Nier Replicant remaster heading to PC, PS4 and Xbox One

The action-RPG game Nier is celebrating its tenth birthday next month and Square Enix has come up with something very special to celebrate it. The company prepared a special website ahead of the big day and the original game director Yoko Taro was also diligently teasing the occasion on social media. All this teasing and celebrating has turned into two new games, both of which have jumped out of a big birthday cake today.

First of all, a trailer with atmospheric images showing a remaster of the original game was shown. This remaster is called Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139 and it will release on PC (Steam), PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in the future (we don't have a date yet). A studio called Toylogic is responsible for the port, and according to their own website the team has previously contributed to Super Smash Bros. Melee (Wii), Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS) and The Evil Within.

More importantly, the remaster is based on the Japanese version of the game, which we never saw over here in Europe. The original Nier was produced in two editions: Nier Replicant for the Japanese market and Nier Gestalt for all other regions. In the Japanese original, we saw an adolescent boy who wants to free his sister Yonah from an incurable disease. In the European Gestalt edition, Nier is a grim middle-aged man who uses all his might to protect his daughter from harm. The changes between these two editions are very subtle in most cases, but the context that emerges from these changes makes it very different.

In Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139 Square Enix will prepare a complete voice over and maybe even "new content". According to the Japanese magazine Famitsu, producer Yosuke Saito mentioned that he did not yet know if there were any more endings for eager fans to explore. The original from 2010 had to be played through four times to see all of the content included therein.

Composer Keiichi Okabe will take charge of the music in the Nier remaster and apparently he's even preparing some more surprises for our eardrums to enjoy.

The second surprise landing as part of the game's 10th birthday is a mobile spin-off for smartphones. It's called Nier Re[in]carnation and a studio called Applibot is on dev duty.

According to publisher Square Enix, the character design comes from a Japanese animation studio called CyDesignation. The first trailer reveals little about the actual project, and there is no further information to be found on the official website. To what extent Yoko Taro is involved is also not known at this time. Taro is currently overseeing another mobile game that will be released in the west in early June: SINoALICE.