Simone (Nier: Automata)

"Beautiful... Beautiful... I must become beautiful!"

- Simone

Simone (Beauvoir in the Japanese version) is a major antagonist and boss in the 2017 action RPG game Nier: Automata. She is the beauty obsessed opera singer of the amusement park, using her songs to hack and eat android "flesh" to make herself more beautiful.

She is voiced by Kaori Kawabuchi in the Japanese version and Erin Fitzgerald in the English version.

Appearance
Simone altered her regular robot appearance into that of a slender woman wearing a metallic gown and opera crown. She dangles a pink strip of fabric from the back of her helmet like hair, and another strip that covers her dress. Several skinned androids can be seen attached to her dress and two are hanging from both sides of the top of her crown. Underneath her dress is a compile of feet, which extract from under her dress whenever she jumps around the arena.

Backstory
Simone was once a ordinary machine lifeform who fell in love with another machine lifeform named Jean-Paul. Despite Simone's efforts to win Jean-Paul's affections, he paid little attention to her, as he is uninterested in romance. Simone decided that in order to get Jean-Paul to love her, she must become beautiful. Simone accentuated her beauty with parts of her machine friends, but Jean-Paul continued ignoring her. Simone's sanity continued to dwindle as she continuously tries to gain Jean-Paul's attention, going as far as cannibalizing androids for their "flesh", believing that eating enough would make herself more beautiful. Instead of killing the skinned androids, she hacks into their system and turns them into weapons to lure more androids into her lair.

Route A
Using her mind possessed androids, Simone lures 2B and 9S to the amusement park to investigate the signal, believing them to be surviving resistance members. When they reach the Main Stage, Simone reveals herself and begins attacking them. She is at level 15.

Halfway into the battle, Simone retreats to the stage and attempts to hack the two androids, while also bringing out her possessed androids to attack the duo. After she comes back out, 9S analyzes Simone's hacking program and weakens her by hacking her back. Once she is weak enough, Pod 042 fires a laser straight through Simone, killing her instantly, but not before she visualizes Jean-Paul reaching out for her. Upon her death, all remaining androids have their hard drives immediately fried.

Route B
Simone fights exactly the same way as she did in Route A, although she has a larger health bar and is now at level 39. When Simone attempts to hack 9S and vise versa, parts of Simone's backstory is revealed, showing her both before and after she began killing machines for parts to woo Jean-Paul. When she is killed, Simone's thoughts are read describing her pleas for somebody to look her way.

SINoAlice
During the Nier: Automata collaboration event for SINoAlice, Simone is a boss that can be encountered. Like the other beings in the Library, she is driven by a desire, her desire to kill so she can be beautiful. If the player uses any character other than 2B, Simone's dialogue can be heard during the first, fifth, eighth, and twelve verses of the story mode. Using her songs, Simone can summon Nightmares to aid her in battle.

The player continues to battle against Simone throughout the story, as the Library is regenerate her due to the determination of her desire. Once Simone defeated for the last time, she realizes that she had long forgotten her original motive for seeking beauty in the first place and regrets her actions she committed. The despair for the meaning of her existence causes her to fade away. After defeat, a Simone Nightmare can be bought by exchanging 3,000 Nier Medals. When summoned, she temporarily lowers SP costs for all weapon skills.

Trivia

 * Simone first appeared in the E3 2016 trailer of Nier: Automata.
 * Simone's name may be based off of the late French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.