Introduction
Understanding the world of Midgard and NieR’s depiction of Tokyo is no easy feat. The world’s history spans the entirety of three different games (so far), and each has multiple endings that lead into different timelines. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be examining the timeline that brings us to the events of NieR: Automata. This means that we’ll only be covering the events in the relevant branches for each game, but do note that the endings we do leave out also contain lore points that will help to further your understanding of this world.
We’ll be going through significant events like the Flower’s appearance in Drakengard 3, the creation of the Cult of the Watchers, the defeat of the Queen-beast and appearance of the Legion, as well as the start of Project Gestalt and the events of the original NieR. Events get a little muddy after NieR’s ending, but we’ll do our best to explain some possible connections and links between the original and Automata.
