Before You Play NieR: Automata, Catch Up on its Drakengard Backstory Here

"A red dragon falls from the heavens."

Part One: The Flower and the Intoners

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The main antagonist of the Drakengard series isn’t some crazy, cackling villain; instead, it’s a small white flower that looks innocuous to anyone who passes by. No one is really sure where the Flower actually came from or what it is exactly, except that it has to be the product of some form of black magic. Either way, the important thing to take away here is the fact that the Flower is evil, and it wants to destroy the world. The story of Drakengard and NieR starts with this Flower.

The Flower gained power by latching on to a young sex worker who was on the brink of death. By implanting itself in the girl’s eye, the girl was brought back to life and she gained the power of Song. After her rebirth, the girl threw away her old name and started calling herself Zero. This is the protagonist of Drakengard 3. However, after learning of the Flower’s intentions and how it could bring destruction to the world, she tried to remove it from her eye to see if she could kill it. All her attempts fail, and when Zero tried to commit suicide, the Flower retaliated by birthing five sisters who were named One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. Not very original, I know.

As a result, Zero took it upon herself to hunt down her five sisters (or Flower clones, really) and look for a way to permanently destroy the Flower itself. She enlisted the help of the dragon Michael, who swore to kill Zero after they had hunted down her sisters.

Zero’s sisters were all blessed with the power of Song as well, and were known in Midgard as the Intoners. As the five sisters killed the evil rulers of the land, they were worshipped by Midgard, and Zero was branded a criminal because of her desire to assassinate them. When Zero launched her first assassination mission against all five Intoners, they struck back, killing Michael and leaving Zero wounded. Michael didn’t really die, though. In the world of Drakengard, dragons have the power to reincarnate. Michael was reborn as Mikhail, and he and Zero went into hiding to recover.

A year later, Zero resumes her killing spree and she manages to take down her sisters one by one. This is where things start to get a little confusing.

drakengard 3 one

In Ending A, Zero kills One, but immediately after, she’s killed by Brother. Brother is actually a clone of One, whom One created herself as a fail-safe in case anything happened to her. After Zero and Mikhail are dead, Brother goes on to establish control over the city, and forms the Cult of the Watchers. Ending A is largely considered the canon ending to Drakengard 3, as it seems to lead into the events of Drakengard nicely. However, Drakengard 3 has a couple of other endings that could potentially tie into Drakengard’s story as well, and we’ll go over those later.

There is one other important note about Drakengard 3. After unlocking the first couple of endings, we’re introduced to a character named Accord. She’s a mysterious girl who is later revealed to be an android. We’re not entirely sure what her motives are, but it’s clear that Accord is tasked with monitoring the timelines of the Drakengard universe and recording events. It is revealed in Ending D that there are tons of androids exactly like Accord. We don’t know how relevant this is, but considering the fact that NieR: Automata has a LOT of androids, this could be an important detail to keep in the back of your mind for now.


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Author
Zhiqing Wan
Zhiqing is the Reviews Editor for Twinfinite, and a History graduate from Singapore. She's been in the games media industry for nine years, trawling through showfloors, conferences, and spending a ridiculous amount of time making in-depth spreadsheets for min-max-y RPGs. When she's not singing the praises of Amazon's Kindle as the greatest technological invention of the past two decades, you can probably find her in a FromSoft rabbit hole.