The Nier Automata community has become borderline feral almost overnight thanks to new footage of a never-before-seen secret door that leads to a mysterious church seemingly found by just one player.
The alleged discovery has brought modders and data miners out of hibernation and even prompted statements from a few of the game's developers, but players still aren't sure if the church is even real, and if it is, nobody knows how to get into it.
The history of the secret church
this_is_the_church_area_that_i_was_talking_about from r/NieRAutomataGame
This tumultuous saga is the work of Reddit user sadfutago, who first posted about the mysterious Nier Automata church on June 10, the same day their Reddit account was made.
"Hello, I'm new to Reddit and want to know how to open the church in Nier Automata," they said in a brief post on the Nier fanart subreddit, which has now been flooded with incredulous comments. The same day, they asked the Nier Automata game subreddit the same question, and the community was understandably confused because nobody knew of such a church.
Four days later, sadfutago shared two screenshots taken inside the church they described – or rather, taken of the screen, seemingly with a phone. They said they entered the church via a door in the Copied City after the boss fight with Adam, but noted that their friend was unable to replicate this in their game. This post was initially deleted by the Nier Automata subreddit's automod (it's now been restored), but on June 15 it was also posted to the larger mainline Nier subreddit, which is when the mystery really took off.
Nier fans were immediately perplexed, in no small part because back in January 2021, Nier Automata director Yoko Taro personally confirmed that the game's final secret, a true-blue cheat code, had been found.
On June 18, sadfutago followed up with a short video of A2, one of Nier Automata's many playable protagonists, making her way to the hidden door they'd described. The video was seemingly filmed with a phone and the footage ended right as the door opened, which raised some red flags among curious onlookers.
hello_here_is_the_video_of_the_path_to_the_church from r/nier
As fans debated whether there was anything to this discovery, sadfutago disappeared for about a month. Out of nowhere on July 25 – one day after making a profile post claiming they'd forgotten their Reddit password and wanted to reset it – sadfutago shared a new, longer video of the alleged secret.
hello_here_is_the_video_for_the_clip_i_recorded from r/nier
This time, they showed A2 going through the hidden door and down a massive shifting corridor – but again, no church. Lance McDonald, a known PlayStation sleuth and the player who discovered the aforementioned Nier Automata cheat code, shared this video on Twitter, and it's since racked up over three million views from that tweet alone.
McDonald's involvement gave the whole thing a thicker air of mystery. He was quick to note that "it’s not yet possible to mod Nier Automata in this way, if anyone is curious if this is fake," and with that, the fuse had been lit. Sadfutago was just dancing around the hornet's nest before, but with this video they had officially kicked it.
And on July 26, sadfutago posted another, longer video which finally took us inside the church.
hello_i_get_lots_of_messages_and_i_cant_read_them from r/nier
Opening the door connected to the church appears to be a scripted event, as it triggers a brief, black-bar cutscene showing off the interior. At the heart of the church, a distorted cursed figure prays to an alabaster corpse with a white lily sprouting from their chest – a motif that Nier fans are plenty familiar with, and one that could easily pass for a Nier Replicant Easter egg. The video continues but there's seemingly nothing else of importance inside the church apart from an oddly placed treasure chest, and sadfutago's Reddit posts end here for now – but the trail continues elsewhere.
Nier Automata experts weigh in
Nier fans have been divided over the legitimacy of this secret church since June, and because nobody has been able to find or access this area on their own, many modders are convinced that it's some sort of elaborate hoax.
The hopeful believe that this is a proper ARG campaign leading to a new announcement for Nier or Drakengard, the series that acted as a sort of incubator for Nier's dramatic stories. Some reckon this is all a marketing stunt meant to drum up interest ahead of the Nintendo Switch version of Nier Automata launching October 6.
Others believe it's a joke orchestrated by Nier series director Yoko Taro. Nier Automata producer Yosuke Saito joked about this possibility in a tweet addressing the mysterious church after the story spread to Japanese outlet Automaton, but unsurprisingly, Taro himself has only broken his usual silence to confirm that he can't comment on the situation – and to add that he loves beer and sausages.
I reached out to publisher Square Enix to see if they had any thoughts on the situation. A representative told me that, "unfortunately we won’t be able to provide a comment," and they haven't elaborated beyond that. I've also reached out to sadfutago directly but haven't heard back. I'm sure their inbox is a mess right now.
With sadfutago MIA and no official details to go on, Nier fans started poking through the game's assets and reexamining what they know about the mod scene. Just today, someone shared a noclip tool on NexusMods specifically designed to break through the Copied City's walls in search of the secret church, but the uploader says they didn't find anything. Reddit sleuths pointed out that Nier Automata often only loads in specific assets once the player triggers something in the world, which goes back to the theory that this church is the result of an incredibly rare interaction hidden somewhere in the game.
More recently, a full-fledged rebuttal to sadfutago's claims was shared on Reddit. Users claim that this whole charade is the result of a PS4 Pro or, more likely, a PC mod. They assert that the white figure enshrined in the church is a model of the character Yonah brought over from Nier Replicant, and they make similar comparisons between a statue in Replicant's opening town and a silhouette spotted in sadfutago's video. Additionally, they claim that differences in lighting and ambient occlusion between sadfutago's videos demonstrate that the secret area is not only fan-made, but that it was also updated and re-rendered between sadfutago's posts.
"Whether it is a mod created using official dev tools/SDK or custom tool is yet to be 100% confirmed," they claim in the document, "though the latter is likely, given specifics such as the church cutscene’s lack of interpolation for its camera movement and camera cuts (note that there is a slight shake for several frames when a camera cut occurs in the new cutscene). The voice lines are also recycled from an earlier point in the game. Either way, this is clearly the work of a very talented, experienced person."
An early theory proposed that sadfutago had somehow gotten their hands on a pre-release build of the game which included content that may have been cut or made off-limits by a launch update. After scanning the earliest archived builds of Nier Automata, modders have largely moved away from this theory. The "sadfutago debunked" proponents are therefore operating under the assumption that this is all a mod which was apparently siloed off from the game's mainstream mod scene. It's not an airtight explanation, but it does have some compelling evidence behind its claims.
Others like Redditor _emoose_ have pointed to unused assets spotted in a data mined beta version of the Copied City map which could explain some of sadfutago's footage. This doesn't fit the church interior shown in the videos, but the surrounding buildings visible through the windows of this mystery church do line up with archived assets, including a building model thought to have originated in Bayonetta 2, which developer Platinum Games released three years before Nier Automata. This leaves the door open for a mod grafted onto an unused level, but it could also bring the line of thinking back into the realm of an Easter egg.
A retouched video from Reddit user AsahioDev, who's been active on the Nier modding Discord and also contributed to the deep-dive into beta assets, highlights more of the surrounding features of this mystery area. This is yet more support for the theory about the adjacent building's origin, but we're still left with the conundrum of the church interior and the figures inside it, to say nothing of the bizarre-o hallway leading from the hidden door to the grand church door.
Who is sadfutago?
A non-trivial chunk of this whole investigative process has focused on sadfutago rather than the photos and videos they've shared. Their internet presence is limited and could fit the profile of a run-of-the-mill troll, though if they are just trolling, their efforts go far beyond the usual red herrings and jokes. Some people even think they're a bot designed to sow chaos.
Even their username, which can be translated to "sad twins," perhaps in reference to Nier's iconic redheads Devola and Popola, has come into question. However, they say it's a simple reference to a "clan," presumably either a gaming clan they've made with their friends or a clan in another game or series.
Sadfutago was verified on the Nier modding Discord in the midst of all this chaos, and though they've yet to share a new video of this purported secret area, they've been pretty forthcoming with minor details. Asked how they opened the secret door the first time, they said: "I don't know I was killing robots with my friend to level up and then it said I could open the door. I thought it was an item."
Many users have mentioned sadfutago's curt and sometimes wonky verbiage, but based on a gallery of photos they shared on Discord when asked about their Nier Automata case and disc, their native language is French, and this would explain the perceived language barrier. As a side note, just to put into perspective how deep this rabbit hole has taken me, the pink flowers in the background of these photos momentarily made me consider a possible reference to the lily of Drakengard's Zero, but thankfully my higher brain snapped me back to reality before I could do something really stupid like share this theory on the internet.
Sadfutago's Discord comments also fit with their Reddit comment history, which is important to note because there have already been confirmed copycats. Redditor Alexray35 spotted a fresh NexusMod project shared by someone with the same username, but it was quickly deleted after fans decided it was an ARG smokescreen looking to hijack the community's hype.
I'd also like to note that, before posting their latest videos, sadfutago said on Reddit and Discord that they would have to delete some games – specifically Far Cry 4 and Terraria – to give their hard drive space for another video file, and this has since spawned an iconic meme.
What do we know for sure?
This is one of the strangest moments in the Nier community's long, strange history, and we're still desperate for more information at this point. Everyone is waiting for sadfutago's next video with bated breath. All we know is that someone found or manufactured a secret area in Nier Automata, nobody has been able to replicate or completely disprove it, and even the game's developer and publisher won't talk candidly about it. If this does turn out to just be Yoko Taro in a trench coat hyping up an announcement, give the man the budget for whatever game he wants to make.
Source: Sun Co
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