Square-Enix has revealed the first substantial information concerning Nier, a third-person action game in which you take on the role of a vengeful father seeking the cure for a mysterious disease that has infected his daughter.
Last week Square-Enix announced two new games – the third-person shooter Front Mission Evolved and Nier, a mysterious action-adventure title that promised a dark storyline and book-based combat. Now Square has fully unveiled Nier, revealing an action game that sounds a bit like God of War but with as much of an aim to depress you as to make you feel like a badass warrior. And yeah, you fight with books.
In Nier, you play as a warrior (named Nier) who’s searching for a cure to the Black Scrawl virus, a mysterious disease which has infected Nier’s daughter. Naturally, the best way to find a cure for a virus is to kill whoever gets in your way, so Nier goes off with his giant sword and magical floating book to “explore hauntingly familiar lands” and “a world plagued by human anguish, buried secrets and a ravaging disease.” Sounds pretty grim.
Gameplay will find Nier using “a combination of chain attacks and crushing magic abilities,” the latter of which he can unlock as you progress through the game, along with new weapons and such (hopefully more books). There are also “cinematic event scenes,” which may be another way of saying “quick-time events.”
Cavia, the developers of Nier, are best known in the West for making Bullet Witch, a relatively ho-hum action-shooter. Will working for such a big-time publisher entice them to create something a bit more interesting? We’ll see.
