![]() ![]() While it’s not explicitly stated in the game, comparing the events of the first ending to the game’s chronological sequel Drakengard makes it clear that it’s the one that ties into the rest of the DrakeNier franchise - Zero fails to eradicate the Intoners, setting off the chain of events that leads to the extinction of humanity. The player never gets to know if Zero’s gamble pays off. All the player can do is walk through the events recorded by Accord, hoping that maybe the next path will be the one that reaches a happy conclusion, or at least one that isn’t completely hopeless. These failures and alternate timelines are the various endings of Drakengard 3 - only unlike most games with multiple endings, they’re completely unrelated to player choice, and the events that lead to the timelines branching are a mystery. When Zero fails, Accord moves to a parallel timeline in which events played out slightly differently, and the game continues on a separate path. Zero’s quest is being recorded by an observer named Accord, whose journal comprises the level select screen. This is reflected within the game’s framing. This detachment makes perfect sense - from the player’s perspective, the future of this world is predetermined, after all. While player autonomy in games is always necessarily limited - one can only do what the game engine permits - Drakengard 3 doesn’t even try to provide the illusion of freedom. ![]() There are quiet moments of conversation between Zero and her companions between missions, but the player has no choice in what is said. While there are side missions, they exist solely as challenges for the purpose of making money to purchase weapon upgrades, and are completely divorced from the game proper. The player is dropped into a level with no indication of how they got there, and warped out just as enigmatically when they’ve completed it - generally when everything that can possibly be killed is dead. ![]() The narrative sweeps us along, and although Zero is ostensibly controlled by the player, we are powerless to do anything but fight as her, without even the pretense of choice. The player has no say in this decision - in fact, the player has very little say in anything that happens in Drakengard 3. Instead of complacently accepting a false and temporary peace, she chooses to throw the world back into chaos with the implicit belief that humanity will endure if left to its own devices, even knowing that the price of this second chance is her life. It’s a savage, bloody goal, but it’s for the sake of preventing the world’s destruction at the hands of the Intoners’ power, which Zero knows will eventually consume them and all life on the planet. Unlike most games which position the player as able to change the fate of the world, all the player can do here is see it through to its predetermined end - a dynamic Drakengard 3 plays on to create a unique experience.ĭrakengard 3 is about a woman named Zero and her quest to kill her five sisters - the semi-divine Intoners that protect the world - and then herself. By the events of Nier, humanity had been brought to its knees by the apocalyptic Black Scrawl plague and the earth had stopped rotating, resulting in a world divided into perpetual day and perpetual night. The game is the chronological first entry in the universe of both the Drakengard and Nier series, and players of those games already knew that the future of the setting was pretty bleak. The world of Drakengard 3 is doomed from the very start. ![]()
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