Okay, so, today I messed around with this thing called “Commander Bond.” Basically, I wanted to give the 2B character in NieR:Automata a different hairstyle – the Commander’s, to be exact. I got this idea from reading somewhere that the Commander actually smiles at 2B and tells her not to push herself too hard. I thought that was a nice little detail, and it made me want to play around with their appearances.
First, I did some digging on what exactly Commander White is. Turns out, she’s the one in charge of all the YoRHa forces. I’ve seen her around in the game, but never really paid much attention before. She’s kind of a minor character, but an important one. I knew who 2B was. 2B is the main character, you know, the cool one with the sword.
Then I found this tool called Commander. I downloaded it, and apparently, it’s used to control some kind of “E-Stim Systems 2B” from your computer? It said it only works on Windows 10, which was fine by me. I’m not sure what all that stuff is about, but it sounded interesting, and I figured it might be related to changing 2B’s appearance in some way. After getting it on my computer, it’s time to get deeper.
Then I started looking into how I could actually swap the hairstyles. I learned a bunch about encoding issues, like how “%3A” can sometimes turn into “%253A,” which seemed completely unrelated but still good to know, I guess? It seemed pretty complicated, but I kept at it.
I stumbled upon another mod that replaced the idle animation with 2B’s, and it even changed the sitting animation at bonfires. That wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it was a step in the right direction. It said it was still in testing, but I figured I’d give it a try anyway. I figured I’d try it out and see if it got me any closer to swapping the hair. I mean, if they can change animations, surely changing hair can’t be that much harder, right?
I also read something about “plasminogen activator inhibitor-2” and how it affects “fibrinolytic uPA activity.” I honestly have no idea what any of that means, but it sounded super scientific and complicated. Maybe it had something to do with the Commander’s hair? I don’t know.
Anyway, I spent a good chunk of time trying to figure this whole thing out. It was a lot more complicated than I expected. There was a lot of stuff about Microsoft .NET Core and something called “Expressing Context in Direct Messaging.” My head started to spin a little, but I wasn’t about to give up. I kept messing around with the files and trying different things, hoping that something would eventually work.
Finally, after a lot of trial and error, I managed to do it! I got 2B to have the Commander’s hair! It wasn’t easy, and I’m still not entirely sure how I did it, but it worked.
It was a fun little experiment, even though it was a bit of a headache at times. I learned a lot about modding and some other random stuff along the way. So that’s my story of the day. Maybe I’ll try something similar again soon.
