Deleting your save in Nier Automata

Save files are precious keepsakes for most players. Everyone has a devastating story of losing a memory card, or a younger sibling deleting your 40 hours of progress in a game. (People who’ve grown up in the era of cloud saves will never know this pain!) So when Nier Automata asks you in the end to delete your save in order to help someone else playing through PlatinumGames’ action RPG, it’s no small matter. By this point, you’ve put dozens of hours into the game, likely collected a ton of loot, and unraveled plenty of mysteries in the post-apocalyptic world. Giving all that up to help a stranger? What if I still have optional stuff I haven’t finished yet? You can decline and come back later, but once you do it, it’s done. The game makes a big show of it, too, painstakingly erasing your menus and inventory. Most choices you make in video games aren’t final, as you can just save scum your way around them. Nier Automata makes you live with a choice, even if you won’t see any material benefit from it.