NIKKE 3rd Anniversary PART 2 – Event Story Thoughts

I finished reading the second part of Goddess of Victory: Nikke’s 3rd Anniversary event, Goddess Fall, about an hour ago. If you haven’t finished the event, consider this a spoiler warning. To say A LOT has happened is an understatement and I’d really like to get my thoughts down and discuss a few things that I’ve noticed.

General Thoughts

While I can’t speak for everyone, I can’t say that I was expecting a confrontation with the Queen at this point in the overall story.

Final Fantasy XIV: A REALM REBORN was an MMORPG that I began playing in 2014. And it wasn’t until 2021 that the game’s major story arc concluded with the Endwalker expansion. So, I’m used to waiting a long time for the story in live service games (like NIKKE) to develop.

After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that it’s about damn time we took some action against the Queen. Granted, it’s taken a lot of time to introduce all the major players and their motivations. Without the prior events like Cinderella’s or Siren’s, we wouldn’t have an idea of who or what the Queen is. I would argue that before their events, the Queen was this mythical being that the Ark (and by extension the commander) was searching for blindly.

So yeah, I’m kind of reflecting on everything that’s happened in the story. Without all the prior anniversary/half-anniversary events, Goddess Fall wouldn’t have the punch that it had.

However, let me get into the details that I want to discuss.

Inherit’s Sacrifices

After witnessing Noah turn into burnt toast in Part 1, I began to feel very anxious about whether or not Shift Up would permanently kill off their characters. Killing off characters can be a very impactful thing, but speaking from experience, if the developers bring them back to life it tends to undermine the actions of the character and “death” becomes less tense.

The interesting thing about NIKKE is that the writers gave themselves some wiggle room because of how Nikke are designed. Nikke are more akin to cyborgs in the sense that they have an organic brain but the rest of the body is cybernetic. A Nikke can lose her body but can ultimately be rebuilt if the head (and by extension the brain) is unharmed and preserved.

We’ve seen this happen a few times in the main story and some events.

In part 2 of Goddess Fall, two more members of Inherit, Isabel and Harran, seem to perish. Whether or not they actually die is still iffy … but their situations are very different to Noah. Isabel’s lower body was basically vaporized when trying to get Harran to the Spice Station (as Crown calls it). And Harran herself succumbs to the virus she brought to weaken the Queen/Space Station’s defenses? That was a little unclear to me, but assumed it was that because she mentioned her immunity becoming ineffective before calling Johan one final time.

Will Inherit be back? I believe so. Harran and Isabel’s bodies have not been found yet. Personally, I need to see the body in order to believe that they’re actually dead. Noah is already confirmed to be in a brain shelter and recovering by the end of the event.

Honestly, I really enjoyed learning more about Eden in Goddess Fall. In the event’s mini-game there are additional cutscenes that show the early days of Eden and a bit of the philosophy that Dorothy had behind its creation. I was surprised to learn that Dorothy herself played a major hand in its development, basically recruiting Johan and Cecil to her cause.

I think it’s implied that she fundamentally does not agree with her old squad’s approach to reclaiming the surface and decided to create an entity that’s more aligned with her views. Basically EVERYONE in Eden hates the Ark in some capacity. They’re all looking to reclaim the surface out of spite and prove they’re better than the Ark in every possible way.

The mini-game explores Dorothy’s personal feelings and her inability to move on from the Goddess Squad until Cecil confronts her about it. I can relate to Dorothy a lot in that sense, I can imagine it would be really hard to move on from a Squad who were basically your sisters and rebuild it from the ground up with new faces. It’s not the same and she yearns for the good ol’ days.

My prediction is that Inherit will be out of commission for a while. And when Noah, Harran, and Isabel return they’ll be in their over-spec form.

Pioneer Squad

Hooooooy boy, I was so anxious every time my girl Scarlet was on screen. My greatest fear was that they’d kill her off.

I really love these girls, honestly. When the Commander first meets them, there’s a sense of mystery behind them. They’re dedicated to their mission of stopping the Queen but we don’t really get a sense of how deeply they’re connected to all of this.

We eventually learn that they were part of the Goddess squad. Both the Red Ash and Over Zone events describe how these Nikke became to be known as Goddesses of Victory and later abandoned by humanity. Yet, unlike Dorothy, they are dedicated to their mission. The objective has not changed for them.

It was really interesting to me that there’s a soft retcon regarding all the wandering they did on the surface. Eventually, Scarlet, Rapunzel, and Snow White realized that the Queen was not on the surface at all and instead decided to install 6,000 Surface-to-Surface Missiles (SSM) to have as a backup plan for the final fight.

I don’t even consider it a retcon, really, but I always found their original reason for wandering on their own to be pretty weak. For example, Rapunzel wanted to lay her “sisters” (fallen Nikke) to rest. It’s a noble goal, but I didn’t see how it would contribute in the final fight with the Queen.

help

Scarlet is aura farming again

It’s been a very long time, but I remember Scarlet mentioning how her goal was to sever the Queen’s head. And I was incredibly proud of her when this part of the final cutscene played. However, as happy as I was, nothing could’ve prepared me for this next part.

WHAT

THE

FUCK

Okay, I’ll admit it … the Scarlet one is kind of funny. Some things NEVER change.

But for real, I was absolutely crushed when Rapunzel was destroyed like she was made of egg shells. I cringed when Scarlet was crushed and deep in my mind I had a Northernlion moment and telling myself “It’s okay, we tank those”. However, Snow White’s was by far the nastiest one. Watching her decapitated body tumble around like that and leave a streak of blood was gut-wrenching.

After the cutscene, there’s a scene with Snow White in the infirmary. Similar to Chime, the cut was SO clean that repairing Snow White wasn’t difficult. Scarlet’s damage is so severe that removing her brain is dangerous until she stabilizes. And Rapunzel is apparently lucky that part of her head managed to survive, so her brain is safe.

Similar to Inherit, I think the girls will be fine considering their bodies were retrieved. HOWEVER!!!! HOWEVER!!!!! Cecil tells Snow White about plans that Eden had made in the event that the Pioneer girls joined them. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS …

SCARLET: OVER-SPEC !

Side-Ramble About Power Creep and Re-releasing Units

This is another prediction, but I think it’s a really safe one to make. It also fall in line with the direction Shift Up is going in for updating older characters.

I’ve been noticing that certain characters like D, for example, have been getting updated versions. Maybe the character design was good, but the kit wasn’t that great … so Shift Up decides to re-release the character instead of doing a massive overhaul on the old one. D: Killer Wife sees way more use in raid content. You almost never hear of the original unit anymore. Except for when Shift Up decided to use her original appearance for the Resident Evil collab, but then they released a skin for Killer Wife … kind of cementing the fact that the better unit is the re-release.

Scarlet is still a very solid unit, but I actually haven’t seen her recommended as much in Raid comps. This probably has to do with the amount you need to invest in her since her base magazine size is low, and you need a dedicated healer for her on the team.

Rapunzel was THE healer early on, but we’ve since received more healer units and even ones who can res, like Mana.

Power creep is a very real thing in many games. It’s very difficult to work around in a game where units are constantly being released. If it were up to me, Over-spec would be an upgrade path via Treasures. It gives the original unit some use instead of diluting the gacha pool with non-meta versions of certain characters.

However, since this is a gacha … they’re gonna try to milk these characters for everything they can, lol. While I’m on this detour, I’d like to also point out that we’re probably going to get a Matis event like we had for Absolute. Can you imagine ANOTHER triple banner?

Shit’s insane, man. I still don’t have Over-Spec Vesti! She’s the only one I’m missing. Not even that, I barely have the resources to build Emma and Eunwah.

Lilith Returns

I was having trouble processing everything, but then I remembered that Nihilister had fed herself to the Queen, thus combining both Liliweiss’s head and body. In Part 1, Nihilister had absorbed Liliweiss’s body and kept it safe. The original plan she had to poison the queen worked, kinda. She consumed a vapaus bullet given to her by Nayuta and just jumped right back into mom!

Then, another point was made. The Queen’s brain had overwritten most of Liliweiss’s memories and whatnot. However, Lili’s NIMPH was still active and managing to hold on. My suspicion is that the Queen hijacked the complete body and is running around.

She also took Marian’s core … which I guess she’s using for herself? It’s hard to tell.

So we killed the Queen. Technically. However, now we have this possessed Liliweiss walking around one-shotting pilgrims.

Liliweiss and Nayuta

So there’s been something that’s been bothering me. A lot.

Why did Nayuta cry when she saw Liliweiss’s body?

There’s a lot that we don’t know about Nayuta, but from the campaign, it seems that she’s associated with D.E.E.P. to some extent. This might be a stretch, but I think Liliweiss was a Nikke who was associated with D.E.E.P. as well.

At first, I thought about how Nayuta and Liliweiss have similar hair color. Sometimes it even looks prismatic.

But I don’t know … that connection doesn’t really convince me. Let’s look at Liliweiss’s uniform real quick.

This design under her right shoulder always stood out to me. It’s a design of three interconnected triangles.  You can also see these triangles on the buttons on her uniform as well.

This is the D.E.E.P. agent from the FOOTSTEP, WALK, RUN event. You can see a similar triangle motif appear in the prisms behind her. In fact, they’re three interconnected pyramids, basically a 3D version of the 2D design on Liliweiss’s outfit.

Usually I’m not a huge fan of speculating, but I think this might be intentional and I want to see where this goes … if it’s anything at all even.

Conclusion

Goddess Fall was a fantastic event! But it’s not over yet! Hard mode has yet to unlock which means there’s one last bit of story at the very end before we see the

GODDESS FALL: END

that finally concludes the story.

What twists will await us then? Will we see Pioneer’s new designs? Who will become back from the dead? Wasn’t it kind of funny that Chatterbox died within 30 seconds at the end there?

I’m going to let this simmer and add anything I’ve missed to a Part 2.5 post once hard mode is out. I’m tired.