How 'NieR' was brought back from the dead

Taro Yoko, director of NieR: Automata, leans forward in his chair. "The stories I write really aren't very good at all," he says, through a translator. So I wouldn't have great expectations for the game if I were you." I've just spent a few hours playing a preview build in London, and it was anything but crap. The story follows a pair of combat androids who are fighting on humanity's behalf. They talk about life and death, and what it means to be caught up in a never-ending cycle of war. The Japanese game designer is, perhaps, trying to temper expectations. Two years ago, no one would have guessed that a new NieR was in development. The first title was a commercial flop, and Square Enix, the game's publisher, had shown no interest in a sequel. NieR was a strange experience, extending the story of the original, equally bizarre Drakengard game from the PlayStation 2 era. It starts in the distant future, in a bleak, snow-covered Tokyo. The adventure then cuts to more than 1,000 years later, where humanity has reverted to swords and rudimentary houses once more. Even stranger, the same characters depicted in the "modern" prologue seem to be living in this new, fantastical world. "Square Enix came to me and said, 'Well, it didn't sell very well.