Honestly, we couldn’t have expected anything less from the creator of NieR, which was released as a spin-off of Drakengard.

A Japanese publication, 4Gamer wrote about an event that took place on November 16th at the G-Star conference in South Korea. Yosuke Saito (the producer) and Yoko Taro (the creator of NieR) appeared. At the end of the talk, Saito promised that NieR will continue as long as Taro is alive, but they couldn’t give any details there because the talk was mainly about NieR: Automaton, which was released in 2017. The game’s distinctive character design was meant to appeal to its Japanese target audience, and the developers hoped it could be a niche game outside of its home turf. There was also talk of competition between a producer and creative director, as they had complementary needs during development.

Saito hinted at an as-yet-unannounced collaboration between the two, and hopes to have more to say about it in 2024, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being a current-gen NieR: Automata re-release (NieR: Replicant was also ported from PS3 to the newer generation…). When the original NieR was released in 2010, it wasn’t very good and even dragged developer Cavia down with it.

NieR has been really quiet lately, except for the modernized version of NieR: Replicant, but the franchise gained a lot of fans with the release of NieR: Automata (and not only in Japan), so Square Enix should do something new soon. Sure, there’s the Nintendo Switch port of Automata and the story-driven free-to-play mobile game Re[in]carnation, but there’s a need for something console-based after all this time.

Who knows what Saito and Taro might be working on together. Maybe another mobile game, maybe a theatrical production (because there is such a thing), but if the presentation was about NieR: Automata, maybe we can hope for a sequel to that. Square Enix isn’t that stupid (they’re into NFTs though, lol).

Source: PCGamer