The almost four-year-long secret cheat that Yoko Taro has been teasing has finally been discovered, and here’s how you can activate it.

*Just a reminder that this article will have spoilers of NieR Automata, so if you haven’t finished the game, you can just come back once you complete it.

NieR Automata is one heck of a game to complete, as it features a ton of endings that requires multiple playthroughs. There is one secret that wasn’t discovered for several years as producer Yoko Taro hinted a few years back, now with the game reaching a milestone of 5 million copies sold worldwide, it was great timing that the secret cheat was finally discovered.

Modder Lance McDonald was reverse-engineering the game on the PlayStation 4 Pro console when he discovered a code that he thinks could be the secret code that Yoko Taro was hinting about, and this cheat allows players to skip all the way to the final part of the game where you must delete your entire save date of NieR Automata to actually acquire the true ending. But in order to reach that part, you need to finish the game 3 times.

In order to use the cheat, you must be at the prologue stage after defeating the first sub-boss and after talking to 9S, head to the spot with a couple of barrels and stand in between them. Now hold R2 then press Up, Down, Up, Right, Left, Square, Circle, Triangle and Cross. If done correctly, you will be transported to the post-credit scene of the final ending. Using the cheat will also unlock some features, such as a chapter select and some debugging tools.

Game Producer Yoko Taro confirmed the legitimacy of the cheat as he retweeted Lance’s tweet.

( 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