Part 91: Episode LXXXIX: Weird Science

Episode LXXXIX: Weird Science


Music: Pascal (Vocal)



It’s the final stretch of sidequest before we head into the Forest Kingdom for some new main plot business. Before we depart from Pascal’s Village, one more sidequest has cropped up quite close to Pascal himself. It seems accepting Data on the World is the trigger to activate this quest. Couldn’t tell you why. Regardless, let’s see what these machine kids are up to...



This kid’s being weird! Yeah! I asked if he wanted a coin that’s low value or one that’s high value, and he said he wanted the worthless one!
Seriously? Hey, kid. I’ve got one coin that’s worth a little and one that’s worth a lot. Which one do you want?
UMMMM... THE LITTLE ONE!
You sure about that?
YEAH, ‘CAUSE IT LOOKS COOL. HEE HEE! THANKS A LOT!
See? He’s weird!
Yeah. What a dummy!
I’M A DUMMY? HEE HEE! THANKS A LOT!
Hmm. This little guy might have a bad mathematical processor. Or maybe his logic circuits got crossed somehow... I should probably take a look inside.



Idiot Savant is the final quest we’ll be picking up from Pascal’s Village in Route B. This machine kid is not respecting capitalism properly, so we need to do our due diligence and crack open his brain to correct this behavior.



As an aside, I really like this dingus machine lifeform’s design. Powerful marker drawn eyebrow game.





Back on task, the thing is this Weird Machine’s noggin is surprisingly complex (as far as hacking mini-games go.) There are nine cores segmented to nine different areas. Each of the outer cores have a different energy orb pattern emitting from ‘em. We need to destroy those eight before the shield is shattered on the central core.



As we go about destroying the cores, the patterns of the remaining cores’ energy shots get WAY more intense. I’m pretty sure this is the only hack in the game that grows in difficulty as it progresses. Hmm...



Still, our ace Hackerman, 9S, is able to break through the Weird Machine’s defenses and see what’s up. That boy ain’t right... What’s the deal, weird kid?



......
If your logic circuits are this advanced, why are you behaving like that?
Well, I suppose there’s no point in pretending anymore. It’s simple, really: If I pretend to prefer smaller denominations of coins, the people around me are so entertained, they keep giving them to me. In this fashion, I’m able to earn far more than I would if I asked for larger units of currency. There’s an important lesson here: The more of a fool people take you for, the more you’ll learn of their true nature. Oh, but keep this between us for now, all right? I need them to keep thinking that I’m slow. Here’s a little hush money to smooth things over.



A little hush money and also most of a couple complete disassembled machine lifeforms. Weird Machine, what were you doing to the other machines that found out your scam and didn’t take the bribe money...? Do we even want to know...?



Regardless, that concludes the Idiot Savant quest. It’s probably a bit worrying the machines are learning how to scam people out of their money before they even have a good grasp on capitalism. But not our problem. As soon as we’re out of earshot, 9S has a final post-mission bit of musing. Meanwhile, 2B has been completely zoned out since we set foot in the village.



Reply unknown. Terms are too vague to formulate a reasoned response.
Heh. Don’t I know it...



That’s it for Pascal’s Village for now. The only remaining sidequest we have (beyond initiating the DLC, which we’re not doing in this Route) is to sort out that business on the Old World Data.


Music: Rays of Light (Quiet)







There are only a couple archives left in currently available areas that we haven’t snatched up yet. One is found back in the Flooded City. Remember that giant pain in the ass gap we needed to cross here using wholly unexplained in-game movement tech? Yeah, turns out we need to do this again with 9S in order to access a hacking locked chest with a wayward piece of intel. This unlocks a Newspaper Scrap. Let’s take a look...



Legion were from the backstory of the original NieR. There was a whole other entire apocalypse that happened after Caim, Angelus and the Watcher Queen Beast had their rhythm battle in the skies above Tokyo. The particles left behind when the mama Watcher was destroyed scattered throughout the world and started making forced Pacts with humans. Infection either turned them into white humanoid monsters called Legion or if rejected they’d just turn into a pile of salt. It was a whole thing.

You can read more about it here.



Moving right along, 2B does NOT seem into 9S’s new look. Maybe if she spoke up we’d do something about it. Alas...



Our next destination for gathering the last bits of Old World intel is located on a building across from the shipping crate fort adjacent to where Father Servo’s rooftop dojo (RIP) was located. You can see the span on the mini-map down there. We want to get to the far western outcropping across the street. Usually, that requires a fair amount of aerial finesse, like that last jump we had to perform.



However here, we can cheat a little bit. First, we’ll stealthily hijack a Flyer from afar to infiltrate the machine lifeform ranks. Despite the fact its name is literally “flyer”, 9S hasn’t mastered the controls for this particular flight unit and can only briefly hover for a couple seconds. That’s fine. We just need it to get close to our real target...





The Linked-Sphere Type (aka bullshit worm bot.) Again, 9S is only capable of brief flight while controlling this machine, while normally it can fly lazily around with its absurdly bad and janky hitbox forever.





However, unlike the Flyer, the worm drifts slowly back to the ground. So we can feather its flight by briefly tapping and releasing A/X/the jump button and easily drift across the street to the desired rooftop. It’s way the heck easier than trying to string together a series of precise aerial tech in a row just to barely make it across. Let’s see what our prize is in this electronically locked box...



...Softcore schoolgirl porn. Terrific. Keeping it classy even in the post-apocalypse, eh Japan? I don’t think we should hand this over to those sweet innocent robot boys. I also ABSOLUTELY don’t think 9S should hang onto this thing either. 2B or Pod 153, you’ve got to do the responsible thing and pitch this into the ocean.



There is one more piece of optional Intel left in the City Ruins region. But we’ll be picking that up on the way to the Forest Zone soon enough. If we want to actually complete the Data on the Old World sidequest, we need to enter this building on the edge of the central crater. We ran past this building (on the roots of the giant tree growing from it, in fact) in the first Speed Star sidequest.





The interior of the wrecked building is now lousy with machine lifeforms looking to pick a fight. They selected the wrong OP android to mess with and are easily eradicated. That’s not what we’re here for though.



What we want to do is head down a crumbling staircase to a lower level of this building. Here we come upon a locked chest that spawned specifically for the Data on the Old World quest. The building would only have a small generic chest with less than noteworthy loot otherwise. A quick and easy hack on this sealed box reveals...



...Aww, Christ!



Right. We located the blueprints to build nuclear bombs. That’s just what this world needs... a nuclear arms race on top of the half dozen other apocalypses that have occurred. Great to see this stood the test of time.



This data is related to the creation of nuclear fission weapons.
Oh, geez. I wonder if we should really hand this over to Pascal... I mean, the Commander might want it, right?
Only unit 9S is qualified to make that decision.

Boy that box lid clipping through that pillar is unfortunate. Really couldn’t have nudged that thing a few feet ahead to avoid that...? C’mon Platinum. You’re better than that... mostly.



So we cannot just quietly put this knowledge back where we found it and pretend we never found it. Nor can we toss it in the ocean like that beat-off material DVD. To finish this quest we need to hand it over to someone. Unlike most every quest in the game, this one has multiple endings. Neither of them will really effect anything other than this sidequest’s end dialog and our reward. But hey, I’ll let you jerks choose what we do with this nuclear bomb creation manual.

Option 1. Deliver it to Pascal – Pascal did send us on this assignment in the first place and I’m fairly sure the pacifistic nice robot uncle won’t begin development of a nuclear stockpile. Probably.

or

Option 2. Deliver it to the Commander – We are locked in an eternal war with machine lifeforms. Handing over directions to develop nuclear weapons is PROBABLY a frowned upon act of light treason. On the other hand, YoRHa seems WAY more likely to actually use this thing.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE VOTE OVER!






Video: Episode 89 Highlight Reel





Wrecked Truck Concept Art – I’ve gotta say, it’s mighty well-kept for something pushing 8,000 years old...