I have played two games in the past month that I could safely say are among the greatest games I’ve played ever. The first, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, artfully advances the mechanics of open world adventure games, and the interactions of those mechanics, in a way that future games should aspire to emulate. It is a game where the act of playing the game brings immense joy and delightful surprise. The second, by contrast, is a game that I think is amazing in how it conveys a story through its mechanics and through the inherent structure of a video game. The story of Nier: Automata could not be told through any other medium, not without losing much of the impact and connection I felt playing this game. To put the cart before the horse, I think that if you have any investment in video games, either as your primary means of entertainment or as the premier form of interactive fiction, you owe it to yourself to play through Nier: Automata.
