Emil's Determination | Why DId I Do This??? - NieR: Automata

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Shin FTW

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Published on September 20, 2019 5:00:09 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsmfqJb1wdY

Game:

Nier: Automata (2017)

Duration: 37:55

1,045 views

17

I shouldn't have recorded today. Hell I shouldn't have even PLAYED today! I had the flu. I could've just stayed in bed! I should've just...

Well, now we know the true purpose of that spot in the desert, with the giant Emil heads...

F***, nothing else in the game made me cry this hard. Last time I did was at the end of Life Is Strange.

When I first heard the Hegel boss fight OST, I thought the tune sounded a lot like "Emil - Sacrifice". Then when I heard it again during that Desert DLC arena, and the vocals come in, I was convinced that it was Automata's version of it. But when I looked up the song to download and use for my final desert sinkhole video, I saw that the OST's actual name was "Emil - Despair". I didn't know why at the time.

But now I do...

He was just a little boy when we first met him in NieR. Just a sweet little boy in a land of stone. The sweetest person you could ever meet. Then it turned out that this little boy was actually 1,400 years old, because he'd been taken and had terrible experiments performed on him and his sister, to turn them into weapons - his sister to combat Red Eye and Legion, and Emil to combat... his sister. He was cursed with eyes that would petrify anyone and anything he looked at, without discrimination.

Then the poor boy - in order to obtain the power to reverse his curse - was physically transformed into the very same monster that his sister had become. Many feared him. He was torn apart from the price he paid to fix his cursed eyes. But his friends still accepted him. They were all he had left, which wasn't much to begin with.

In the end, he was forced to live thousands and thousands of years, all alone. All of his friends were gone. EVERYONE was gone. Try to imagine that pain. Why did he even fight so hard to protect Earth, when there wasn't anything left to protect? Emil fought merely to protect the memories of his friends that he'd shared with them on the planet. There was no one physically left to protect. He did it just to preserve his memories of them.

But... in order for Emil to fight to protect his memories, he had to clone himself, which began to deteriorate those memories. In order to preserve his memories, he had to lose them anyway. Despite that, he still kept fighting on, even after he'd forgotten his purpose and WHAT he was fighting for. He had only fragments, and many of his clones didn't even have THAT.

But that's why he kept Kaine's house safe for all these millennia. He didn't even remember WHY, but he could FEEL that it was important, and so he did it. He stuck to this duty even when it lost all meaning to him.

I think I get it now. I had no idea what I wanted to type for this description. I'm just typing as I go, but I think that's the theme of this entire game. This entire WAR seems meaningless, and 9S is slowly having his own sense of meaning and worth stripped away. I noticed that already, but I didn't even realize how bad it was for Emil...

I didn't even put together before that he was ONLY fighting to preserve his memories, because the planet where he had those memories was in danger, even if there was no one left to protect, and I just realized that in order to protect his memories, he had to lose them.

That's so horrible!

Hearing the Emil clones going on about all of their pain and how everything was meaningless was hard enough to listen to without tearing up. It was like hearing Emil finally crumbling under the thousands years of pain and isolation he had to endure. But it REALLY got me when I heard him ACTUALLY reference Kaine directly and then talk about "him" (Nier). Emil FINALLY remembering hit me like a tidal wave and that's when I started actually crying.

But the worst was realizing that Emil had this revelation... during his final moments....

I didn't think Yoko Taro would do it. I thought that out of EVERYONE, he wouldn't do anything to Emil. For people who know the first NieR, Emil's been with us the longest out of anyone. He's grown so much in our hearts. I can't believe he's actually...

Dead...

That's why, while only 1/3 of this video is the actual quest, I HAD to add that tribute for the other 2/3. Emil has so much involvement with the first NieR, and his death hurt too much for me NOT to pay my respects to him. It wasn't easy. Making that tribute to him made me cry so much as each scene made me think "He's dead.". But I HAD to.

And as a bit of good-yet-sad news, the unit date for the Emil Clones says "At the end of this pitched battle, the true Emil stopped his doppelgangers with heartfelt words before annihilating them with a final strike. He then passed away with an expression of great relief, as if he had finally met the person who he'd longed to see.".

So that means that, yes, he WAS the true Emil this whole time, and he did actually... die.

This was without a doubt the most painful experience I've had in this game. But the most memorable as well. No matter what, I will never forget you, Emil. Never.

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