2B and A2 enter The Fog as Dead by Daylight brings NieR:Automata into its endless cycle of suffering

Death has never meant much of an escape in either of these worlds. Dead by Daylight has officially launched its NieR:Automata Collection, bringing 2B, A2 and Emil into The Entity’s Realm through a new set of licensed cosmetics available from October 6.

Behaviour Interactive is not treating the collaboration as a full Chapter with a new Killer, Survivors, perks or map. Instead, 2B and A2 transform Feng Min and Yui Kimura through elaborate Legendary Outfits, complete with unique voice lines, music, HUD elements and menu animations, while The Legion receives a disturbing Very Rare outfit inspired by Emil. Pod 042 also makes an appearance, giving one of gaming’s most celebrated action RPGs a surprisingly natural place inside Dead by Daylight’s never-ending Trials.

2B turns Feng Min into a YoRHa combat android

The headline addition is naturally YoRHa No.2 Type B, better known as 2B.

Rather than entering Dead by Daylight as a completely new Survivor, 2B is represented through a Legendary Outfit for Feng Min. Equipping the cosmetic replaces Feng’s normal appearance with a dedicated 2B model built around the android’s unmistakable black YoRHa uniform, white hair and visor.

The Legendary classification is important.

Dead by Daylight uses its highest-tier licensed cosmetics to go considerably further than simply dressing an existing character in another franchise’s clothes. Behaviour has used Legendary Outfits for years to effectively place additional licensed characters into the game without needing to give every one of them a separate perk set and progression slot.

That is exactly what is happening here.

2B receives unique voice lines, her own music, dedicated HUD imagery, individual menu idle animations and additional presentation changes intended to make the character feel distinct from Feng Min despite technically occupying the same Survivor slot.

During the actual Trial, however, the underlying gameplay remains Feng Min’s.

There are no exclusive 2B perks or android abilities. She cannot summon giant swords, launch Pod programs or suddenly transform Dead by Daylight into PlatinumGames’ action combat system. Players select Feng Min, equip the Legendary Outfit and then participate under normal Survivor rules.

That distinction is worth stressing because the quality of modern Legendary cosmetics can make them look almost indistinguishable from newly added playable characters in trailers.

The collaboration is substantial cosmetically.

Mechanically, it remains a Collection.

A2 takes Yui Kimura’s place in the Trial

YoRHa Type A No.2 — A2 — receives the same Legendary treatment through Yui Kimura.

The pairing gives Behaviour another opportunity to recreate a NieR protagonist without adding a separate Survivor slot. Like 2B, A2 comes with a dedicated character model alongside unique audio, voice work, HUD presentation and menu animations.

Her visual identity is considerably different from 2B’s.

Where 2B embodies the controlled, almost ceremonial appearance of an active YoRHa unit, A2 carries the signs of somebody who has spent a long time surviving outside that system. Her torn clothing, long white hair and battle-worn appearance make her particularly compatible with Dead by Daylight’s aesthetic.

She does not need much reinterpretation to look as though she has already been trapped in The Fog for years.

Yui is also an interesting base Survivor for the crossover. Behaviour is not presenting the connection as a canonical equivalence between both characters, but each has an established identity based around determination, independence and refusing to submit easily to the forces surrounding them.

The Legendary Outfit lets A2 retain her own identity while using Yui’s existing gameplay framework.

As with 2B, however, this does not give A2 bespoke perks or combat abilities.

The Entity may have acquired a powerful combat android, but it still expects her to repair generators.

Pod 042 follows 2B into The Fog

Behaviour has not forgotten one of 2B’s constant companions.

Pod 042 also appears as part of the collection, represented through a new charm connected to the collaboration.

The tactical support unit is an important inclusion because the Pods are much more than floating accessories in NieR:Automata. They support YoRHa units in combat, provide information and gradually become important participants in the game’s wider story.

Dead by Daylight obviously cannot reproduce that combat functionality without altering Survivor balance, so reducing Pod 042 to a cosmetic appearance provides a way to preserve another recognisable piece of NieR imagery without affecting the Trial.

The Collection also includes character portrait badges for 2B and A2, allowing players to carry the collaboration into their wider profile customisation rather than limiting it exclusively to whichever Survivor they are currently playing.

According to the official Dead by Daylight cosmetic records, the individual 2B and A2 portrait badges are tied to obtaining their respective Legendary Outfits.

It is a relatively small extra compared with the full character transformations, but one that makes the crossover feel more complete.

Emil has somehow become even more unsettling

Survivors are not the only ones receiving NieR content.

The Legion gets a Very Rare Outfit inspired by Emil, bringing one of NieR’s most recognisable faces onto the Killer side of Dead by Daylight.

And the result is predictably disturbing.

Emil’s enormous skeletal head and permanent smile are already capable of appearing unnerving outside the context of NieR. Transplant that face onto a Killer sprinting through The Fog with a knife and it requires remarkably little modification to fit into a horror game.

The important difference here is the wording.

Behaviour describes The Legion’s cosmetic as inspired by Emil, whereas 2B and A2 are explicitly Legendary character transformations. Emil is therefore not being introduced as a standalone Killer in the same way that those two androids are being represented as complete alternate Survivor identities.

The Legion remains The Legion mechanically.

Feral Frenzy works exactly as expected. Its perks do not change. There is no Emil-specific power.

But visually, the combination works almost suspiciously well.

Emil is one of the most sympathetic and tragic figures associated with NieR, yet his skull-like appearance has always created a deliberate contrast between what he looks like and who he actually is.

Dead by Daylight removes most of that context.

What remains is a grinning face coming toward a Survivor with a weapon.

The Entity would probably approve.

This is a Cosmetic Collection and not a NieR Chapter

The distinction between a Collection and Chapter is particularly important with a crossover this prominent.

Dead by Daylight Chapters normally expand the game mechanically. Depending on the release, they can introduce new Survivors, Killers, perks, Killer powers and sometimes new environments.

NieR:Automata does none of those things.

There is no new playable Killer called Emil, no separate 2B or A2 Survivor progression, no NieR perk set and no ruined City map transported into The Entity’s Realm.

Instead, Behaviour is using the flexibility of its modern cosmetic system to let existing characters become recognisable NieR figures while leaving the structure of Dead by Daylight intact.

That approach has become increasingly important as the number of franchises collaborating with the game has grown.

Not every licence needs enough content for a complete Chapter.

Some characters make more sense as alternate identities for existing Survivors and Killers, especially when the objective is primarily to celebrate another game rather than introduce an entire new gameplay archetype.

The trade-off is obvious.

Fans hoping to literally main 2B as a mechanically independent Survivor may find the Collection limited.

On the other hand, Legendary Outfits allow Behaviour to represent characters with considerably more fidelity than a conventional costume would permit.

2B does not merely put Feng in a black dress.

She replaces her.

NieR and Dead by Daylight are stranger companions than they first appear

A crossover between an asymmetrical horror game and an action RPG about androids fighting machines may initially look like another exercise in putting 2B into as many games as possible.

Behaviour argues there is more connective tissue than that.

Dead by Daylight Creative Director Dave Richard has specifically pointed toward the themes shared by the two universes, particularly their obsession with cycles of violence and suffering.

It is a fair comparison.

Dead by Daylight’s entire premise is built around repetition.

The Entity captures people and imprisons them in its Realm, where Survivors and Killers are forced through Trials repeatedly. Escape from an individual match does not represent genuine freedom. Death is not necessarily an ending either.

The cycle simply begins again.

NieR:Automata approaches repetition from a completely different narrative and mechanical direction, but it repeatedly asks similar questions about violence, purpose, death and whether breaking an apparently inevitable cycle is even possible.

Its android soldiers have been created to participate in a seemingly endless war.

Machines continue fighting.

YoRHa continues fighting.

Characters repeatedly confront situations where the purpose they believed justified their existence starts collapsing around them.

Behaviour’s official announcement consequently frames The Entity’s Realm as less of a radical change for 2B and A2 than another chapter in lives already defined by impossible struggles.

They escaped one cycle.

The Fog provides another.

Even the collection’s announcement borrows NieR’s language

The reveal leans directly into that thematic overlap.

“Everything that lives is designed to end” immediately invokes one of NieR:Automata’s most recognisable philosophical ideas before Behaviour adds the obvious Dead by Daylight twist: especially in The Fog.

It is an effective piece of crossover framing because NieR:Automata has always treated endings as something more complicated than simple death.

Its structure repeatedly challenges players to reconsider what an ending actually means, using multiple routes and conclusions to build toward ideas about repetition, memory and the possibility of doing something different despite everything suggesting the same outcome will occur again.

Dead by Daylight takes the opposite approach.

An ending is denied almost completely.

The Trial finishes, but The Entity’s cycle continues.

Bringing NieR’s characters into that system therefore creates a darkly appropriate contradiction.

2B and A2 come from a game obsessed with finding meaning inside cycles.

Now they have entered a universe built to make the cycle permanent.

2B has become one of gaming’s most travelled crossover characters

There is also a much more practical reason this collaboration exists.

NieR:Automata has remained extraordinarily visible long after its original 2017 release, and 2B in particular has become one of the most recognisable Square Enix characters of the modern era.

The game had surpassed nine million combined physical shipments and digital sales worldwide by December 2024, according to Square Enix’s last major official sales milestone.

That longevity has been reinforced by an enormous number of collaborations.

NieR characters and cosmetics have appeared across games and franchises ranging from Final Fantasy XIV to fighting games, mobile titles and other major multiplayer releases. 2B’s visual design is recognisable enough that her presence can effectively represent NieR:Automata by itself.

Dead by Daylight is therefore joining a long list.

What makes this appearance different is the genre.

Most 2B crossovers naturally emphasise her combat abilities or simply translate her clothing into another game’s cosmetic system.

Dead by Daylight strips the character of the power fantasy almost completely.

The woman capable of cutting through armies of machine lifeforms can now be downed by a Killer, picked up, carried across a map and placed on a meat hook.

Behaviour even jokes about the apparent problem in its announcement, pointing out that being made from metal will not stop The Entity’s hooks.

It is ridiculous.

It is also very Dead by Daylight.

Emil’s inclusion keeps the collection from becoming another obvious 2B crossover

Choosing A2 and Emil alongside 2B also helps the collaboration avoid becoming entirely predictable.

2B was effectively inevitable.

If a videogame announces a NieR:Automata collaboration, she is almost always the first character audiences expect to see.

A2 gives the Survivor side a second major protagonist with a completely different appearance and personality, while Emil lets Behaviour use the Killer half of Dead by Daylight’s roster without attempting to turn one of NieR’s actual antagonists into a fully licensed Killer.

That creates a collection that at least represents several different parts of NieR’s identity.

There are obvious omissions.

9S is not part of the announced lineup, despite being one of NieR:Automata’s central protagonists.

Behaviour has not announced further waves or promised that additional NieR characters will arrive later, so anything beyond the current three should be treated as speculation.

For now, this is the complete revealed Collection.

2B.

A2.

Emil.

Pod 042.

And a Realm in which none of them can actually escape.

Legendary Outfits have become one of Dead by Daylight’s most useful crossover tools

The Collection also demonstrates how much Dead by Daylight’s licensed cosmetic system has evolved.

A crossover no longer necessarily requires Behaviour to create a Chapter.

Legendary Outfits allow the studio to effectively increase the number of recognisable licensed characters inside the game without creating the balancing and progression problems that would come with giving every one of them three perks and an independent roster slot.

Over the years, that system has allowed existing Survivors and Killers to represent additional figures from major horror franchises and beyond.

The advantages are substantial.

Behaviour can bring in a character whose abilities would make little sense within Dead by Daylight’s rules and preserve the visual and audio identity people associate with them.

That is almost exactly the situation with 2B and A2.

Trying to design authentic perks around high-speed combat androids capable of supernatural-looking feats would either produce absurd balance problems or require ignoring most of what makes them distinctive.

As Legendary cosmetics, the problem disappears.

They become Survivors.

The Entity decides the rules.

The crossover arrives during another packed period for Dead by Daylight

NieR:Automata also lands during another busy stretch for a game that has now spent more than a decade building an increasingly surreal collection of licensed universes.

Behaviour used Dead by Daylight’s tenth-anniversary celebrations earlier this year to outline another long slate of cosmetics and collaborations, continuing the strategy that has transformed The Fog into something close to a horror multiverse.

That identity has changed considerably since the game’s early years.

Dead by Daylight was once primarily a collection of Behaviour’s original Killers and Survivors with a handful of major horror licences appearing alongside them.

It is now capable of absorbing characters from games, films, television, music and franchises that would once have seemed almost impossible to place beside one another.

The NieR collaboration pushes that definition another step.

NieR:Automata is dark, violent and frequently existential, but it is not a horror game in the traditional Dead by Daylight sense.

Behaviour clearly no longer considers that a requirement.

What matters is whether a character can be made to feel convincing inside The Fog.

In this case, the studio believes the thematic similarities are enough to carry it.

The timing puts NieR directly into Dead by Daylight’s Halloween season

The October release is also particularly well timed.

Dead by Daylight’s annual Halloween period is one of the biggest moments in its calendar, and Haunted by Daylight is scheduled to return later in October, bringing Behaviour’s dedicated seasonal horror event back to the game.

That means 2B, A2 and Emil arrive just as Dead by Daylight is entering the part of the year when player activity, cosmetics and horror-themed events become especially prominent.

NieR itself is not being presented as the Halloween event.

The Collection is a separate licensed cosmetic release.

But launching on October 6 places it directly at the beginning of the game’s wider seasonal push, ensuring players who pick up the new Legendary characters will have plenty of reasons to take them into The Fog immediately.

It also produces one of the collaboration’s stranger visual possibilities.

A pristine YoRHa android can now spend Halloween repairing generators while an enormous smiling Emil attempts to murder her.

There are probably worse endings in NieR.

Probably.

The most appropriate crossover is one where nobody gets to escape

What ultimately makes the collection work is not that NieR:Automata and Dead by Daylight look similar.

They do not.

NieR’s devastated science-fiction Earth, machine lifeforms, elegant android combat and sweeping soundtrack belong to a completely different visual language from muddy generators, sacrificial hooks and masked murderers.

The connection is more uncomfortable.

Both worlds trap their characters inside systems that appear impossible to escape.

Both repeatedly confront death while denying it the simplicity of being final.

Both ask what remains of a person when violence becomes routine.

And both understand that repeating something forever does not necessarily make it meaningless.

That gives Behaviour considerably more material to work with than a simple costume exchange.

The Entity has acquired two warriors specifically created to fight an endless war.

It has placed them inside another one.

The NieR:Automata Collection is available now in Dead by Daylight from October 6, 2026, bringing 2B to Feng Min, A2 to Yui Kimura and an Emil-inspired look to The Legion, alongside Pod 042 and additional profile cosmetics.