This NieR 12th anniversary art celebrates the series, minus Papa Nier

The young girl is from NieR Reincarnation

Over on Twitter, the NieR Reincarnation account shared a spectacular piece of NieR 12th anniversary art to celebrate over a decade of the series. To be clear, we have Nier from the original (sorta, haha, man, unpacking this would be a spoiler-ridden article), Fio (The Girl of Light) from NieR Reincarnation, and 2B from Automata.

NieR has had a fascinating history, starting in 2010 as a spinoff for one of Drakengard‘s endings. This wild turn would help define much of designer Yoko Taro’s career: who started working on innocent games like Namco’s Alpine Racer 2, only to become one of the biggest gaming industry mind-screwers alongside of Hideo Kojima. From there NieR grew as a cult hit, and seven years later his stock would absolutely explode as NieR: Automata made him a global superstar.

Four years later he’d co-direct NieR Reincarnation, a mobile take on the game that is now illustrious enough to be included in this NieR 12th anniversary art piece: including the entire background (which is The Cage, the setting for Reincarnation). I hope we get another project like Automata eventually, with a firm action gameplay foundation in tandem with Yoko Taro’s unique ideology.

Chris Carter

Reviews Director, Co-EIC – Chris has been enjoying Destructoid avidly since 2008. He finally decided to take the next step, make an account, and start blogging in January of 2009. Now, he’s staff!