Announced at the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Paris, it was just announced that there will be a new NieR:Automata themed alliance raid penned by Yoko Taro.
According to PC Gamer, it is planned for the new Shadowbringers expansion of FFXIV! It is a raid that will encompass three teams of 24 members and is said to take place after the events of NieR:Automata.
The new FFXIV expansion will be helmed by SQEX Producer Saito Yosuke, who is affectionately nicknamed “Yosu-P,” and, of course, Yoko Taro. Very little about their individual roles has been stated at this time, but I believe Yoko will be penning the scenario for the YoRHa collaboration. This does not necessarily make him the director, which I believe will still remain in the hands of Yoshida Naoki (Yoshi-P), the FFXIV director and producer. More about their specific roles for this collaboration should become known in the coming weeks.
Yoko Taro has also been quoted from this pre-recorded video of him talking with Yosu-P.
Saito: What was the last Final Fantasy you played?
Yoko: The last Final Fantasy I played… FFXII.
Saito: Ah, you played FFXII?
Yoko: Yes, I did.
Saito: That’s pretty recent. I was thinking maybe it’d be around FFVI or so.
Yoko: But the Final Fantasy I played before XII was II.
Saito: (haha) So, I guess you don’t really like the series.
Yoko: I play it!
Saito: Sounds like you don’t really like it.
Yoko: I love Final Fantasy!
Yoko Taro is notorious for his chronic tongue-in-cheek comments, and him saying that the FF game he played before FFXII was II… just screams Yoko cheekiness to me. I don’t believe those are the only FF titles he’s played, so it might be better not to entirely take everything he says as 100% truth.
Very little of this is currently known, so additional details should become known later this year. The presenter suggested that they only have five more months to work on it, so they may be thinking of a release around July or August (I’m not sure if this would be released along with Shadowbringers or not, though). He also made the comment that just the look of this promotional illustration by Koda Kazuma makes it seem like a straight-up NieR:Automata sequel…
Lastly, the next Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival will be in Tokyo on the weekend of March 23-24. I would bet that we will hear much more details on this topic then.
Source: Twitch | Twitter | PC Gamer | FFXIV Fan Festival Tokyo
I’ve realized that I never uploaded the photos that I took at the NieR Music Concert “Memory of Puppets” or even wrote up a recap about it. It’s unfortunate now since my memory of the event is pretty hazy. orz Therefore, the majority of this post will mostly be comprised of photos only.
The script books began to be distributed to customers at the first show in Osaka on Sunday, April 23rd, 2017, about a week and a half before the next two shows in Tokyo (May 4th & 5th). Only those who purchased the concert tickets at the SQEX e-STORE received a voucher ticket in order to redeem it for a script book.
In Famitsu Issue No.1494 with publishing date August 3, 2017 and released on July 20, 2017, there were interviews with Yui Ishikawa, Natsuki Hanae, and others. Ishikawa mentions that she was told a portion of the script for the final recitation drama would be different than what she was originally given. Hanae also mentions that he didn’t know how the script was going to change until the last minute, plus he didn’t even know if he would be able to attend until 3 days prior. Additionally, later on page 151, Yoko states in a group interview that he planned the change of the scripts as a method to control spoilers from getting out. Hanae was booked elsewhere on May 5th, so his lines were going to be recorded in advance, but just 3 days prior to the final concert, he was suddenly able to go and perform live. Because of this, Yoko made some additional changes to his original version of the “changed” script to account for this.
This is something that I started working on earlier last year but never had the opportunity to finish it until now. There’s some pretty interesting information here, so I hope you enjoy!
A couple interesting things to note:
See also the Secret File from the YoRHa Boys Ver.1.0 stage play pamphlet here.
This post contains spoilers and speculation. Please read with caution.
This is a thought that I had last night that’s delving a little deeper into the realm of speculation. Things may or may not fit well with the new idea connecting everything, but let’s just have a little fun and suspend disbelief for a little while and let me indulge in this thought.
Firstly, let’s review the theory about Emil & the machine lifeforms that I’ve been contemplating for a long time:
So, in this theory, it’s plausible that:
Now, moving on to what Yoko said in the Game Informer interview:
“Emil actually holds a great secret of the part of the Nier world and it’s not all revealed with the games I’ve created so far. I’m not sure if I’ll have an opportunity to disclose that secret, but if I do, I might one day create a game that delves more into why it’s Emil and why I continue to wear Emil’s mask.”
Game Informer
According to this statement, Emil seems to hold a secret that we haven’t heard about yet, but what if this secret is exactly this theory? That essentially all of the machine lifeforms are Emil copies? And this is also why Yoko continues to wear an Emil mask; basically because everyone is Emil, or rather “a child of Emil”.
Okay, hold on to that for a moment. Following the Maso “crumbs”, Yoko had stated that Maso does, in fact, still exist in the time of Automata. This is what he says in the 50 Q&A segment from the NieR:Automata Strategy Guide:
Q38. It appears as though “Maso” also exists in the world of NieR:Automata, but how is it used in battle?Yoko: There isn’t a lot of Maso, but it still exists (in Emil’s attacks and such). Additionally, Maso is converted into the skills of the YoRHa androids among other things.
50 Questions asked to yoko taro, nier:automata strategy guide, as translated by rekka alexiel
EDIT: It was suggested that perhaps the secret about Emil has something to do with his original self, aka, something that occurred during the National Weapons Laboratory time when he was made into a weapon to combat the Legion. But I’m a little skeptical about that because Yoko also mentioned that whatever secret Emil is hiding is directly related to why Yoko continues to wear the Emil head mask. My thought behind that is that there are still multiple Emils around, that… almost everyone is “Emil” at this point.
So, if you followed my train of thought in the post above, I think it might still be closer than speculating what could have happened to the original human Emil when he was made into a weapon.
