Cast your mind back to a few months ago, when the sun was shinier and the leaves were greener. Remember all the furore over Nier: Automata’s supposed secret church? Well, now you too can play the greatest trick the Internet ever pulled on people who enjoy Yoko Taro games a bit too much. SadFutago’s The Nier: Automata Church mod is finally ready to download from NexusMods.
You’ll just need to grab the Nier: Automata Mod Helper if you want to install the secret church. SadFutabo and uploader DevolasRevenge recommend being around level 90 for your first time playing, and removing chips such as overclock and shockwave so that you’re not too powerful. They also suggest not playing the regular story with the mod’s normal version installed, instead plumping for the lite version. The mod’s at version 1.0, and its creators say that “improvements may come”, hinting at “even bigger changes”.
Alice0 reported on the secret church mod back in July. Official mod support and tools weren’t kicking around, and the church seemed quite convincingly like something from Nier: Automata, so it wasn’t until the creators owned up that the mod’s origins were really blown wide open. People got excited enough by the whole mystery that they started creating secret churches in other games, such as Mario 64 and Duke Nukem 3D. Both experiences that you could easily imagine something like that turning up in, even years later.
Adam (RPS in peace) gave the game an RPS Recommended in his Nier: Automata review. “You don’t need to have played any of Yoko Taro’s previous games to appreciate Automata, even though it has links to both Drakengard and (of course) the original Nier,” he said, “but it’ll probably make you keen to seek them out.” It seems to just be a game that inspires people to look for things, I guess.
Nier: Automata’s available on Steam for £30/$40/€40. We ranked it among the best RPGs you can play on PC today. We’ve got more on the secret church mod coming up at a later date, so look out for that.