Nier: Reimagining apocalypse

Somewhere the apocalypse became the lone man’s journey. In a fractured world, he seeks revenge against those who have wronged him. Companions may be met, but gruffly. The aesthetics of the apocalypse skew a specific way, too; often they are wastelands filled with debris and twisted metal. Often they are funhouse mirror reflections of the place that used to exist.

By fictional standards 2020 is an apocalyptic year. A pandemic, a recession, a bad and growing police brutality crisis, a worsening climate emergency...any one of those alone could and have set the backdrop in a game. Any one of those things alone has the power, at least in a video game, to end life as we know it, and they do. Nier’s story begins with a pandemic and picks up again more than a thousand years later, when all that remains of humanity are the clones we created to save ourselves.

Nier’s apocalypse does not look like the lone man’s apocalypse at all. There are no streets filled with trash and concrete rubble, no burned-out cars marking the cities as graveyards. Nier’s apocalypse looks like people doing their best despite the circumstances. Like the titular Nier’s community banding together to help him save Yonah, the only family he has left. Like Nier returning the favor and taking on the most insignificant tasks on behalf of the people in his village who aren’t strong enough to swing around a five-foot-long greatsword.

Nier’s apocalypse looks a lot like ours.

Perhaps we have done ourselves a disservice with the fictional lone man. We have imagined space for him but stopped short of imagining a community who supports him. Nier is pointedly not alone during his journey, relying on both his friends and his village to save Yonah. 

This reliance on others is largely true to real life, too. It is easier to call a system broken than it is to admit it was never designed to support the people who most rely on it. There is no repair for a system that commands its most vulnerable members to risk their health for the benefit of its wealthiest. 

The apocalypse safety net, if there is one, is is strung up by organizers and activists and it is strengthened when communities pool their resources to provide meaningful support. The swords are optional, but community is essential.