NieR Replicant Singer, Emi Evans, Talks About Composing in New Interview

Singer, composer, and songwriter Emi Evans recently appeared on the Official PlayStation Podcast to talk about her work on the Square Enix series, Nier. “For the first time ever, I had the exciting opportunity to ‘officially’ chat about my involvement in NieR and singing in made up languages,” said the NieR Replicant singer tweeted.

The interview with Evans can be heard on the Official PlayStation Podcast around the 16:30 mark during episode 384. In it, she talks about how she created the “Chaos” language used in the games. The idea for a soundtrack of invented language came from the Nier director, Yoko Taro. Evans, who had never had such an experience, thought it sounded fun and began combining different languages she’d heard to form the track “Song of the Ancients” from the first game. Yoko Taro wanted songs that sounded like they were from different languages, though, and Evans felt like her approach would lead to similar sounding results each time. Series’ composer, Keiichi Okabe, suggested that a different approach might be to base each song on a different existing language. Evans would then immerse herself in YouTube videos of specific languages. She’d base her lyrics off of the unique sounds she picked out from what she’d hear.

Evans also mentioned that part of the appeal in her singing, according to an interview she saw with the Keiichi Okabe, is that her voice doesn’t clash with the voice actors, which is something that he claims can be an issue with songs with lots of vocals in a video game. The soundtrack in NieR has multiple songs with heavy vocals.

Her singing has, so far, appeared in both NieR and NieR: Automata. She will appear in the upcoming title, NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139, as well. This game is an updated version of NieR Replicant, which had previously launched exclusively in Japan.

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 releases on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in Japan on April 22, 2021. A worldwide release for those consoles, and PC via Steam, will follow on April 23, 2021. A trailer recently aired during the pre-show of The Game Awards 2020 that showcased the upcoming game’s combat. A mobile title, called NieR Reincarnation, is also currently in development for Android and Apple iOS devices.