Ruka Endo as No2. Screen cap from the initial DVD release of the play.

This just in! News has broken that the subtitle to the new Nier title is “Automata” aka “Automaton” or “Android”.

The so-called “enemy” of the game is called the “kikai seimei-tai” or the “Living Machines”, the very enemies which bore down upon humanity in Yoko Taro’s stage play “YoRHa“. There seems to be more and more similarities between the two, so I suggest you take a look at my notes on the matter here.

As it appears now, the main character will be “No.2 Ver.B”, taking place after the events of the YoRHa play! She is able to use both a katana and large-sized swords.

According to the Character Designer Yoshida’s storyboards, this character will have a long-range attack ability called “Pod”.

This is a short summary that I wrote for Siliconera:

During the during the 14th Machine Armament War in the year 11,939AD, humans are near extinction. With the invasion of the “Living Machines”, humanity had no choice but to abandon the planet, taking refuge upon the Moon. Their only hope lie in an armada of specially configured androids called “YoRHa”. Programmed with human emotions and feelings, they descend upon the surface of the planet to combat the ceaseless onslaught of the Machines.

With the destruction of No.1 in the decent to the planet, No.2 assumes command over all units… however reluctant and unsure of her own abilities. She remains this way throughout the entity of the play; she keeps her black “visor” on the longest…only taking it off in the final scene when she faces the machines on her own.

No.2, after witnessing the destruction of her unit and the last of the Resistance, a failed YoRHa expedition hundreds of years before her time, is alone among a cold, unfeeling world ruled by machines.

Source: Game Johou

Other interesting notes:

Definition of “autamata“:

• noun
  1. a plural of automaton.
  automaton
• noun, plural automatons, automata
  1. a mechanical figure or contrivance constructed to act as if by its own motive power; robot.
  2. a person or animal that acts in a monotonous, routine manner, without active intelligence.
  3. something capable of acting automatically or without an external motive force.
  “automata.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 28 Oct. 2015. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/automata>.