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Fun little note: Kaine is heavily censored in Replicant in both voice acting and text dialog. All her swearing is beeped out and the text replaced with gibberish! It's incredibly funny to play this game full of violence, gore, and depressing stuff then hearing "BEEP BEEP you, you BEEP!" in a cut scene.
Khurath posted:
So in the interest of having something non-spoilery to discuss for a bit, how does this go down for Brother Nier? I was under the impression that the game is mostly the same for both of them, but this makes it sound like there's a difference in how they react.
Just rambling about Niers here folks, you can scroll past this if you'd like.
I like to say the word "context" a lot when comparing Brother and Father Nier's perspectives on this game and this is one of those quests that really emphasizes that. This quest plays out the exact same way in both games, but as different characters who hold different beliefs and exist in different circumstances, the impact of this quest hits in different ways.
Father Nier seems to approach this quest begrudgingly, like he knows this is a waste of time and that he knows what's going to await him when he does find their mother. He doesn't say it though even when Weiss presses him on it because he doesn't want to admit it, he sees these two kids as vulnerable and doesn't want them to end up alone without someone to take care of them at their young ages. It's like when you were a little kid and you asked your Dad (or someone else) to look under the bed in search of monsters, of course there's no actual monsters but your Dad probably plays along just to make you feel better. Father Nier knows how this is all going to end but in spite of this, he fulfills his goal out of his own sense of duty. Father Nier is a very loyal, duty obsessed man. He's admitted that he wants to help out people because some people can't help themselves, it's a noble goal! The weight of the world has been crushing those big shoulders for awhile now and his resulting goal, while sad, kind of just lumps into his other failings. It's like a numb feeling, he's failed, oh well, life goes on. They'll make it somehow. I'll be in touch!
Brother Nier, on the other hand, approaches this with wide-eyed optimism. When arriving to the Junk Heap, he finds these two kids (who are very close in age to Yonah and himself) faced with the exact same situation that he lives everyway: losing their parents and becoming orphans. He knows how bad this situation is and when presented with the task of "saving" their mother, he rushes off to try and fix the problem as only a young, plucky JRPG protagonist could. Nier so achingly wants there to be a happy ending to this! So far in the game, Brother Nier has established himself as a standard JRPG lead character, you know the kind. The kind who at some point in the game will have a heartfelt speech about friendship and never giving up? Weiss calls this out even harder on Brother Nier because it's so naive to have this belief in their world, and as they get deeper into Junk Heap and the gravity of the situation begins to pile up, Nier simply doesn't want to face the facts.
Imagine a small boy playing on the beach, he finds a treasure and decides to play as a pirate by burying it in the sand and marking the location with a stick. He comes back the next day to find the marker washed away, realizing that he's lost his treasure, but refuses to accept it while frantically digging everywhere and fighting off tears. Nier doesn't want to accept this failure, he doesn't want to see another pair of orphaned kids just like him and Yonah, and when his failure finally does come it just continues the viscous cycle that the world he lives in creates. It's a heavy blow, as Brother Nier is a young, idealistic, wide-eyed, hopeful young man who (so far in the plot) has accomplished everything he set his mind to. This failure teaches him a lesson, that he can't always be the hero and save the day, that the world is harsher than he tries to envision it as. It's a pretty powerful moment that marks the first step of Brother Nier becoming a man.
Shit this went on longer than I thought.