DualShockers Weekly News: April 17th To April 23rd Recap

The world of Nier: Automata appears to be more technologically advanced than its predecessor. This shouldn't be too surprising as this title takes place 9929 years into the future, though things appear to have fallen into disrepair since the last time players got to visit this world. Instead of a wise cracking spell book 2B has a floating gun turret. The NPC android that assists 2B during her mission, 9S, has a pretty sweet flying apparatus that is equipped for battle. Humans are no longer on Earth, and the androids left behind are at war. The factory where the demo takes place is enormous, and is completely overrun by hostile machines.


NieR: Automata is certainly gathering a lot of attention lately thanks to the great gameplay showcased by the recently-released demo , but there is another element that turned many heads, the rather prominent behind of android protagonist YoRHa 2B, which is often generously displayed by her physics-enabled sk


Yoko-san might be referring to this post , in which Twitter user Kibu  provided a  handy gallery of a whole lot of dedicated fan art, for which the Game Director took time to thank him personally . On the other hand, user kuchiekoo  provided an actual zip . It's worth mentioning that, while the art included in both links is absolutely charming, it might be considered not safe for work in some workplaces, so click at your own r

Here’s a distinctive landscape! Rows and rows of nearly identical housing units stretch across the desert as far as the eye can see. To be honest, I’m not crazy about having to draw the same thing out over and over again like this in 2D, so I started making this piece by digitally placing models of the buildings in 3D space and painting over that. To keep it consistent with the overall game world, I brightened the scene up and toned the colors way down until it’s nearly monochromatic.

The demo for Nier: Automata follows two androids, 2B and 9S, inside of a massive abandoned weapons factory that is now run by machines . The player takes control of 2B as she (do androids have genders?) travels through this factory on a mission to take out a Goliath-class weapon. Immediately upon playing this demo the familiarity of its predecessor is apparent. 2B has a floating mechanical companion that can provide fire power assistance as she battles the robotic enemies as they shoot the familiar orb projectiles. Nier was no slouch with a sword, but watching 2B in melee combat is truly a thing of beauty as she is able to dispatch her enemies by using her blades with the finesse of a ballerina trained by ninjas. The explosive action on screen is accompanied by a beautiful choral infused soundtrack, which was one of the more memorable aspects of the original.

The difference appears to be less visible during cutscenes, where developers probably managed to squeeze a little more juice out of the standard PS4 due to the controlled rendering environment, bur it's still quite noticeable in elements like YoRHa 2B's hair.

On the other hand, Square Enix mentioned better lighting and shadows definition for PS4 Pro, but from what we can see in the comparison screenshots above, and playing the demo, those improvements might not yet be implemented in the demo. That's quite understandable, considering that we're still about two months from release.

As usual we encourage you to allow the pictures below load properly, since they're rather big files, and to avoid downloading them on mobile platforms if you're on limited data, since they'll eat it up rather fast.

The Biggert Shocker award goes to the game that really surprised us. Final Fantasy XV did. Considering that it has been delayed, you would expect it to be a bit rough around the edges, but it simply isn't.


NieR: Automata  will release in Japan for PS4 on February 23rd, in North America on March 7th, and in Europe on March 10th, 2017. A PC version is also scheduled to come next year, but no release window has been announced for that one. It's definitely a hotly anticipated game. It won our staff-pick for Most Anticipated Game of 2017 , and it ranked third among our read

I made this concept art of an abandoned city by painting over a screenshot of the area as it looked in the unfinished game. Environmental concept art like this serves as a solid guideline for the team that makes all the environmental models. I originally painted this cityscape with much darker colors – though the weather was always pretty nice! In the end, I decided that it didn’t match the overall feeling of nier automata secrets|https://nierautomatafans.com/: Automata very well, so I brightened it up to what you see here.

On paper, Nier sounds like a strange game. It's an action RPG where the player controls the titular protagonist who is on a quest to cure his daughter Yonah from a disease called Black Scrawl and takes place 1312 years after the year 2049. Nier is accompanied by a talking floating book known as Grimoire Weiss, "female" warrior Kaine with a mouth that could make a sailor blush, and Emil, who has something in common with gorgons and ends up looking like something retrieved from the nether regions of Tim Burton's mind. This game is actually about as weird as it sounds, but that is part of the charm that has made the title nier and dier to many gamers. The emotional story, memorable characters, humorous dialog and fantastic soundtrack have made it a cult hit among action RPG fans, and because of this there is a certain level of excitement over the upcoming Nier: Automata, which recently received a playable demo.