In a recent interview, the NieR producer shared that creator Yoko Taro will continue the series as long as he is alive to work on it.

NieR Franchise will Live On As Long as Yoko Taro is Alive

During the Korean gaming event G-Star 2023, the Square Enix team went to talk about the production of NieR Automata. The Action-RPG has sold over 7.5 million copies and is a successful entry in the series. According to the interview published by 4Gamer.net and then quoted by Genki_JPN on Twitter (X), as long as NieR director and creator Yoko Taro has anything to say about it, he will continue working on the NieR series. Producer Yosuke Saito said that the series would continue with Taro, but they weren’t working on anything solid at the moment.

The event mostly covered NieR: Automata, how the game’s unique character art was aimed at captivating the Japanese audience, also with the hope that it would also attract a “niche” market in other countries. That it did, Automata selling over 7.5 million copies worldwide speaks volumes about the game’s success, but it’s not an easy act to follow. Saito shared “It’s not easy” when referring to whether they can repeat that success.

Interestingly Yoko shared that NieR Automata was created to be a “weird story” rather than a “dark story”. He justified the darker themes of the game’s narrative, due to the consequences of defeating enemies would appear “unnatural” if the game had an overall lighter tone.

2B or Not 2B

But many wonder where will they go from here. There hasn’t been another NieR entry announced for the main line of games. However, we did get the remastered version of NieR Replicant in 2021 which also introduced new weapons inspired by Automata. There has been the mobile game NieR Reincarnation which follows different characters from the NieR universe, using card-based combat instead of the mainline’s hack-and-slash combat.

Taro has said in the past that “NieR is finished“, and previously has said nothing is being worked on. But never say never. They could always work on another Drakengard which acts as a prequel of sorts to the series. However, there are other mediums that the series can continue in. In January last year, an anime spinoff series was announced called NieR Automata Ver 1.1a which has received 12 episodes. It focuses on retelling the Automata story, but there are some differences to the game’s version.

Saito and Taro are working on another project together but haven’t said much else about what it is. Would you want another NieR entry? Or maybe a new IP by this talented developer? Let us know in the comments below.

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For a rundown of recent news find it here in This Week in RPGs – November 19th, 2023 and don’t miss The Starbites: Taste of Desert Is A Turn-Based RPG That Is Reminiscent of Borderlands.