10 Intense Video Game Thrillers That Will Melt Your Brain
3. NieR: Automata
From one cortex-frazzling scene to an entire game that deals in metaphors, interpretations and segmented narratives designed to provoke conversation.
Annoyingly, NieR: Automata hides its best content behind two solid playthroughs, asking you to complete the game twice over before any sense of "what's really going on" kicks in.
The answer to that though, is exquisite. NieR (and you really need to play through it for this to make sense) is an exploration of what it means to be human. Not in just a "What does it mean to have a conscience or to think?" way, but what it means to mess up, to worry, to be vein, happy or sad.
NieR: Automata asks questions of wartime and human suffering just as much as the very purpose of emotion, style, social circles and belief.
It posits these questions through character, world design, side-quests and especially music. It's tragic, though in this stark dissection of the fragility of humanity, really quite beautiful.
There's nothing quite like us on this planet, and creator Yoko Taro plays that out like nobody else ever has.