Remnants of Facade
In the original NieR, we got to visit a town in the desert. The town was called Facade, and its citizens all wore weird tribal masks to differentiate themselves from the rest of the world. Facade fell into ruin at the end of the game with the death of its king and most of its army. With the failure of Project Gestalt, it probably didn’t take long for the rest of the town to deteriorate either.
However, there are still pieces of Facade’s civilization to be found in NieR: Automata. When you first approach NieR: Automata’s Desert Zone, you’ll start to encounter enemy machines wearing peculiar capes and masks. These look a lot like the ones that the Facade citizens wore as well. Considering that these masked machines are only found in the desert, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that these machines scavenged these pieces from Facade’s ruins.
UPDATE: The Heritage of the Past side mission actually has you collect artifacts from an ancient civilization all around the desert. Completing the mission will reveal that the desert is, indeed, where Facade was located.
