Sword Art Online: Vengeance

The First Chapter - Exposition

September 19th, 2027

"This is amazing, huh?"

I didn't think it would be possible, but the Amusphere II had actually managed to top its predecessor's incredible level of immersion. The visuals, the audio, and, of course, the sense of touch, seemed to all be perfectly refined. For once, the virtual world was indistinguishable from the real one. I breathed in deeply through my nose, taking in the smell of the landscape around me. Off to my left, the smell of warm bread wafted outward through the chimney of the bakery. There was a sweet scent of flowers as well.

I felt like I could sit there forever and just take everything in. It was strange, really; flowers, grass…these are all things that we have plenty of in the real world, yet, for some reason, those scents and sights in a virtual environment just seemed to be so much more enticing. I gazed up at the sky, an azure expanse dotted with lazily floating clouds. All around me, people chatted and laughed alongside their friends. This was truly a paradise. I'd been playing this game for a month now, but it just never seemed to really sink in.

"Damn," I groaned, "if I didn't have to worry about keeping the boss off my ass, I might just stay here forever." I forced myself to my feet. This world was a gorgeous place, but I hadn't come here to sit around and enjoy the scenery. I'd come to investigate the game itself: the beautiful and long-awaited Blade Vale Online, the first VRMMORPG to be released on the brand-new Amusphere II.

Ezra, my friend and party member, just laughed at me. "You must really be passionate about games, huh? I mean, this isn't that impressive. Not to me, anyway. That might just be because I'm not familiar with just how much work goes into all this stuff." Ezra brushed the grass and leaves off his robe. With a flick of his finger, he opened the menu and pulled up the quest journal. "We've still got to take down that field boss, you know."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, stretching myself out. "We've avoided it for too long. I just don't feel like dying to that stupid thing and losing my precious XP." I opened the character window. Only 3,700 more experience points to level 25. Taking down the giant wolf boss wouldn't be easy, but the XP and loot we'd obtain through killing it made the prospect irresistible. Dying to it, however, would mean the same death penalties as usual: the loss of two thirds of the experience points you'd accumulated that level, as well as a small sum of gold. The thought of in-game death on my mind, I couldn't help but be reminded of the terrifying Sword Art Online incident. A game where virtual death meant real death made the hefty death penalties of Blade Vale look like nothing.

Ever since that infamous game released in 2022, very few VRMMOs had actually received mainstream attention due to the stigma surrounding the genre and its potential dangers. In fact, that stigma is the reason the Amusphere line of products came to exist in the first place. Designed with safety as its first and foremost priority, the Amusphere and its successor tried to cash in on the fears of consumers who wanted a virtual reality experience but feared the possibility of another SAO-like death game. The sensory information sent to the brain by the original Amusphere was said to have paled in comparison to the experience created by the original NerveGear. After the first few tens of thousands of the NerveGear units shipped and the SAO incident began, however, they were recalled and outlawed. I never thought that a product so focused on the safety of the user like the Amusphere would be able to create a perfect virtual reality experience. My experience with the Amusphere II over the past month had proven me wrong.

You see, online games are both my passion and career. I work (or worked, anyway) for a San Francisco-based game development studio called Event Horizon. In recent months, we've been looking to expand into the realm of virtual reality. For the past month or so, I was to continuously log into Blade Vale Online and report the state of the game's activity and community, as well as study the game's mechanics as potential inspiration for a title of our own. That day, September 19th, marked the 27th day of my investigation.