Nier: Automata’s Game-Skipping Cheat Discovered Nearly Four Years After Release

Nier: Automata is a very strange game, with multiple “endings” necessary in order to actually see its final ending and some of its content actually repeated from a different character’s perspective. This all comes together to deliver one of the most memorable conclusions in video games, but one clever player has managed to figure out a way to let you skip nearly all of it. We’re not exactly sure why you’d want to, but it’s apparently possible.

Major spoilers for Nier: Automata to follow!

Once you’ve unlocked ending “E” in Nier: Automata, you’re presented with a final credits sequence that sees other players’ save data assisting you in a retro shooter sequence to defeat the text itself. Completing this gives you the chance to sacrifice your own save data–thus erasing all of your progress–in order to give another player the chance to beat the game, too. This is where Twitter user Lance McDonald comes in.

McDonald hasn’t completely detailed the inputs you need to activate the cheat but promised a full video will come soon. In the teaser above, he shows that you must kill the game’s first boss, which is at the end of a required action sequence to open the game. After that, he moves to the back of the arena, does a few jumps, and is then given the option to sacrifice his save data without playing the rest of the game.

It’s possible this is the game’s “final secret” that the developers teased several years ago, but this hasn’t been officially confirmed. Nier: Automata has more than 20 endings, most of them being jokes, and five are required to see the actual conclusion. The game’s director Yoko Taro seemed to confirm the cheat with a response of his own on January 3.

The predecessor to Nier: Automata, Nier: Replicant, is getting a retooled and remastered version called Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… on April 23. The game will be released for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and features reworked combat more similar to Automata’s.