SMASH 2018: Nietzche, the end of days & science fiction, according to Nier Automata director Yoko Taro
The unpublished part of an interview with game director Yoko Taro at SMASH 2018 for IGN. You can find the rest of this interview, including why he thinks the release of Nier Automata, Persona 5 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a miracle, in an IGN feature I wrote on the Japanese games industry.
J: What makes Nier Automata’s gameplay so unique is it transcends the assumptions of a traditional third-person action experience with arcade asymmetric shooting gameplay and changing camera angles. Can you explain to me a bit of the design philosophy in that?
Y: Despite the fact that gaming is becoming more intelligent, as in it’s becoming more rich, there’s much more different factors in gaming now. But when I look at genres such as FPS [first person shooter] it is a completed genre. FPS [First person shooters] will stay FPS [first person shooter] no matter what you do. Even so with such a limitation, I believe there’s many other ways to express yourself to make a different game. In my method that was mixing up two genres: having the 3D action part and the 2D action part.
J: In the same way, can you explain a bit of the philosophy in [Nier Automata]? I know that the game is hugely philosophical and there are Nihilistic elements to it.
That’s the — What about your own philosophy and politics? How familiar were you of nihilism and concepts of humanity prior to your work on Automata? Is it something you were fascinated by when you were younger?
Y: I really do love psychology and philosophy but I’m no professional at these things. Because I love seeing the true side of humanity, as I’ve continued that, I have ultimately lent towards philosophy and psychology but it is not something in which I try to study.
What I really love about philosophers and psychologists is that they sound smart. They may be saying something smart but what I see is [that] they’re insane. As much as they’re saying something which sounds really intelligent, in the core what I feel from them is insanity. A great example of this is Nietzsche, that really interests me is the answer to that question.
J: Are there any specific elements of him that you’ve applied in Automata?
Y: In Nier Automata, the protagonists are androids, not humans, and that’s very common in a Science Fiction story. But one big question I believe in such a story is, ‘what if robots had personality and gained their own soul?’ and I believe that is one of the most important factors of these kinds of SF stories.
What is different about Nier Automata is that I ignore that. My thought in making the game Automata is, ‘I’m going to make these androids and they are going to be human.’ That’s why my concept of Nier Automata was that I was going to make these androids who pretty much are human and then they start questioning to themselves, ‘what is human?’ So Nier Automata feels like a story about androids but no, the main theme of Automata is human.
J: On that note, do you think that — obviously it follows a Pseudo-sci-fi setting and explores human psychology and such — Do you think that it is a prophecy for what you predict — even though it’s fantastical — of what you predict the world could be becoming?
Y: So the reason why Nier Automata doesn’t show humans is simply because I’ve killed them off in Nier Replicant and I can’t re-summon them back. But I do indeed think humans will go extinct and this kind of world in which I’ve drawn in Nier Automata would be reality in the end.
