Yesterday was the pre-release live broadcast for the next installment in Yoko Taro’s NieR saga, NieR Re[in]carnation. There were several segments of the broadcast, one of which gathered up a bunch of questions from fans who posted them on Twitter with the appropriate hashtags. The video below shows the moment a question similar to mine was read live:

We’ll get back to that in a little bit, but first the DETAILS in the question..

[QUESTION]
How much is NieR Re[in]carnation related to the previous games in the NieR Series? As long as it doesn’t spoil anything, I’d appreciate it if you could tell us!

[ANSWER]
Yoko: If I were to say whether it’s connected or not, I’d have to say that it is, but…
Saito: There’s not much you can say…
Yoko: Well, if you think about how NieR has its roots in the real world, I would say that it’s connected like today’s morning dramas are connected to NieR Replicant. It’s sort of connected to NieR like that.

So, basically…

NieR is to Asadora* as
NieR Re[in]carnation is to NieR.
* Japanese morning dramas/soaps

PLEASE NOTE:
This gets into some pretty heavy-duty speculation, so please keep that in mind. I have also not played the CBT of Re[in]carnation, so there may be things that are explained there that I don’t know about.

I’m not exactly sure what we can take away from this answer, but it could be something along the lines as my old speculation regarding Accord and the Dragons.

Basically, my idea is that Fio, the little girl character, is the Original Accord who exists to “set things right” within something similar to the Gestalt Terminal. Of course, if you’ve played OG NieR, you’ll know what that is, but I’ll try to be discrete and leave out the spoilers.

Simply, the Cage is actually the Gestalt Terminal that houses all the Gestalt data of humanity. It’s not just their DNA biological data but also copies of their soul and/or memories. So, by interacting with the Cage, Fio is able to access the “slumbering” memories inside. What becomes the main conflict is that even though the memories are not physical and yet they continue to exist within the Cage. It’s sort of like a living hell, where there is never salvation and they keep repeating their same mistakes over and over and horrible things keep happening. That’s where Fio steps in to try and change that for them…

Maybe.

But, in the end, that would make the Cage a sort of “limbo world”, one that doesn’t necessarily exist on the physical plain; it’s sort of separate to the real world. It can copy and make it seem like you’re in the real world, but they’re all just memories. They’re not real… Much like typical dramas or soaps are not real and yet they try to mimic real life. I think that’s what Yoko was trying to say in his answer. That the story is indirectly connected to the NieR series as a whole, but in bits and pieces, like the roots of a tree or the nerves stemming from your brain to connect to various areas of your body.

Now, going back to the live broadcast and the fan questions that were picked up to be answered during the program…

As you can see in the video above, I was visibly excited that a question close to mine was read aloud, but I knew the wording was different but the content was close to identical. Sometimes for events like this where fan comments and such are used, the presenter can and do make edits to make the wording more clear or to fit the context of the show better. This is what I imagined happened with my question.

As it turns out, it wasn’t necessarily my question that was used, and was actually posted by the following user about a day or two after mine:

So, sorry about that! It wasn’t my intention to “claim” the question as mine, I was just super excited to hear its answer more than anything else, but of course, we didn’t really get a clear answer out of Yoko anyway, so… xD

We have 15 more days until the Japanese release of the game, so be sure to check out the official NieR Re[in]carnation Twitter, who will be posting countdown illustrations until the release on February 18!