Today, Square Enix showcased something rather special, a look at some early work-in-progress gameplay of its upcoming action JRPG NieR: Automata.

The gameplay, that you can check out in the video below starting at the six minutes mark, was presented by Producer Yosuke Saito, Director Taro Yoko, and Designer Takahisa Taura. It showcases the level we saw in the recently-released demo, when it was in an early work-in-progress stage. Models are much rougher and many textures are missing, with many environments simply blocked out to give an idea of the level, but not actually modeled.

It's a good chance to see what a game looks like when developers test the gameplay in early stages of development. Often you hear that a game several months or even over a year away can be played from start to end, and this is what developers normally mean. The game can indeed be played, but a lot of the assets are still missing.

At the end of the broadcast, a surprise was showcased, in the form of a cover for the CUH-2000 model of the PS4, as you can see at the bottom of the post. The hosts used it to tease a limited edition PS4 console to be released for the game and to be announced next week.

Unfortunately, it's quite unlikely that it'll ever come west, but we can always hope.

NieR: Automata will launch in Japan for PS4 on February 23rd, in North America on March 7th, and in Europe on March 10th. A PC version on Steam has also been scheduled for this year, but no release window has been announced for that one just yet.

In the meanwhile, check out the video below. If you want to see more, you can also check out recent gameplay showcased at Taipei Game Show (Part 1 and Part 2).