One of the biggest inspirations behind Yoko Taro's works is existential despair and the pursuit of finding life's meaning, no matter how fruitless the pursuit. Above all else, the biggest inspiration is humanity and how we are all uniquely human, no matter our past experiences that define us. Yoko Taro recently shared a year-end letter in which the video game director calls for change in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine from Russia and the systematic genocide happening in Gaza.
In one line, Taro says, "Looking back at 2023, the world was too cruel, wasn't it? The war in Ukraine hasn't even ended, and a new war is starting in Gaza," this statement was originally published on 4Gamer and was translated through a machine learning translator. However, there was more to the statement; according to a more complete translation by a co-host, the director, well-known for his curious antics, shared that he felt utterly useless when thinking about the statistics released for both of these ongoing atrocities.
In the statement, Yoko Taro also shares a story from his youth where one of his friends was sharing advice on how to win over the ladies. His friend concluded that Charming Girls was simply a numbers game, saying that if the success rate of asking someone out on a date was only 1%, then that would mean if you failed, all you had to do was do it 100 times to find success.
Despite the dreary tone of his year-end letter, Yoko Taro was able to turn things around. The famed Nier director tries to change his feelings of powerlessness into a similar probability game, and he calls on all readers to think about all the ways that they would be able to address the ongoing crisis, even if they do so just for a minute. If even a thousand people all try to commit to some effort in stopping the ongoing senseless violence, then Taro hopes that maybe these conflicts could finally come to an end. "If there are 100 people, that's 100 minutes. If there are 1,000 people, that's 1,000 minutes," Taro says. "Someone might come up with an idea. That's what I was thinking about today."
Stories of anti-war are found very prominently in Yoko Taro's works. In the first Drakengard, we encounter young shell-shocked soldiers, who are broken shells and have become barely human because of the atrocities of war. Cities are destroyed, lives lost or forever changed, worlds destroyed, all by the hands of war. The Nier games aren't going anywhere, but maybe we can make the topics address things of a regretful past that no one in any position of power wants to repeat.
Daman Shelley (@UndeadandTired)
Editor, NoobFeed
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| Platform(s): | Xbox One, PS4, PC |
| Publisher(s): | Square Enix |
| Developer(s): | PlatinumGames |
| Genres: | Role-Playing |
| Themes: | Fantasy |
| Release Date: | 2017-12-31 |
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