is also how scenes are loaded into the system. So, really, this sequence is playing out very much like a game and we’re seeing the backend code to do it.
Comparatively, DOD1 used slightly different callback codes, which we can see in the scripts that were included in the DOD 10th Anniversary Box.
The scenario voice recording script uses a pair of dual digits plus a two letter code to designate scenes. (ie. 01-01 MV). Other codes include EA, GA, AC, and GG.
Simple AI explanation…
Since the scenario recordings don’t require codes for every single line, the same is not true for the window message recordings. For these, each individual window will have a callback code (ie. 01-04WM01E that lives within 01-04 GG). Here WM likely stands for “window message”.
Depending on the game engine they’re using, the script callbacks will look different, so I’m not exactly sure what they were using for DOD1.
I get how people are translating 流転 as “transience”, as that’s the most common meaning, but this will change depending on the context, which is why I translated it as “transmigration” instead because this is literally the point when a certain person returns…
It may be important to understand the difference between these two words and you’ll understand why one is more appropriate to use here than the other. Because I’m lazy, this is a ChatGPT explanation:
“Transmigration” and “reincarnation” are very similar, so it could be possible to use them interchangeably.
So, “transience” generally means temporary, changing… something that will not last for long, where as “transmigration” is a form of reincarnation, so I don’t think we need any more explanation there…
Moving on, let’s take a look at these EID_ codes. If anyone remembers DOD3 at this point, you should recognize this from Accord’s timelines that we saw even within the game. Please take a look here for further reference (of course, beware of spoiolers): https://firesanctuary.com/branches.html
So, although I get why they probably used these codes in the new webnovel… but I can’t help but ALSO think of Accord at the same time, similar to how she is able to jump from place to place within time. It’s very much like how the game actually works on the backend.
Additionally, Haruto on Twitter also found similar string IDs that call up specific points along the story:
ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates (SEA). The file format and the program were both called ARC. The format is known as the subject of controversy in the 1980s, part of important debates over what would later be known as open formats. ーWikipedia
For those who are familiar with the backend of game development, you will know that each and every line of text also comes with a specific string ID so that it can be called up at any moment. This also helps to save space, so you can use a single string multiple times in different locations within the game.
What’s also interesting is that we’ve seen these specific string IDs before, in DOD3 as directly stated by Accord.
Click the image to view more information on the various branches in Drakengard 3 according to Accord.
▶︎ Please note that the numbers following “EID_” do not designate a year within the Yokoverse. This is specifically used within the coding of the game itself.
Although I see them dropping these string IDs in the Web novel as a clever way of showing a bit of the backend of game development, I also get vibes of Accord and how she easily jumps from moment to moment. It’s curious that she would actually use these string IDs, almost as if she were a developer herself.
