Nier Automata community "in shambles" after never-before-seen secret door surfaces

Update 2: Nier Automata director Yoko Taro has tweeted about the Nier Automata secret church mystery, and his response is every bit as trolling as fans have come to expect from the developer.

"Do you want to know about my insight?" Taro asks. "In that case, you can find answer at my Twitter profile. Thank you."

For those of you who are curious, Taro's Twitter profile says this: "I can't answer about any products. Please ask publisher. I can't reply DM except business and acquaintance."

We have, for the record, asked publisher Square Enix about the mystery church. We'll provide another update if we learn more.

Update: The mystery around Nier Automata's secret church is deepening, as the player who discovered it has provided more footage, modders have begun digging deeper, and the game's developers have provided a few vague comments.

The new footage provided by sadfutago on Reddit is nearly four minutes long, and shows A2 continuing through the twisting hallway into the nave of the church. A brief cutscene plays, highlighting a mannequin on an altar with a lunar tear flower growing out of its chest and an unkillable figure shrouded in black voxels.

Just after the cutscene, A2 and her pod have a brief exchange. A2 says "Whoa. What's that?" The pod replies "Unknown." A2 then says "You're useless." (This conversation is a pretty good metaphor for where the community is at right now.) sadfutago notes that they had to "delete my Terraria and Far Cry 4" in order to record the video.

Members of the modding community have gotten in touch with sadfutago for further details. Apparently this footage was captured on a French Canadian PS4 copy of the game that was never updated. Now players are scrambling to test various game versions to retrace sadfutago's steps and see if they can open this secret door.

"We so far haven't found any evidence in the assets that this exists, OTHER than the tower itself from late game," modder xxk_ notes in a Reddit post. xxk_ adds that "If this is a mod this would be the first time anyone has done something like this, and NOBODY else knows how to make custom doors like seen in the video - it would be a relatively IMMENSE undertaking for a single individual to accomplish with various modding breakthroughs."

Meanwhile, Nier Automata producer Yosuke Saito has been tweeting. First he sent a tweet in English saying "eternal mystery." Then one in Japanese, translated by aitaikimochi, to say "This looks like something Yoko Taro would do. Lol." Then came a self-translated tweet saying "First of all, please calm down and make a reservation here," pointing to a link for pre-orders of Nier Automata's upcoming Switch port.

On that last point, some fans are growing convinced that this is some sort of viral marketing stunt for the Switch port, speculating that the church might actually be a Switch-exclusive area and that all this mystery is just a way to draw public interest.

Every new possibility seems just as weird as the last, though, and whatever the truth, it remains fascinating to watch the story unfold.

Original story: A Nier Automata player has stumbled across what appears to be a never-before-seen secret door, and the sudden revelation has the community "in shambles."

A month ago, a Reddit user called sadfutago made a post asking "how to access the church?" Apparently, this player had opened a door in the Copied City leading to the interior of a church-style building, and was trying to figure out how to get back inside. The issue was that, as far as the rest of the community was concerned, no such door existed.

Shortly afterward, sadfutago provided a handful of screenshots and a brief video showing the path to the mysterious door. Some community members were suspicious of a fake, pointing to the fact that the clip ended just after the door opened. To that point, sadfutago responded "I didn't want to record too much because my mom said not to take up space."

Nothing more happened for a month's time, until today, when sadfutago posted a longer clip showing what lies beyond the door, including custom assets and animations that don't appear to have precedent elsewhere in the game.

As modder and dataminer Lance McDonald puts it, "the community is in shambles over this discovery."

Members of the Nier Automata modding community say it's unlikely this area was created through mods, as full-on new maps with unique animations are well beyond what modders' tools are capable of building right now.

That leaves us with three possibilities. Someone's either pulling an elaborate prank by creating a Nier Automata mod far beyond what other modders have made possible, pulling an even more elaborate prank by perfectly animating a fake video of the game, or this door is truly a new discovery that's somehow gone unnoticed in the five years since the game launched. No matter the truth, it's a remarkable mystery.

Since the publication of this story, Nier Automata's secret church mystery was revealed to be the result of unprecedented new modding tools. You can read up on our Nier Automata's secret church mystery explained feature for a full look back on all the wild events of the last week.