Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Drakengard 3, Final Fantasy XV, nier: Automata, NieR: Gestalt, playstation, playstation 4, PS4, sony

NieR Director Yoko Taro Was Cursed By Final Fantasy XV For About 10 Years

Published Thu, 13 Jul 2017 07:45:00 -0500

by Madeline Ricchiuto

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Game director of the NieR series, Yoko Taro, was recently asked to write about his favorite PS4 games on the PlayStation Blog. Its one of the small ways Sony continues to make PlayStation the better of the two main consoles for this current generation. And Taro's post is the perfect example of just how to make use of your creative team outside of the traditional means. Taro's post starts out with a very candid opener, which gives you a great taste of just how idiosyncratic his PS4 choices are going to be.

Hello, my name is YOKO TARO. I did things like direct a game called NieR: Automata. I was asked to give a list of PS4 games that I recommend along with my comment for each so I did just that below. And I was told to write "one to two lines per game" but ended up writing quite a bit. But oh well. It's okay right? Here it goes.

Sure, he starts things off with Resogun, which was one of the early PS4 indie hits. But then moves on to everyone's favorite Final Fantasy game. While his opinions on Final Fantasy XV aren't exactly controversial, the background information he brings with him to the discussion is. There is nothing quite like hearing about game releases from developers of other games, after all. Their perspective is much different than the rest of us. Even as games press, we still identify more with the games consumer than the developers behind the game. Not so for other devs, obviously. And Taro's perspective on Final Fantasy Versus XIII which later became FFXV, is particularly unique.

I was creating a title called NIER Gestalt/Replicant when this title was called Versus XIII but because it was very likely that our games would release around the same time, I was thinking "oh man, Versus is an action RPG right? It would suck if the release dates were close to each other." NIER ended up releasing without having to worry about Versus XIII but then, when I was creating Drakengard 3 I thought "it would suck if they release close to our release," and it was the same again when we were creating NieR: Automata this time too. Looking back, I feel like I was trapped by the curse of Versus for about 10 years.

Taro also took some time to discuss Gravity Rush, Daganronpa, The Last Guardian, and Horizon: Zero Dawn. But nothing will come quite close to that revelation of the NieR and Drakengard series' being cursed by the looming spectre of Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

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