Nier Automata truth finally revealed as 'secret door' and 'The Church' revealed to be a demo of game-changing new fan mod tools

by Alex Donaldson on 29 July, 2022

Fans now finally know the truth behind the Nier Automata mystery that has been driving the community wild over the last week. In a special Twitch stream tonight, a team of Nier Automata modders revealed that the 'secret room' that a reddit user claimed to have discovered in the game was, in fact, their work: a mod built to showcase a huge leap forwards in modification tools available for the game.

The room was gradually teased out on the Nier Automata reddit over a period of weeks, with its developers posing as a clueless gamer who had stumbled upon the content by mistake. This sent the community scrambling, many believing it to be real content that was cut from the game but was left undiscovered until now.

That hypothesis was backed up by the fact that the complexity of the room and the surrounding scripting was beyond the scope of what has been possible in Nier Automata modification up until this point. Others believed that this meant the content was real, too complicated for fans to make, but was likely part of a Square Enix-backed alternate reality game marketing campaign for the Switch version of Automata, or even a new Nier entirely.

Others, however, pointed the finger with suspicion at the poster being an all-new reddit account, at the secret room being a shocking lore treasure trove of references to Nier Replicant, an error in some of the Japanese-language text in the new content, and more. Now, we know the truth, revealed in a special Twitch stream as a capper to an 'event' that has driven the community wild.

The new geometry that was revealed as a shock discovery that galvinized the internet has now been revealed to be new fan mod content.

Over time, the pretense of this being anything but a mod began to fall away. Towards the very end, images began to be posted of a number of Drakengard 3 assets ported into Nier Automata, and a second user began posting more images of "unknown" parts of Nier Automata beyond the church. Shortly after this, that same user took to the live stream to reveal everything has been the work of a dedicated team of modders who have discovered new ways to manipulate and edit Automata.

"Everything we have shared has been completley in-game, no [video] editing was used," a statement from the team behind the mystery states. "We have been loving all the discussions and tehories - it has been an amazing journey. It has been inspiring to see the community come together after so many years, it has made all the hard work well worth it.

"Over the following days we'll be releasing the new Blender addons and scripting tools. Completely open source. We have so much in store for you."

The team, made up of a trio of hackers, also promise to release the mod files directly, meaning the curious can visit the church themselves. So ends the saga of Nier Automata's secret room and hidden door - a memorable event that has opened the door to a new, far more open era of Nier Automata modding. More incredible custom content is likely to follow - and this tease has kicked that off.