Nier: Automata fans are going wild over a secret church

destructoid.com:

There’s been quite a commotion in the Nier fandom the last few days. Following several video posts from one player, other Nier: Automata players are now on the hunt for a secret church area.

The discovery lit up this week, but actually started a while ago. Reddit user u/sadfutago posted to the Nier subreddit two months ago, asking how to “open the church” in Nier: Automata. And in follow-up posts, sadfutago asked more, providing more details and images. And then, what really blew up, was the video of it.

This might seem banal, but the thing is, this church is not a known area. No one playing Nier: Automata knew what sadfutago was talking about. This door just seemed to appear for this player, during the A2 section of the game, and led to quite a startling locale.

As user u/xxk_ shares on the Nier subreddit, the modding community has been looking into this for a while. But the most recent post, combined with word of mouth on social media, brought on a swarm of attention.

The community currently has a few points to go on, as sadfutago says they are playing a 1.0 copy of Nier: Automata, on a PlayStation 4 that has been disconnected from the internet since starting the game.

As xxk outlines, modders have not discovered any evidence this exists. There hasn’t been a successful attempt to replicate it, as of this writing, and assets like these also don’t exist. The church pews and first door in the Copied City, for example, are not found elsewhere. And existing geometry at the location doesn’t indicate it would support a door.

That said, if this is a mod, Nier modders say this would be the first time anyone has managed to do something like this. They say it would be a “relatively IMMENSE undertaking for a single individual” to