The mysterious secret church that recently excited NieR: Automata players is just a hoax. Just over a month ago, a player supposedly discovered a secret area in Automata that players had never previously seen. This led to a follow-up Reddit post that showed the full area being explored, plus a hidden boss fight.
These posts had the NieR community speculating all kinds of things. The top response on that Reddit post is a user questioning if the Easter egg refers to the Shadow Lord and Yonah, both key characters from the original NieR.
The speculation only grew stronger when creator Yoko Taro responded to a fan asking if it was a scrapped mission. His response was, “you can find the answer on my Twitter profile.” That, combined with the understanding that the current state of NieR: Automata is primitive and undeveloped, led fans to believe that it had to be real.
It turns out the secret church in NieR: Automata was the creation of three very talented modders. DevolasRevenger designed the map, with Woeful_Wolf developing the blender tools, and RaiderB developing scripting tools. After revealing their involvement, the modders said that it is “inspiring to see the community come together after so many years.”
HOLY SHIT pic.twitter.com/UQzMHJ9RTs
— ☆オードリーAudrey☆ (@aitaikimochi) July 29, 2022
We got played
The modders have played the NieR: Automata community with the secret church hoax. A lot of people fell for it, and even the series’ creator used it as an opportunity to troll. It’s a little disappointing, but there is a positive to come out of this. The creators intend to release the tools and make them open source meaning that other players can try using them. If the right people get involved, NieR: Automata could have a bright future when it comes to modding. That’s an impressive reversal given that not long ago it was thought that creating anything beyond surface-level mods was impossible.
