Nier: Automata's Anime Will Have an Original Story
NieR: Automata will be making its full anime adaptation debut next year, but it's going to come with some major changes to how the story played out in the original games! NieR: Automata has exploded in popularity in the last few years since its initial release, and one of the major reasons fans have come to love the video game is the fact that it has many multiple ways the story can end. It's built into how the narrative unfolds overall, and each new ending seems to have some small ties into the other. It's why fans love exploring each particular path.
As it turns out, fans of the original game won't have too much to worry about in terms of spoilers or potential adaptation of it. Original game creator Yoko Taro revealed during a special segment in Aniplex Online Fest 2022 this past weekend that NieR: Automata's anime (officially titled as NieR: Automata Ver1.1a) will have a new story as "copying" the story made for the game "wouldn't make an interesting story" for an anime. In fact, it's why the anime carries the specific title it does to further differentiate itself.
As Yoko Taro explained about the planning of the anime itself, "The anime title has the affix 'Ver1.1a' because the title 'NieR: Automata' was a story created to be a game, so copying it as is wouldn't make an interesting story for an anime. So I brought up the idea of changing things around." But the director for the anime, Ryoji Masuyama, tried to keep the changes from happening in order to not only please fans of the original game, but it seemed to be something the staff wanted for the adaptation too.
But Yoko Taro revealed that these changes to story became an internal debate, "The original creator was trying to destroy the original story, and the anime staff is desperately stopping that...Such a debate kept going back and forth for a long time." The debate itself might be continuing, but fans should likely expect some story changes to the original game as NieR: Automata Ver1.1a will be making its debut some time in January next year.
What are you hoping to see from NieR: Automata's big anime debut? What kind of new story would you want to see play out? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!