Nier Creator Yoko Taro and Square Enix Producer Yosuke Saito at GameStart 2017

One of the highlight of this year GameStart 2017 is the main stage appearance of Yoko Taro, father of Nier, and Yosuke Saito, Square Enix Producer.

As usual the eccentric Yoko Taro has his Emil Mask on only for a short period of time before being ushered into a Yoko box where he takes off his mask. Nope you can’t see him from outside the box. It’s his own way of keeping his identity secret (though his real life photo can be found on the internet).

The interview session was entertaining with legion of fans participating actively throughout the entire session. Many shouted vehemently at the end of the show “人類に栄光あれ” in Japanese which mans “Glory to Mankind”. A pledge that is made famous in the game Nier Automata.

A set of pre-submitted fan questions were selected beforehand. Some of them are your standard fan questions, some elicit really funny answer from Yoko.

*Q&A below is not the actual transcript but a translated version from Japanese.

Fan: Are there certain movies or books that inspire you for the game.
Yoko: I get my inspiration from some of them. Evangelion is one from anime and the American Drama 24 is another one. I will try to avoid taking ideas from major titles as other would easily spot it. So usually, I will steal from the more minor title.

That’s Yoko Taro for you. Straight, honest answer with a tinge of humour.

Here’s another one:

Fan: Why did you include an ending where you have to delete the gamer’s save file?
Yoko: When I was young, my save file for Dragon Quest 3 was deleted. I was devastated and disappointed. But my parents do not understand what I was going through. Hence I make my players go through the same experience.

So that’s it?! While this sounds brutal, it is also really amusing to me. For the longest time, I always thought that there is a stronger meaning behind asking the user to delete the save file at the ending. So the truth is simply this. Advice to you when you play Yoko Taro’s game, don’t read too much into why things are how they are in the games.

The final section is a compilation of the fan’s answers to a list of Nier Automata related questions. Here are some of the results