The Nier community has been abuzz since a user in the Nier: Automata subreddit made a post purporting to show a secret church in Nier: Automata that had never been discovered. A follow up video showed a door being opened in a nondescript wall in the Copied City which led to a twisted hallway connecting to a chapel that contained references to Nier: Replicant. Nier fans racked their brains to try and figure out the truth behind the secret, to no avail. Fortunately, the original poster has come forward and revealed that the entire area was created using a robust new set of mod tools which will be released in the coming days.
Secret church in Nier: Automata turns out to be a mod
Someone randomly posted a video on the Nier Automata subreddit showing they found a secret room in the Copied City. So far no one else has worked out how they managed to make this secret door appear. Literally 1 person on earth has accessed this room and we are uttered mind blown pic.twitter.com/g7W4JxiNDg
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) July 25, 2022
One of the things that confused fans about the secret chapel in Nier: Automata is that current mod tools didn’t allow such extensive changes to the game. This made Reddit user sadfutago’s claims that it was an undiscovered area plausible.
As a teaser for the mod tools, sadfutago drip-fed footage of the “secret” area and claimed they had found the door while playing version 1.0 of Nier: Automata on PS4. Given how big the game is (and how esoteric Yoko Taro can be), the method to unlock the chapel location could have been incredibly obscure. Even well-known PS4 hacker Lance McDonald (who made the 60fps Bloodborne patch) was astonished at the discovery.
pic.twitter.com/1WeuTG0Ko4
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) July 29, 2022
Today, the team of three behind the mod revealed themselves and thanked the community for a fun journey. The message also promised they would release the Blender addons and scripting tools they used soon and that they’re completely open source. The team will also make the church’s mod files available and hinted that new mods are currently in development.
In other news, ex-CDPR developers have formed a studio to create a new IP set in feudal Japan, and the latest PS5 firmware beta contains a reference to PSVR 2.