The final secret included in NieR Automata has finally been discovered, almost 4 years since the game's release.

　　Lance McDonald a well-known dataminer in the Souls series community, discovered the game's final secret yesterday. This secret allows players to skip the entirety of the game after defeating the game's first boss.

　　I found a cheat code in NieR Automata that allows you to skip to the last ending immediately after killing the first boss and unlock the bonus modes. I'll do a full video soon. It's not a glitch, it's an actual cheat code hard-coded into the engine. @yokotaro pic.twitter.com/FtuNPovq6F

　　— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) January 3, 2021

　　Shortly after Lance McDonald revealed his discovery, NieR Automata's director Yoko Taro confirmed that this is indeed the game's last secret that he has been teasing for a while.

　　( NieR:Automata Spoilers )

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　　3 years 10 months.

　　（◎血◎）

　　RT: @manfightdragon

　　I found a cheat code in NieR Automata (snip) https://t.co/2LeNlBguLi

　　— yokotaro (@yokotaro) January 3, 2021

　　Given how well this secret was hidden inside NieR Automata, it is no wonder that it took so long for it to be discovered. Lance McDonald only managed to do so with hundreds of hours of reverse engineering.

　　Hundreds of hours of reverse engineering. https://t.co/WweV0LOfXL

　　— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) January 3, 2021

　　NieR Automata is among the best action role-playing games released in the previous console generation, combining Yoko Taro's signature masterful storytelling with Platinum Games' excellent action gameplay mechanics.

　　You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you might even contemplate whether androids are capable of feeling emotion at all or if they’re merely going by what they were programmed to do. NieR: Automata rewards long-time fans of Yoko Taro’s works with an experience that transcends any single genre. Although it might not be a perfect game, the sum of Automata’s unique storytelling meshed with Platinum Games’ style of action meld together into a title well deserving of being one of my personal Games of the Year, not for the story being told but rather HOW 2B’s story was told.

　　NieR Automata is now available on PC and PlayStation 4 worldwide.