Part 60: Episode LVIII: ...Gods

Episode LVIII: ...Gods


Music: Birth of a Wish (Become as Gods)



Hey, 9S. Question: You couldn’t use your hacking to control the machines this entire time and were just holding back, right? That’d be daft. Surely that is not the case. You just have enhanced hackerman abilities since you’re performing intrusions from the Bunker, right? ...Right? I will be extremely cross with you if that is not the case. You’re already on thin ice after that missile thing.

Anyway, this room is home to several non-hostile cultists who got the memo that everyone is going to become a god via a murder-suicide pact and went “EXCUSE ME?!” Let’s see how they’re holding up...



How could God allow this?
I thought we were going to forge peace...
Your Grace...
Ahh... Why did this happen?
Why did something so cruel have to happen?

Not everyone was down with jumping headlong into death a week after discovering nebulous human concepts like God and an afterlife.





There’s a friendly zealot near the exit of this room who sells healing supplies. I’m fairly certain this is the final merchant before hitting NieR: Automata’s first ending. So last chance to stock up on health items while they’re cheap!





Time to move out. Pascal will be joining us for the duration of our escape. Unfortunately, he’s an unarmed pacifist. So all he’ll do is jet behind 2B silently as we make our way through the facility.





And we’ve got a ways to go in order to get out of this factory. Turns out this place is gigantic and that elevator took us DEEP into the bowels of the installation. A nice little detail is the camera zooms way out for this bridge to show us just how vast and cavernous the underbelly of the factory is and the music as well as sound effects become accordingly softer as the camera pulls away. Not only are we in the middle of Robo-Jonestown, we’re also miles underground. Great!





Just a ways past the first set of bridges from where we began, we can enter one of the factory towers to find an Access Point. One of the zealots are trying to help that vending machine become a god.



Sorry, pal. Cool Ranch Doritos do not have souls.







Unfortunately, this Access Point only serves as a quick save checkpoint in our quest to escape the factory. We cannot beam out to safety. Plus, we’d have to leave Pascal behind and that’d be a real dick move to do to that nice robot uncle.

In case you’re wondering, that elevator is also inactive. Nothing more to do than book it out of this room for now and continue along the path outside.



You shall also become gods!
Everyone shall die and become gods!



At this point the machines become far more proactive about helping folks become as gods. Like running up to them carrying bombs and martyring themselves trying to take out 2B. They things they’re carrying are actually suicide bomber machine lifeforms that have adamantly refused to ever spawn during this LP. Maybe someday we’ll fix that...



Regardless, the suicide bomber zealots’ bombs are extremely volatile and a few shots from Pod’s Gatling (Laser is a bit too slow with the DPS to be effective and missile is useless) is enough to detonate ‘em safely. Well, safely for 2B. The machine carrying it is extremely dead.



The majority of the escape from the factory zone is traversing 2D perspective gameplay segments with a variety of obstacles to spice up 2B and Pascal’s flight. This includes such platformer factory level staples as...



Conveyor belts!



Crumbling stairways dropping off into the abyss!



And ridiculous crusher devices! The last of which is an instant death if 2B gets demolished by one of ‘em. It also makes her body nearly unobtainable since, well... it takes like 3-5 seconds for 2B to retrieve her corpse and the crusher comes down every two seconds or so. There’s a math issue with those figures that do not run in 2B’s favor. So it’s very important NOT to get 2B smashed here or we may as well reload the game.



There’s actually a very easy way to evade these crushers. Remember during the crappy Speed Star sidequest, I mentioned that charging the Pod Program will slow down everything but 2B for a couple seconds. And it can be canceled with and restarted by briefly tapping the Pod’s main fire and then charging the Pod Program again? That can be abused to safely dash past all these crushers while time is slowed. So that’s handy!



Will do.

9S is still on overwatch somewhere unlocking the way for 2B and Pascal to escape.





He could warn us that the next room is full of enemies, though. He’s obviously got access to some manner of surveillance system to monitor our progress. That kid needs to get his priorities straight.



If you’re wondering if all the machines in the Abandoned Factory decided to convert to the death cult religion after being disconnected from the machine network, look no further than the pile of generic machine corpses discarded in a corner of this room. There’s a few piles of dead machines that clearly had no place in the religion and were purged accordingly. I guess the machines’ God is a choosy motherfucker about who gets to receive his blessing. Real Old Testament that way.



Oh, did you see all your old friends you shanked rotting in the corner and not much in the way of divinity going down with ‘em? Weird... Well, good luck with that, bud. Pascal, let’s bounce.



Gooooooood!
Machines! People! Androids! Every one of them, a god!



As we continue our ascent up the towers’ spiraling stairways, there’s a very easy to miss side area half-way up one of the towers. See this severe OSHA violating gap in the safety railing?





That actually leads to the top of those insta-kill crusher devices from earlier. And there’s just enough of a gap between those for 2B to jump between ‘em. This leads to a hidden room on the far side of the area.



In here we find a trio of treasure chests. The one in the middle is just some generic healing item. The one on the right is another one of those pesky locked chests. But the large chest on the left...



Why it’s a new weapon – the last one we’ll be receiving before the credits roll... for the first time. Let’s take a closer look.



The Engine Blade is actually a cross-over weapon from Final Fantasy XV. It’s Noctis’s default sword, the Engine Blade. I’ll forgive you for not recalling that one since it looks like a sword with a bunch of machine shit bolted onto the hilt and wasn’t featured in many pieces of promotional art despite Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s 47 years of development time.

The Engine Blade is a fairly decent Small Sword that gains Stun Ups for most of its upgrades. At maximum level, it gains Shift Avoid which turns the animation of 2B’s dodge to look like the warp Noctis does in Final Fantasy XV. It also alters the damage numbers to the same font as Final Fantasy XV possesses. I mean, I know Dragon Quest has big bubbly numbers. You could put a gun to my head and I couldn’t recall what FFXV’s font looked like. But sure! Why not?

Let’s take a look at the weapon history...

Welp. That managed to characterize the relationship between Noctis and his dad Sean Bean in a few paragraphs better than several meandering hours of supplementary materials. You can take that as a testament to the NieR series having pretty good writing or an indictment of Final Fantasy XV having pretty bad writing.





As soon as 2B grabs the Engine Blade, this hidden room begins flooding with suicide bomber cultists from all directions. They just kind of fall from the sky with no explanation or reason. Much like the events of the third act of Final Fantasy XV.





There isn’t a lot more to be said about our escape from the Abandoned Factory gameplay wise. Other than there’s a reason we picked up the Spear Pod Program and that is it is absolutely devastating during all of these 2D segments. I bet you robot idiots didn’t expect your path to godhood involved getting a nanomachine spear up your ass, now did ya?





All right.





Inside this next tower we find a medium biped cultist trying to calm down the terrified survivors that aren’t keen on committing suicide for their faith. There’s nothing we can do for ‘em. Sorry guys. Good luck with that.





We can, however, activate the elevator in this room. This leads down to the early Access Point in case we want to save our game/make a checkpoint through this lengthy dungeon. There’s now a single zealot bowing towards one of the machines lining this room. If 2B is foolish enough to investigate...





...She gets a battle against an Enhanced Leg Goliath Biped for her troubles. Fun fact: Much later in the game, this room can potentially spawn the solitary Enhanced (Red Painted) Buff Leg Boy Goliath in the game. That’s a piece of trivia we’ll keep in mind for another day.





For now, we can just send that Goliath Biped and its worshiper buddy on their way to becoming as gods. The latter isn’t actually hostile. But he made us fight a mid-boss and for that we ought to reward ‘em...







I’m glazing past a lot of this dungeon because there is very little left to talk about. But this area is LONG as far as NieR: Automata combat focused areas are concerned. It’s probably the longest stretch of pure combat struggles in the entire game. Even the inevitable final dungeon we’ll not be seeing for a couple months from now is about half as long as this joint. Boss battles not included with either area’s overall length calculation.



Don’t you see? You can become gods now!
Ahahahahaha!



Well at least someone is having a good time. On the other end of the spectrum, we have...



Rejoice! You have all been chosen!
With your death, you will become gods!
Somebody help us!





We actually have a chance to save some of the less devout cultists in this room. All of the robed machine lifeforms are hostile and will attempt to kill the cowering machines that only agreed to paint themselves purple. We’ve got to be careful while attacking though, since 2B doesn’t discriminate when damaging machines.





Any survivors of this machine on machine violence will thank 2B for her assistance and give her 1,000 G and one of the three sizes of Recovery items as a show of gratitude. Or she can just massacre everyone and easily obtain the trophy/achievement for destroying 10 friendly machine lifeforms like a jerk.



Before we leave, we can take note that they had entire shipping crates full of machines they’d purged before getting the Become as Gods jamboree started. Guys, I know you’re having severe second thoughts about this religion thing now. But the warning signs were *clearly* already there beforehand. Let this be an important life lesson to you all.



Continuing along the path, we’re making progress towards the top of this place. I think...



Thanks!





That’s rough buddy. Hey! An Access Point! Those things make us androids effectively immortal if you ignore the lingering questions about self and memories determining who you are and such... You don’t mind if we waste that dude and activate that thing, right?





Didn’t think so. Sadly, this Access Point also lacks functionality to teleport out of the facility. Plus, the whole leaving Pascal behind thing. As a side note: This is the very last Access Point we’ll be activating in the entirety of NieR: Automata. We’ve done it! They’re all up and running. This is not at all the last area we’ll be visiting in the game. But further locations are like the Copied City and are just a straight shot with no save points. Remember, this game has no auto-save!





Next to the final Access Point, we find another elevator leading to the top floor of the Abandoned Factory. We’re almost out of this place! Pascal, this is the last time you’re taking 2B anywhere on a date. Or following any of your advice on checking out weird machines. This has gone incredibly poorly both times now.



...This isn’t a good sign.



That’s not a good sign. Pascal, you feel like throwing away your pacifism for a boss fight? I get the feeling there’s a boss fight coming up shortly.





Pascal, there is 100% about to be a boss fight in this room. It is literally a platform suspended over lava. Records show humans only constructed this sort of architecture for climactic showdowns as a tradition hailing from some point in the late 1900s.



Sure enough, as soon as 2B and Pascal make their way to the center of the platform, the far bridge leading out of the area raises. Hey, 9S? Weren’t you hacking the factory to prevent this kinda thing? What’s the deal, my dude?



Oh... Is it the Giant Robot Spider? I bet it’s the giant robot spider.



Tune in next time as 2B battles a giant robot spider, 9S frantically tries to hack the planet and Pascal lends moral support as our escape from the Abandoned Factory concludes next time on NieR: Automata.






Video: Episode 58 Highlight Reel





Abandoned Factory Concept Art – This doesn’t seem like the most efficient use of space...