Most of the tracks in the soundtrack are actually three different tracks, but used in different places. One impressive feature that the music in NieR: Automata uses makes progression through the game feel dynamic, giving specific areas their own vibe. The automatons are symbolically playing the role of humanity. The empty home of humans is now increasingly a hotbed of activity in the war between the androids and robots. These arrangements also speed up the song slightly, which all match the tone of the game’s narrative as it escalates and the ruins of the city become more crowded with robot enemies. Each successive iteration becomes fuller and more crowded thanks to the addition of a soft guitar and, finally, a string section. City Ruins comes in three different arrangements, and they each play at different points in the story. This mirrors the state of the city itself, as we immediately recognize the city as a place where people once lived, though not anymore in its ruined state. Feeling like a continuation of the hints of piano in the title theme, City Ruins feels slightly more lived in thanks to the lilting vocals that accompany the song. When you finally get to the main hub of the game – a destroyed city overgrown with plant life reclaiming the Earth – City Ruins starts to play.
The reveal of YoRHa’s lie of an existence – that humanity is already dead and YoRHa exists only to keep the androids sane – shatters a beautiful illusion of purpose, and in the one place where you thought you were safe from everything. But the angelic nature of Fortress of Lies proves too good to be true once the true nature of YoRHa becomes clear.
It’s not an accident that Fortress of Lies leads directly into the similarly gentle City Ruins. It’s a nice reprieve after the aggressive battle theme and action-packed tutorial chapter, letting your psyche recover with gentle music to ease you into battle once more. Fortress of Lies suggests a serene space scene, with heavenly, breathy vocals and sparse instrumentation that gently bounces like someone in zero gravity. The only thing that keeps the war going is the lie and inertia.Īll the noise that builds up during the prelude chapter of NieR: Automata dissipates once you reach YoRHa’s space station. In reality, it mirrors the odd war between the machines and the androids perfectly, as it reaches a fevered pitch just as you start playing the game, but the entire reason for the war, to protect the human race, is built on a lie. The otherworldly vocals lend to the magnitude of the conflict, but they also keep all the action grounded in a certain sadness that you can’t quite explain. The insistent percussion and the urgent-sounding strings let you know that the game is more than just melancholy: it’s a war. The main battle theme breaks the silence quite suddenly. The minimalism with which the theme carries itself makes you feel like you’re in for a lonely game, and you’d be right. There’s a bit of a metallic echo in the background as well, which parallels the robotic theme of the game perfectly. The title theme of NieR: Automata feels downright hollow thanks to the sparse piano playing note by note. It all starts with an electric buzz and a piano note. Its soundtrack, composed by Keiichi Okabe, reflects this as it strikes appropriate tones of melancholy, emptiness, and repetition.
In the end, it’s revealed that humanity has been extinct for a long time, but it hardly needs revealing, as one of the most striking things about Automata is its use of absence and artifice to speak to the nature of humanity without ever portraying a human at all. Both the androids and the robots display behaviors learned from humans, whether integrated into their own behavior or just mindless mimicking without understanding of why they’re doing it. NieR: Automata tells the story of the androids and robots who are fighting over the last remains of humanity. Jeremy Signor is a freelance writer from Pennsylvania whose byline can be found at USgamer, PCGamer, GamesBeat, PCGamesN, GamesRadar, Unwinnable, and elsewhere.Ĭontent Notification: reference to suicide