我一直在想游戏结局对游戏本身来说意味着什么。当你真正思考这个问题的时候，你会发现游戏在哪里结束并不重要。归根结底，如果玩家能够十分满意在某一个节点结束游戏，那这是否是创作者原本设想的结局就不再重要了…同时这也是这款游戏有着如此多的结局的设计初衷。

I've always thought about what it means to have an ending to a game. When you really think about it, it doesn't really matter where a game ends. Ultimately, if the player is satisfied with stopping at a particular point, it doesn't matter if it's where the creator intended things to end or not… and so that's where the idea of having so many endings came about.

Yoko Taro
《尼尔：机械纪元》总监

Yoko Taro,
Nier:Automata's Director

《尼尔：机械纪元》的战斗很容易上手，攻击类型只分轻攻击和重攻击。但其中有着细微的差别使得它具有深度并很难掌握，比如连击、空中连击、闪避、多种武器组合和一个可以在你战斗时射击的辅助机（pod）。

Automata’s combat is easy to learn, with just light and heavy attack types, but has nuances that make it deep and hard to master, such as combos, aerial combos, dodging, multiple weapon sets and a pod that shoots while you fight.

游戏让你认为多周目只是在通过不同视角游玩同一个故事，但事实并非如此，这也是其突破传统框架之处。如果你意识到了游戏实际的引导（大多数人并不能），就能打破游戏设计的惯例。能与此相提并论的只有 Igarashi 的开创性作品《恶魔城：月下夜想曲》（Castlevania: Symphony of the Night），但在那个游戏中，真结局^[3] 仅仅是对任务完成度最高和最细心玩家的一种奖励。《尼尔：机械纪元》则更进一步，它真正的剧情并非隐藏在具有挑战性的任务后面，而只是利用了一个简单的误导。你不需要做任何复杂的事情来发现游戏的真结局，只需要在大多数人认为剧情已经结束的点继续玩下去。

在玩的过程当中，你会发现游戏在一遍遍循环探索的过程中有意无意地强调一些概念，诸如后辈仅仅因为“从来如此”便继承祖先意志的危险性，或是旧文明的残党试图阻止新思想及其支持者涌现。

The game twists conventions by making you think that you are simply retreading the same game from a slightly different point of view. What it is doing is leading you into a path that, if you manage to follow successfully — and many won't — will break with game design convention in ways that are only eclipsed by Igarashi's seminal Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997). But while in that game the revelation was “merely” structural, saving the latter half of the game and real ending as a reward for the most completionist and attentive players, Nier: Automata goes one step beyond, hiding its closing act behind not a challenging obstacle, but simple misdirection. You don't have to do anything complicated to discover the game's closing act; you just have to play past the point most people will think there is nothing else to see.

Along the way, the game will have woven narrative and structure — through exploration and gameplay loops — to underscore concepts such as the perils of a generation carrying on with the will of long-gone ancestors just because that's the way it has always been so, or the random and quasi-magical way life forms and how sometimes the fossilized remains of an ancient structure are what is keeping new ideas and people from springing forth.

结局剧透：

《尼尔：机械纪元》的最终剧情要你接受来自其他玩家的帮助，这些玩家自愿献出自己存档来帮助其他玩家。游戏之后会问你愿不愿意也做出同样的选择，你的牺牲能够让和你一样的玩家通关游戏。它在现代重演了最广为人知的西方神话故事。

Ending spoiler:

Automata’s final section asks you to accept help from players who sacrificed their save data to help others. It then asks if you want to do the same; your sacrifice will enable others to finish the game, in a modern re-enactment of the most known story in Western mythos.

《尼尔：机械纪元》在传达所有这些理念的同时保持了吸引人的玩法。游戏中有大量可以解锁的武器和连招，一个有趣的、基于机器人内存插槽的升级机制，以及偶尔会出现的横版射击环节。你在其中甚至可以感受到 PlatinumGames ^[4] 特有的手感，尤其躲避与反击机制有点类似《猎天使魔女》（Bayonetta），反馈非常好。但这些并没有让这款游戏更像动作游戏而非动作 RPG。

《尼尔：机械纪元》帮助玩家体会，同时也赞美源自历史的智慧结晶——游戏在终点以基督教神话传说作为高潮。这样的表达方式在以前从未出现过，也许也在之后的几年内不会被复制。当然，游戏设计并不能一昧地复制，唯一真正的出路是要知道何时抛弃这些框架并打造新的东西。

的确，几乎没有游戏能以如此精巧优雅的方式实现这一点。游戏中的人造人和机械生物试图扮演人类（注意人类这个词的重量）时，甚至没有意识到他们有朝一日能因此无比接近人性。《尼尔：机械纪元》也是如此，即便一些地方套用术语的形式较为粗糙，它也是一部当之无愧的哲学作品。它同时也会不时地帮助玩家加深对西方神话本质的认识，这一点是非常了不起的。

Nier: Automata conveys all of this while remaining engaging to play. There are plenty of weapons with combos and special attacks to unlock; an interesting slot-based upgrade mechanism; and occasional side-scrolling shooter segments to shake things up. There's even the traditional Platinum touch of a rewarding dodge-and-counter mechanic similar to Bayonetta's, but never at the cost of making it feel too much of an Action game instead of an Action-RPG.

Automata celebrates and helps players experience the wisdom of the ages — culminating with the ultimate expression of the endpoint of the Christian mythos, in a way that has never been captured before and probably won't be replicated for years to come (see sidebar) — while simultaneously pointing out that the only real way forward is to know when to leave these frameworks behind and forge something anew.

Yes, it rarely achieves this with much in the way of grace and elegance. Just as its machine life forms play at being humans (note the significance of the word) without even realizing that this is the path to one day achieving something akin to humanity, so is Nier: Automata playing, sometimes awkwardly so, at being philosophy. That it occasionally stumbles into helping the player gain a new level of understanding into the reality of western mythos is nothing short of extraordinary.

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³ 译者注：在游戏《恶魔城：月下夜想曲》中，玩家达到一定条件，可以在打最终 BOSS 的时候进入倒恶魔城（俗称逆城）。并且当地图完成度在 195% 以上时可以触发游戏的完美结局。
⁴ 译者注：原文为 Platinum，即白金工作室。