On my first playthrough of Nier: Automata, its writing disappointed me. 2B and 9S felt too similar and too underdeveloped, a pair of emotionally distant soldiers with few personality traits, and their character arcs were so disjointed that I wasn’t sure they had developed at all by the time I reached ending A. Something strange happened during my second playthrough, though; by seemingly no effort of the game itself, 2B and 9S suddenly had clear character development throughout the story. So, what happened?

Nier and its sequel both boast a strange form of replayability where extra scenes are added on subsequent playthroughs. This allows the story to be fresh each time you play the game, and in some sense means that the story isn’t truly complete until you’ve reached the “final” ending after your third or fourth play. Automata, if anything, doubles down on this philosophy, with its third playthrough acting more as a sequel or expansion than a replay. These added scenes don’t actually account for my redefined view of our protagonists, though.

In the second route of Nier: Automata we play as 9S, our sidekick from the first path. In doing so, we get a few extra scenes from parts of the game where the two heroes are separated, and some of these are actually quite good. They are few and far between, though, and the biggest difference between my first and second runs had nothing to do with them. No, the biggest difference between playing as 2B and playing as 9S was that I simply didn’t like playing as 9S.

Mechanically, 9S plays like a stripped down 2B. His moves look different and have different hitboxes, but he gets fewer of them because one of his primary attacks is replaced with a hacking ability. The hacking minigame is all right, and in small doses I actually enjoy it, but it’s just a simple shoot-’em-up with very little going for it. Anyone who’s played stand-alone shmup games will find this minigame pretty bare bones. Ikaruga it is not. Because it takes up the button 2B used for her heavy attacks, though, 9S loses the ability to wield multiple weapons at once, his list of single moves available at any given time is smaller, and he has fewer combos. All this for what amounts to a new game+ run where, if anything, you’d want more options, not less. The simple shmup minigame was, for me, not a strong enough exchange.

So what does all this have to do with the story? Why does being, in my opinion, less fun to play give 9S stronger character development? Because I didn’t like playing as 9S, so I rushed through the playthrough as quickly as I could, skipping all of the side quests.

I like a lot of the side quests in Nier: Automata. Many of the most interesting and moving scenes in the game come from side quests, while the main quest struggles to generate believable drama. The game’s many side quests are also usually directly relevant to the game’s overarching themes and the development of 2B and 9S as characters. If I had stopped after reaching the game’s first ending, I would have considered the side quests the best part of the game, from a narrative standpoint (with special exception for the very beginning of the game, which I actually loved).

The strength of each of these side quests on their own created a much larger problem for the game as a whole, though: because they can be completed in very different orders, they result in very different presentations of the development of the plot and characters. My first time through the game, I thought the character development was a mess, with development happening in one scene and then being undone in the next scene with no rhyme or reason. When I played through the (largely identical) second run of the game without any side quests, I found that 2B and 9S actually have clear, consistent development over the course of the game.

***SLIGHT SPOILERS***To be a bit more clear, most of Nier: Automata’s plot revolves around the characters slowly growing to understand their adversaries better, while growing more and more emotionally open with each other at the same time. The side quests, by and large, cover these exact same topics. The plot has little else going on, so there’s little else of significance for the side quests to talk about, and 9S and 2B lack meaningful development aside from the blanket “emotionally distant” and the gradual undoing of that one trait. The result is that when the side quests try to add something meaningful to the plot, they have no choice but to advance one or both of these two threads.

When you return to the main quest, this additional development can’t be accounted for, because scenes must be written without knowing if you’ve played the side quests or not. The protagonists will meet highly sentient robots, learn a lot about robots’ emotional range, then turn around and act surprised about less profound emotional behavior during the main story. This effect is even stronger when going back to do side quests you’ve been sitting on for a while. The characters suddenly forget everything that’s been happening in the main plot and act surprised when robots exhibit even relatively simple emotions.

***END SPOILERS***

I don’t feel that the game is strictly better without these extra scenes. Some of the best writing in the game lies in the many optional missions. So, what gives? What went wrong, and how could it have been done better? There are a few different options for how things could have been written differently.

First, they could have simply not included story-relevant optional content. Scenes that couldn’t be worked into the main quest would be removed entirely. Depending on how many scenes could be made mandatory without feeling too awkward, this option could have sufficed. If half of the story-relevant optional quests were mandatory, they could have been placed at the most appropriate points in the main plot to avoid constantly writing and unwriting the story in front of the player. The obvious problems with this option are that not all side missions would make sense as part of the main quest, and that some of the content would likely have to be cut entirely as a result. The other issue I have with this option is that it could result in the remaining side content feeling too insignificant. The side quests in Nier: Automata helped make the world feel more alive and full, and removing all of the most impactful moments from this freely explored patchwork would leave the rest feeling too arcadey and shallow.

The second option would be strictly limiting the timeframes in which side quests can be completed. By making story-relevant side quests available only for a short time, the developers could have ensured that they don’t break the flow of the story. They would, essentially, become parts of the main plot that were simply missable or skippable. This seems reasonable to me, since that’s the way they’re written already. This would cause most people to see a fraction as many of these optional scenes, but since you’re meant to play through the game several times anyway it doesn’t seem like such an issue. If the quests were made to seem sufficiently urgent, like having a separate “limited-time event” quest type, then players wouldn’t feel like they were being screwed out of content when the quests became suddenly unavailable. To me, this option is far superior to the first.

My last alternative for fixing the side quests would be to add more depth to the characters and world. The unfortunate truth is that even with the stronger pacing and plot structure afforded by skipping optional content (or doing it all at the most appropriate time), 9S and 2B are just not very strong characters. The only development either of these characters get amounts to (ideally) linear progress along one of the two axes mentioned in the first sentence of the spoiler section. While fixing this progression to be properly linear vastly improves the story, what we’re left with is still only mediocre.

2B and 9S are never given any real motivations beyond following orders. They lack any connection to the events of the game except as mouthpieces to parrot the one overarching theme endlessly and what little emotional connection they develop with each other. They fail to form relationships with any side character except Pascal. They never express opinions about anything other than the game’s primary theme. Neither of them have definable personality traits. In the 20 hours it takes to reach the first ending, we learn absolutely nothing about our protagonists.

This is where side quests can shine. If the developers of Automata were struggling to flesh out 2B and 9S, side quests would have been the perfect opportunity to develop non-mission-critical personality traits and opinions, and to give them ties to other people and places in the world. Instead of every single side quest advancing the game’s single theme, they could have developed supplementary themes and relationships between 2B, 9S, and other characters in the game.

Instead of each side quest being an isolated event, more of them could have been tied together. Devote more than a single quest each to some of the side characters so that we can feel like a relationship is developing. Allow 2B and 9S to have simple reactions to the behaviors of other characters, from shock to endearment to annoyance. As best selling author and writing mentor K.M. Weiland puts it: “If the reader doesn’t find your character interesting, why should he stick around to follow this same boring character through the next three-hundred pages, no matter how brilliant your final plot twist may be? Ultimately, people read fiction because of character.” These side quests could have been used to breathe life into Automata’s protagonists, but instead we’re left with cold husks who fail to drive interest in their own story.

As a fan of the original Nier, this feels like a kick to the teeth. For all its many flaws, and indeed despite the awkward dialogue and patchy voice acting, one of Nier’s greatest strengths was its characters. Automata’s predecessor had a diverse cast of vibrant personalities that chafed against, supported, and confused each other in equal measure. Automata takes the same driving theme and delivers on it with, arguably, more consistency and nuance, but where Nier’s clumsy writing could be excused because the characters brought so much to the table, Automata’s characters are barely more than dead weight on a plot that couldn’t seem to care less about them as people.

There’s a lot of potential in the writing staff behind the Nier games. With the right combination of Nier’s boldness and inspiration alongside Automata’s polish, they could put out a genuine masterpiece. For now, I’m a little disappointed in their recent work but cautiously optimistic for their future.