Is This ‘Nier: Automata’ Church a Hoax or a 5-12 months-Outdated Secret?

For the final month, Redditors within the Nier: Automata group have been attempting to unravel a thriller. It includes a secret door, a church allegedly hidden within the recreation for 5 years, and roughly 175,000 followers debating whether or not it’s actual, or one very elaborate lie.

It began, as many conspiracies do, with a cryptic publish on-line. Two months in the past, Reddit person sadfutago went to a small Nier discussion board to ask open a church in Platinum’s 2017 hit recreation. The publish attracted little fanfare, however they continued to observe up with images, and later movies, of the world: a paper white room, eerily empty save for just a few small hints some followers imagine are a nod to different video games within the sequence. Since sadfutago started posting, no different participant has managed to search out it.

Numerous theories and investigations later, nobody can determine what the room is or the way it received there. Is it the work of a complicated modder, or outdated code solely unlocked on a dev package? Maybe it’s a teaser for a brand new title or the sport’s Swap launch later this 12 months? Or is it one final secret hidden by infamously enigmatic and eccentric creator Yoko Taro? The reply might not matter a lot because the meta thriller it has created. “That is both a god tier and spectacular hoax, or insanely cool left over information, and both means that is AMAZING,” person SoftDisappointment wrote in a single thread. “I’ve by no means been this joyful at being probably bamboozled earlier than.”

Nier: Automata isn’t fairly like different video games of its variety. Taro is notorious for sporting a grinning, bubble-shaped headpiece that appears like a Tim Burton prop, and his video games are identified for doing issues that flip what you suppose on its head. Secrets and techniques are his enterprise, and Nier is filled with them. A participant discovered the presumed final of those in 2021: a characteristic unlock cheat code that solely works underneath hyper-specific circumstances and was later confirmed as a Taro hidden gem by the sport’s official Twitter account. However this time, Taro gained’t be offering any assist. Even his responses have despatched gamers on maybe the shortest hunt of his profession. “Do you wish to find out about my perception?” he tweeted earlier this week. “In that case, you will discover reply at my Twitter profile. Thanks.”

The chaser to this shot? His Twitter bio says “I can not reply about any merchandise. Please ask writer.”

Two Nier followers, Lyn and Vera (who requested WIRED solely use their first names), share a Twitter account that has been religiously documenting each main improvement via a popular thread Vera created. Each say they’ve been following alongside carefully. Vera is eager for solutions straight from the supply—the individuals who made the sport—to “give us some type of rationalization for the wild goose chase we have all been occurring.” Lyn hasn’t been sleeping a lot. “In another recreation sequence, one thing like this is able to be shortly dismissed as a hoax,” Lynn says. However Taro “has created an immense mythology that has principally consisted of screwing with gamers. That implies that no discovery is totally out of the query.”

Lyn compares it to movies like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, or “an deliberately obtuse” guide like Mark Z. Danielewski’s Home of Leaves. Followers might choose aside completely different cues and talk about theories, however in the end these mediums are static, fairly than interactive. “Everyone seems to be experiencing the identical factor in all these instances, they don’t differ from individual to individual,” Lyn says. “In a online game ANYTHING can occur and builders like Yoko Taro are identified to cover secrets and techniques that lay undiscovered for years.”

Nier’s group has gone to in depth lengths to type issues out: digging into literature, scrutinizing structure, trying reconstructions of their very own, creating memes. Modders proceed to share their progress as they work by the proof. The rabbit hole grows deeper nonetheless, and the fanbase is watching. “That’s the kind of mindset everybody ought to have about searches like these; they’re completely in regards to the journey and what’s uncovered in regards to the recreation versus one singular, monolithic secret,” Lyn says.

On Reddit, the thriller continues as the unique poster releases extra footage for armchair detectives to sift by. “I … cannot fathom how this could presumably be actual or how this could presumably be faux,” wrote person vgxmaster after a brand new video posted Wednesday night time. “Irrespective of how this wraps up, I am alongside for the experience, I assume. Thanks for taking us on this journey.”