dont talk to me unless you’re following the Nier Automata Church mystery x
To break this down:
- OP is reddit user sadfutago. (futago is japanese for “twins”)
- in May they started posting in the NierAutomata subreddit, asking how their friend can access the church area in the Copied City. Since no one knew what they meant, they then a month later posted a screenshot of the unknown area, both in the Nier Automata subreddit and the Nier subreddit.
- people were absolutely confused and asked if they could provide a video. They then later provided a short video, showing a secret door.
- people still absolutely confused, because no one has ever seen this before, asked them for a longer video. On the 25th July they provided a new video, showing a tunnel that let to the church they mentioned in the first post.
- obviously people began asking more and more, because still no one has ever seen anything like this before, so another video was posted on the 26th July, showing the actual church, with a cutscene and voicelines playing. A black glitch blob is seen, which they claimed wasn’t there before (as seen as in the first screenshots they shared), as well as a young figure with a flower on their chest lying on an altar. Devola and Popola’s staffs are seen left and right beside the altar, as well as a chest only available for 9S, contents unknown as for now.
- Lance, the person who found YOKO TARO’s last Nier Automata secret, broke this whole story down in his twitter thread. Since then it gained a lot of attention. He also points out that the arrows for the item pickup are missing and no one has figured out to remove them, ever.
- so much attention in fact, both Yosuke Saito and YOKO TARO himself tweeted about it. Yosuke Saito made three tweets xxx, saying that only YOKO TARO could pull something like this off, and that we should preorder Nier Automata on the Switch. YOKO TARO made a tweet x that we should refer to his twitter bio, which states that he cannot say anything and that we should ask the publisher. In a follow up tweet x he says that he isn’t who we think he is. (Probably refering to people saying sadfutago is YOKO TARO.)
- people are in shambles, because no one can explain anything. Even the modding community said that this kind of modding is impossible to do for them as of right now. They did break down sadfutago’s posts with them and found out they are playing on a canadian-french ps4 version, never updated, so version 1.00.
- since then people are trying to replicate, just anything, about this. Nothing yet.
- people were speculating that this is: a very well done mod, a marketing strategy for the Switch version, an ARG, cut easter egg content someone finally randomly found, a hoax overall.
- sadfutago’s writing style seems to imply they are young and/or not fluent in english. Someone also pointed out that their posting times rather fit into the japanese timezone than to a NA one.
- sadfutago’s latest comments seem also to imply they don’t really understand english that well and simply repeat what they have been told. xxxxx Saying in this own thread that it could be a mod, cut content, a marketing strategy, that we could reverse engenier it. … These comments don’t make sense at all, if they’re the person who found it in the first place.
It is now the 27th July for me, and I’m onto the ride.
Update:
- in the early hours of the 28th July (or late 27th, depending on your timezone), sadfutago posted that they are entering the Church with 9S. The same cutscene plays as they entered it with A2. They open the locked chest with 9S, receiving the data log of Yonah, which you also receive later in the game. The black blob then attacks 9S. Unfortunately sadfutago loses here.
- an hour later, they posted a second video where they defeated the black blob. It seems to be the same enemy as you fight later in the game as 9S. Nothing really happens after sadfutago defeats it, so they go back and interact with the birdbath on the side of the entrance of the Church. The japanese prompt from the birdbath in Nier Replicant appears, but sadfutago selects the wrong answers several times and gets ported back to the beginning of the tunnel
- sadfutago doesn’t seem to understand japanese, as they say those are “random letters or korean”. The community tells them in which order to press the answers. Stay tuned.
- meanwhile a lot of things have happened behind the scenes. Between memes, debunking researches from modders, people trying to find it on their own, people claiming it’s played on a dev kit, etc etc. I try to focus on the important things here :D
I hope the next video will show sadfutago solving the birdbath riddle. That’s it for now.
for ppl wondering i saw this yesterday on twitter and read some of this (honestly couldn’t handle reading it depth but i skimmed), the victim was a Black senior citizen and apparently they were taking this money out of this woman’s government benefits. additionally her neighbors were worried about her and did try to get police involved within a month of her death (still unknown at the time) AND they made complaints about the smell and flies.
nothing was done at any point to figure out what had happened to this woman by anyone with any authority or power to do so. and i think knowing she was a Black elderly woman specifically is important to how this situation played out
Hey btw, to new writers who want to write angst: Nothing illustrates darkness as well as sparse and brilliant highlights.
If you want to write a character with an unspeakably awful past, there’s no need to go into deep and gory details about how horrible it was. Readers who can’t relate to it won’t relate to that, and the readers who have been there generally don’t want to see that. Instead, highlight some of their happiest moments but make them unsettlingly small.
Sprinkles in some realism, too. Having a character go “my parents were abusive monsters and I’ve literally never had a happy moment in my life” isn’t realistic, and both the people who haven’t witnessed that kind of thing outside of fiction, and the people who have personally lived it will just go “yeah, yeah, tragic childhood, misery, darkness, we’ve all seen it”, and being nothing but negative makes the character both uninteresting and unlikeable.
Now, having someone casually think or say shit like “I think my happiest childhood memory was that christmas when dad was in prison. Nobody was yelling or throwing anything and mom was sober the whole time”, and be genuinely surprised by other peoples’ concerned reactions - now jesus christ that’s bleak.
if you do it right, you can simultaneously drop such a scene to be darkly comedic and bleak.
“studio ghibli romances be like “what if we didn’t kiss, but instead both spiritually matured as people because we met each other.”
“I’ve become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and a girl appear in the same feature, a romance must insue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, one where the two mentally inspire eachother to live-if I am able to, then perhaps I’ll be closer to portraying a true expression of love.” -hayao miyazaki
i need to see y'all reblogging this bc you need to realize that if you feel any aversion to this statements you’ve internalized gender essentialism and are a step away from terfism, biphobia and homophobia
Here’s how Naruto should end: Last panel is Naruto standing proudly over Konohagakure. Slowly zoom out to reveal Luffy staring into a snowglobe with a miniature Konoha inside it. Usopp asks him what he’s doing. Luffy replies “Thinkin’ bout ninjas! Ninjas are cool!” and then chucks it off the ship
