A few weeks ago, Square-Enix held a livestream that ended up revealing a remaster of NieR: Replicant, the previously Japan-only version of the first NieR game. However, announced alongside that was NieR: Reincarnation, a new NieR-themed mobile game. The game surprisingly came out with a brief gameplay trailer over the weekend, so I’ll talk about that alongside my own speculation for the game.

The gameplay trailer focuses on the young girl that was previously shown in the reveal walking around, with her ghost-like familiar following. The game has you walking around fully 3D environments with the UI indicating touch-controlled movement. At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any combat. For now, it comes off as a Journey-esque experience. Aesthetically, it looks nice, and if the music playing during the video is indicative of anything, players will definitely enjoy the same quality music they’d expect from a NieR game.

Seeing the gameplay does make me wonder though; what exactly are the in-app purchases that the game will have? It doesn’t seem like a gacha type game. Maybe it’s like Mario Run where it’s free-to-start but you’d need to buy the rest of the game, or maybe in-app purchases are for cosmetics.

There are some bigger questions going on with the game, mainly, what’s going on? The girl looks like a young version of Kaine from NieR, so given the title of this side game, it’s possible that this girl could be a reincarnation of Kaine. It’s not exactly out of the question, because NieR‘s post-ending content in the supplementary Grimoire Nier book shows Nier being reincarnated. In general, the NieR games deal a lot with reincarnation of some sort, humanity living on in one form or another.

Even if it’s not a literal reincarnation of Kaine, it could easily be a version of her living on in a new world. This already exists with A2 from Automata, whose profile mentions that her abrasive personality was built to reflect the memories of a girl that lived with her grandmother.

There’s another thing to think about, in regards to the setting. Reincarnation‘s setting is referred to as the Cage and it seems to be a desert temple of some sorts, like the stuff in Facade and the Barren Temple in NieR. For the most part, the NieR games have taken place in the same locale, so unless Re[in]carnation is taking us somewhere new, it probably takes place in the Facade area. Coincidentally, the only major mention of a “cage” in the NieR series is the Memory Cage, a supplementary story included in the NieR: Automata World Guide, which actually does takes place in the Barren Temple.

The biggest mystery to me though is that ghost. So, the ghost as a companion lends a parallel to Grimoire Weiss and the Automata pods as a floating companion. However, that does not answer the question of what exactly it is. It’s one of those cartoonish ghosts with a sheet draped around it, so it, well, may not be an actual ghost. It’s got a dark body with stubby legs under the sheet, so it’s definitely not human. It could possibly be a Shade of some sort, depending on “when” this game takes place.

Until more concrete details come out, it’s hard to say what’s going on with Reincarnation. Maybe the girl isn’t some form of Kaine. Maybe there is combat in the game that Square-Enix is holding out on. Whatever the case, I can definitely say the music is gorgeous.

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