Avatar Identification: Deprogramming the Machinic Subject in Nier: Automata

Nier: Automata is a Japanese action-RPG in which players control androids. These

androids were created by humans as part of a massive military meant to wage war against alien-

manufactured machines that, according to the military’s android leaders, forced humans to flee

earth for the moon. At the game’s start players control 2B, a female-presenting android warrior

who, of all three playable characters, is the least humanlike. She disavows emotion, refuses to

engage in playful banter with her affable male companion 9S, and has a robotic commitment to

following the orders of her higher ups. Her blind obedience to her higher ups is made physically

manifest in the black blindfold that covers her eyes and underscores her inhumanity. The corpses

that dot the game’s crumbling cities and overgrown fields serve to actively undercut the

possibility of viewing 2B as a unique individual; when players are killed in the game, 2B’s

corpse is left on the ground and the player assumes control of a new 2B model. If a player’s

console is in online mode, she will see not only her own corpses, but also those of other players

who died while connected to the Internet. The countless 2B models strewn about the battlefield

serve as constant reminders that other players have tread the same ground with the same

character model, fighting the same enemies. The overall impression is that the player is only one

android warrior in a military of millions, each one as indistinct as the next.

2B’s apparent inhumanity and lack of a distinct personality paint her as the kind of

shallow set character that Adrienne Shaw observes players often view as “puppets, chess pieces,

or dolls, not characters with which they [can] identify.”. These characters, she argues, cause

players “to be more self-aware than engaged in character identification” (131-32). Self-

awareness and identirfication with characters seem to be mututally exclusive; a chara While

Shaw goes on to argue that players’ lack of identification with set characters means that the
nature of the characters does not matter for players (144), I would like to consider 2B as an

example of a shallow set character meant to cultivate self-awareness as a tool for identification.

2B seems, at first, to be the kind of character with which players cannot (and are not

encouraged to) identify. However, it becomes clear through play that 2B and the player

controlling her are similar in their mechanic approach to the game’s world. For example, players

familiar with conventions of video game play attack enemies on-sight with little thought. Like

2B, players have been trained to kill enemies without questioning the morality of their actions.

However, the game encourages players to question whether they should be attacking enemies at

all; many robot enemies display human traits, such as fear and familial loyalty, that suggest

players should not view them as threats requiring violent responses. As players are led to

challenge the rightness of their impulse to kill as a first response to any unfamiliar presence, 2B

likewise begins interrogating the justness of her actions and the possibility that her enemies

might be more sympathetic than her militaristic programming brought her to believe.