Yoko Taro, the creator of the Nier and Drakenguard games, has been awfully quiet lately. Though he’s worked on some smaller projects (writing scenarios for Voice of Cards, and a few mobile games), the lack of a proper Nier follow-up or other new major game from him has been getting under fans’ skin. But according to Taro, he has been working on projects. They just keep getting canceled.
This comes from his remarks at Korean gaming convention G-Con 2025, which were reported on by 4gamer and translated by Automaton. The panel, which featured Taro and Bayonetta and Okami director Hideki Kamiya, saw the pair asked for updates on recent projects. Kamiya mentioned the upcoming sequel to Okami, while Taro said he’d been very busy with new projects, they just keep getting canceled partway through.
“I often get told stuff like ‘Why aren’t you making a new sequel to NieR’ or ‘Yoko Taro isn’t doing anything,’ but that’s because recently, a lot of projects I was involved in got discontinued midway through development,” he said.
“I’ve actually been working on some stuff, it’s just that it never ended up seeing the light of day. I got paid for it, so I personally have no issues with that, but people seem to think that I haven’t been doing anything just because none of the work I’ve done is being released.”
However, Taro isn’t discouraged by this, apparently. He continued, saying he’d rather fail repeatedly and eventually create something good, rather than put out multiple mediocre works. “I believe that if I’m going to release something weird, I’d be better off not releasing anything at all.”
So, potentially not *great* news for Nier fans who were hoping another Nier game was right around the corner. Especially since Nier: Reincarnation, which was effectively a sequel to Nier: Automata, is still completely unplayable by virtue of being a mobile gacha game that’s since been taken offline with seemingly no plans to rerelease.
So good luck to Taro, hopefully we see a new project from him that makes it to release sooner rather than later.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
