Part 77: Episode LXXV: This Continued

Episode LXXV: This Continued


Music: Memories of Dust



Analysis: It is the ruin of a former human residential area. Large numbers of humans resided in such concrete and metal shelters. The structures were referred to by names such as “apartment complex.”
I wonder why they insisted on living in such large groups. Things must have been really dangerous around here, huh?
Negative. Living conditions were mandated by economic imbalance and a lack of space.
Man, humans sure are weird creatures.



9S, you live in a college dorm in space full of gossiping lesbian robots dressed up like blindfolded members of a goth J-Pop group. You’ve got no legs to stand on with having weird living conditions.



Aside from that, we’ve actually got a couple things to take care of back in the Desert Zone before we move on to the Desert Housing complex. I definitely didn’t forget to go over this in the last update. No sir... Anyway, if we take a trip over to the desert oasis on the far western side of the region, past the eternal sandstorm, there’s couple of things of interest in Route B. For instance, the YoRHa android hanging out here has different dialog if we visit her as early as possible.



Hey, you! What are you doing here? What happened to your mission?
......
...Who, me? Oh, I’m just lost. Ha! Sorry if I startled you. This is the only area with fresh water, and there’s vegetation growing too. Even androids have trouble living in this environment, yet here these plants are. Isn’t nature amazing? I’m going to stick around and investigate this place a little more. Don’t tell the Commander, okay?



Look, if we didn’t narc on the drugged out YoRHa operatives over by the oil oasis, we’re not going to say anything about you hanging out enjoying the weather. Besides, we’re actually here to unlock another lore filled locked chest located behind you.



Clearly the dude played a lot of Demon’s Souls and his priorities were forever warped.



Our second order of business involves a large rock to the south of the Desert Housing area entrance. This rock is home to a couple of things.





There’s a couple of rare Medium Flyer variants here which have detachable suicide bomber pods they can drop off to blow up attacking androids. Which... doesn’t strike me as the most effective use of resources, especially since prematurely detonated kamikaze pods will damage the flyer itself. But what do I know?



Our chief item of interest is another locked chest found beneath this rock. This is the last of the noteworthy 9S unlockable items in this area. It’s another Project Gestalt memo. Let’s take a look...



All the mainstream media claims the government is planning to rip out people’s souls into spectral beings of shadow and cultivate cloned human shells for generations as it cleans up the maso remains is entirely fake news!



That concludes our business in the Desert Zone. Like... for the majority of Route B. We might have to swing by here briefly for a sidequest. But we’re largely done with the area for the foreseeable future.


Music: Memories of Dust (Vocal)



So there is something new in the Desert Housing region: a roaming tank. A roaming golden tank. This is another leg of the unmarked Golden Machines sidequest. The tank will only spawn after we kill the first golden machine and friends. Let’s see what it’s doing out here.



Proposal: Enemy should be dispatched immediately. Leaving such a dangerous foe intact would be unwise.
If you say so.





We’ve never actually fought a machine tank yet, since 2B wasn’t a stick in the mud and didn’t try to interfere with the Party Tank back in Route A. Machine lifeform tanks aren’t particularly complex enemies. There’s a bunch of stubby machines going wild on cannons shooting in all directions while the main cannon fires out a large, dense volley of bouncing energy orbs. It can also speed up and try to ram our androids or, in this weird stuck on an incline tank’s case, try to drift sideways into 9S. And... that’s kinda it.



Accompanying the Golden Tank is another Golden Machine. According to our Intel Archives, this is the Hateful Sister. If you say so...



As before, golden machines have incredibly resilient armor. And once again, the Golden Stubby’s support unit is way easier to take out than the named unit.


Music: Memories of Dust (Chiptune)









As before, hacking will trivialize this encounter. I have no idea how long it would take to take out this tank with just melee weapons and Pod Programs. Longer than I’m willing to put forth the effort testing because that’s stupid as hell to attempt. Two successful hacking sessions will detonate the tank, much to the Hateful Sister’s displeasure.







As with the previous golden Stubby, this one has a ridiculous amount of HP and takes 5-6 hacking sessions (and initiating a hack takes twice as long as most any other enemy unit) before it’s down for the count.


Music: Memories of Dust (Vocal)





There is, in fact, one more of these jerks left out in the wild. However, we’ll have to wait until the Flooded City is unlocked before we can face the third golden machine and tie off this unmarked sidequest. It’s worth noting that despite not getting a log entry as a proper quest, these Golden Machine encounters do work the same as any other sidequest. In that we’ve got to finish murdering them all by the end of Route B or else the encounters are reset and they will all respawn, as if we’d never fought ‘em in the first place.



But that’s a task for another day. Let’s head on towards the Desert Housing proper and get things underway there. There are a couple of items of note here for this run, besides getting to the main plot event.





Those items are, of course, more lore. There are two locked crates here 9S can now access. One is right around the corner for the area’s sole Access Point. This is where the pink machine with the eyepatch was hanging out with its many wives during Jean-Paul’s sidequest. We can now unlock the chest that was resting behind them and find...



Frank, I swear to fucking god if you put your fucking trash out on Monday again and it sits on the curb stinking up the place, I’m going to take a shit in your A/C unit.



The second lore dump chest is found in one of the ruined apartments south of the Access Point. It’s between the old derelict playground and that building where the creepy Resistance android had Frankensteined together a YoRHa android son. Here we’ve got...



How are shitty old people going to get down all of those stairs to get anywhere? I bet your rules didn’t think of that one, did they, Facade? No wonder you collapsed like a week after NieR 1 ended. Idiots. That’s actually the last bit of old Facade lore left in the game proper. We might encounter some more cargo cult remnants of the Masked People elsewhere in the game. But that too is for another day.



For now, let’s get back on task. Which, if you’ll remember, at this point was pursuing a fleeing machine that 2B, 9S and the Pods had an unusually strong murder boner for no particular reason. Along the way, the pair’s journey through the Desert Housing is much the same...



Did you hear about the big game?
You. Not. Cat.
Petting cats is fun.
Petting. Androids. Not. Fun.



Stop. Scary. Cruel. Smell bad. Bad hair. Gross. White hair. Stupid. Idiot.
Hey.
Don’t listen to them, 2B. Nothing machines say means anything.
Shorts. For. Idiots. Stupid. Baby. Idiot. Shorts. Boy.
None of it means a thing. They’re just accessing random data is all.



Kill. Shorts. Boy.
Here. Lies. Shorts. Boy. He. Never. Scored.
That’s it... We’re taking these things out!
......



After taking out all the machines (or just running past since it’s not actually necessary to fight any of these enemies) we eventually once more come upon...



Should we maybe, I don’t know... call this in to Command?
I don’t think they’re with YoRHa.
Yeah, but...
I really want to kill that one machine.
But... Maybe, just a quick—
I’m going.
......





How the hell did these ruins even get like this? It’s not like it’s the skeletal frame of a building. It’s more like it’s a sinkhole with a bunch of other building ruins cobbled together to make a weird hole. Anyway...





What IS this?
It’s umm... well you see, the machines are... Err...
Are those two humping?
I uhh...
Love. Love. Love. Love.
...Maybe? OK. Now *this* we should probably call in, right?
Eh. *shrug*



This. Cannot. Continue.
This. Cannot. Continue.
This. Cannot. Continue.





thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue thiscannotcontinue—
...Yeah, OK. Maybe we should call this in.





No... That rear end. It’s way too flat for that... No! This... this is a machine!




Music: Birth of a Wish (This Cannot Continue)





Once again, we actually get a properly named title card for Adam since 9S can translate Angelic. 2B’s AI is much less prone to starting another damn robot war than Route A with 9S. So if we want, we can just hang out with the naked Adam as he strikes a sassy pose and fails to brush back his hair occasionally.



Unfortunately for him, we’re going to have to get antagonistic if we want to progress the game. It’s possible to hack Adam with 9S but it doesn’t result in anything special doing so and it is indeed a slower method of dealing with Adam the Machine Man.





That’s because unlike everything else thus far, which has leveled up accordingly to accommodate a second playthrough of the game with a character in at least their 30s, Adam still is born as a Level 1 boy and goes through the phases of slowly leveling mid-battle. However, he still tops out at like Level 8 at max while we’re nearly at Level 40.



As such, 1-2 melee strike or a single pod Program is enough to completely stomp each of Adam’s forms and immediately skip him ahead to the next phase of the battle.

Music: ENDS



As such, this fight takes all of about 30-45 seconds, not counting brief cutscenes between phases. It’s literally a couple of full grown adults beating the living shit out of a baby. What did you expect? That’s a real one sided match up! That’s not something you schedule for a Pay-Per-View bout!







And everything else progresses as normal. I mean, normal for a full grown man crawling out of the chest of another man who was just given birth to by a cocoon of chanting robots forming a cybernetic womb in a bombed out building in a desert. Which sounds not particularly average when you write it all out like that, huh?




Music: Memories of Dust (Vocal)



Now it’s just a brief jog back to the surface to finally be responsible and tell the folks back at base that the desert is weird as hell and everyone should probably avoid it. Unless they want to grind levels, because Adam and Eve’s birthplace is the best place in the game for that besides one exploit.



9S to Bunker, do you copy?
I read you, 9S. Go ahead.
Operator we, uh... We encountered some REALLY strange machines.
I see... Could you be more specific?
Well, they were humanoid machines.
Are you sure it wasn’t an android?
No... They like came out of a err... group of... clustered machines. And it was missing... key android components.
Key components?
Parts of it were uhh... incomplete.
Please be more specific with your reporting, 9S. Vaguely detailed accounts are counter-productive.
It uhh... well, it had the appearance of a white, long haired human male but didn’t have... Parts... between its legs? Like... you know...
A penis was missing?
Y-Yeah...
Logging Unit 9S inspected humanoid machine and found it lacking reproductive organs.
You don’t have to put it like that! It’s not like I was specifically looking for its pe—
Is there anything else to log?
I think that’s it... Uploading combat data from battle. Hopefully, you’ll get something out of it.
Understood. Ready to receive.



And with that, we’ve concluded Chapter 3 of Route B and the bulk of our time mucking about in the sandy regions. Tune in next time when we leave the desert and go for a fun filled vacation as NieR: Automata continues!






Video: Episode 75 Highlight Reel





Desert Housing Concept Art – Can’t have a post-apocalyptic setting without seeing at least one derelict playground.