New NieR: Automata Gameplay Details Quests, Exploration And How To Survive Death

Platinum Games’ NieR: Automata will be with us in less than a month, but despite its relatively close proximity to release on PlayStation 4, there are a few questions still floating around in regards to how the RPG handles some of the genre’s core tenets of gameplay.

We’ve, of course, already seen plenty of videos highlighting NieR‘s fluid combat system (would you expect anything else of the studio that brought you Vanquish and Bayonetta?), but what about quests, exploration and the inevitable punishment of death when the challenge of fighting the 14th Machine War becomes too great? Well, thanks to a new 25-minute video released today by Sony (via PlayStation Blog), we’ve got answers to all of that.

In case you’ve yet to try the free demo currently available on the PlayStation Store or just missed the memo, NieR: Automata puts you in the role of 2B, an android and member of the ‘elite’ YoRHa organization tasked with helping the Resistance push back the machines and reclaim what’s been lost. Besides the main story, various hub worlds are scattered throughout NieR‘s dystopian world that houses quest givers and the like, which will send 2B out into the wastelands of Earth to complete various odd jobs. The planet may have been deserted by mankind, but wildlife can be tamed and used as transport in order to reach your objective quicker, says the blog post.

Most interesting of all, however, is how Platinum plans to handle death in-game. Owing to the fact that 2B is an android, whenever players hit the dreaded game over screen, her “memory and data are uploaded into a new body and redeployed into the fray.” Should you come across your own corpse, you can attempt to reactivate it which, if successful, will give you a second pair of hands to help in battle. Do take a second to mull the choice over, though, as failing to repair the unit will cause it to become hostile.

NieR: Automata launches March 7 in the US and March 10 in Europe. For a more in-depth exploration of its core mechanics, give the video above a watch.