Yoko Taro (横尾 太郎, Yokoo Tarō, born June 6, 1970) is a Japanese video game director and scenario writer.

He has since worked extensively on every game in the series (except Drakengard 2), and on mobile titles after becoming a freelancer following Cavia's absorption into AQ Interactive.

[2] Taro's parents were often absent from home due to their jobs, so he was mostly raised by his grandmother, who left a strong impression on him.

[3] During his youth, he heard about an incident that would influence his later work as a scenario writer: while an acquaintance was in a shopping street with a group of friends, one of them who was walking along a high building roof slipped and died from the fall.

[1][2] Initially not intending to pursue a career in video games, his first job a month after graduating was as a 3D CGI designer for Namco.

[14] After Nier was released and Cavia was absorbed into AQ Interactive, Yoko left the company and pursued an independent career.

[15] During this period, he took an unknown role in the development of Square Enix's social game Monster × Dragon.

[18] After that, he began writing a short-term special column for Famitsu titled "Taro Yoko's Circle of No Good Thinking".

His reason, according to his Famitsu column, was that he feels video game developers are not entertainers or commentators on their work and that he thinks the subjects they talk about in interviews would be overly boring to those reading or listening.

[23] Yoko describes it as a method of visualizing and keeping in order events and emotional peaks throughout the story.

[24] Yoko was influenced in his style for the Drakengard series by many games of the day: a commonality he noted was that the player got gradings for their performance after killing dozens or hundreds of enemy units in a "gloating" manner.

[22][25] Another direct influence on Nier was of the gameplay of the God of War series, which both he and the game's producer Yosuke Saito admired.