Machines and Melancholy – The Journey Through Nier: Automata

***All The Spoilers for the story in Nier: Automata*** The message of Nier: Automata doesn’t become apparent until the fifth and final story ending of the game. In a game of bombast and spectacle, it’s a quiet moment that you might be forgiven for missing in the heat of the moment when the reveal comes. Someday, human civilization will end. Either as a result of miscalculation on the part of our leaders, or the ultimate result of an indifferent universe, all of this will be gone someday. There will be no one to remember us, or how important it was that the Patriots win this year’s Super Bowl, or the horrors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, or how proud you were of your child’s first word. In terms of time, the existence of humanity is less than the blink of an eye; it is the firing of a galactic synapse, a random, half-formed thought that flickered in deep space and then was snuffed out before anyone had a chance to even notice it. What will happen to the things we value when we are gone? Not the material possessions or wealth, but the intangibles we say we truly value — love, kindness, hope, hatred, fear, sadness. Do these concepts exist independently of our ability to perceive and name them? Are our deeply held, core feelings just as fleeting as everything else about us? That someday has already arrived in the world of Nier. Humans and the aliens who invaded our planet are extinct, leaving androids and machines stuck in a never-ending war. The gods are dead, and no one bo…