After teasing Nier 3, Nier: Automata creator Yoko Taro signs up for some brutal irony: an AI telling him to stop posting on social media and start writing games that make sense

Nier Automata director Yoko Taro
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Nier Automata director Yoko Taro got told to stop posting about ramen and get back to working on games by a particularly nasty roast bot.

The Drakengard and Nier developer jumped on the (now downtrending) trend of having an AI bot go through your social media account to deliver a savage roast, and thankfully, he posted the diss online for all to see. 

"Ah, the enigmatic Yoko Taro, hiding behind that creepy moon mask while tweeting about ramen like it's the pinnacle of culinary achievement," the roast bot begins, referencing Taro's infamous headgear that he wears in every public appearance. "Your tweets read like a fever dream of a starving artist who stumbled into game development. Maybe if you spent less time on game mechanics, your fans wouldn't need an encyclopaedia to understand your plots." (Good spot, Automaton.)

That sounds like pretty harsh criticism from a frustrated player who got through one set of credits in Nier Automata and quit the game without realizing there was about 20 more endings that make everything comprehensible to those of us who don't own encyclopaedias. 

But, alas, Taro didn't seem to mind that his ramen posts were under fire, only captioning the post with a simple description: "The remains of a roast that was popular for a while." He's spent enough time dealing with meaner robots, I guess. 

Since Nier Automata became a massive breakout hit seven years ago, Taro has worked on one mobile spin-off, a remaster to the first game in the series, and a trio of turn-based card games, but no follow-up to the best-selling action-melodrama. All hope isn't lost, though.

The director did tease a third mainline Nier earlier in the year, before a series producer revealed that several Automata leads had reunited for a game that "might be Nier" or "might not be Nier." So, Nier 3, or whatever it ends up maybe being called, is definitely possible. We'll just need to follow the lead of wine (yes, the drink) and age in Nier Automata's soundtrack in the meantime. 

Nier Automata’s Yoko Taro says the beloved RPG was “most inspired” by Neon Genesis Evangelion: “It’s pretty much just a retelling of Evangelion, so there’s not much originality to it.”

Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.