It’s been a while since we’ve had a new game from Nier creator Yoko Taro, and even longer if you don’t count mobile titles and the Nier Replicant remaster that launched back in 2021. It’s been a whopping eight years since the release of Yoko Taro’s last proper new release, which was Nier Automata back in 2017, which makes you wonder exactly what he’s been doing during that time.
Due to his rather unique personality and Nier Automata’s willingness to crossover with pretty much any game under the sun, it’s easy to joke about him taking life easy and living off the money that his work has almost definitely been bringing in on a regular basis. However, Yoko Taro has assured us that he’s been hard at work on new projects, but the trouble is that none of them have been getting off the ground.
Nier Creator Yoko Taro Says His “Weird” New Projects Keep Getting Cancelled
First reported by Japanese outlet 4Gamer (and then translated by Automaton), Yoko Taro has explained that most of the games that he’s been working on have been “discontinued midway through development”, though he doesn’t actually explain exactly why.
“I often get told stuff like ‘Why aren’t you making a new sequel to NieR’ or ‘Yoko Taro isn’t doing anything,’ but that’s because recently, a lot of projects I was involved in got discontinued midway through development,” says Taro. “I’ve actually been working on some stuff, it’s just that it never ended up seeing the light of day.”
That’s pretty upsetting to hear, honestly, but while a canceled project would normally devastate a developer, Yoko Taro has been taking the cancelations of his projects in his stride. He starts off in his usual money-loving persona, explaining that he doesn’t mind because he “got paid for [them]” so he’s not too heartbroken, but we do then get a glimpse into his creative process.
“I don’t view that as a negative thing,” says Taro. “I believe that if I’m going to release something weird, I’d be better off not releasing anything at all.”
Nier Automata wasn’t exactly the most normal game on the market, what with androids dressed as maids running around hacking robots to bits, so I shudder to imagine what a game too weird for Yoko Taro would actually look like. Personally, if I was Square Enix, I’d just give the guy a giant bag of money and let him make whatever weird and wonderful game he’d like. I am still holding out hope for a new Nier though.
- Released
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March 7, 2017
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence
- Engine
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Proprietary Engine
