Sword Art Online - Q & A

[cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by ghostpickle

So there's a lot of vague answers out there, so can someone just me a straight forward answer about any episodes after 25, like if do or ever will exist.

There is an OVA set to be released but no confirmed second season as of yet

[Nerroth]

After watching Extra Edition (but missing most of season 1), I had a few questions.

Spoiler for questions:

1. There were a few mentions of "New Aincrad" here and there. Is that the floating city thing they were looking up at while in ALO, near the end of the episode?

2. If the answer to the question above is "yes", how is it being in ALO make it different from the original? I gather that most of the floors haven't been unlocked yet, but are the player characters there still humans, or are they the same creatures "down" in ALfheim? And can the ALO characters fly there and back, or do you have to log out and back in again as a separate avatar?

3. Does anyone know if the two handheld games (Infinity Moment and Hollow Fragment) are set in the oriignal Aincrad, or in the new one?

[daedalron]

Questions were in spoiler, so spoiler for answers...

Spoiler:

Aincrad was the name of the 100 floor castle in SAO. New Aincrad is therefore the name of the same castle introduced in ALO.

The difference in New Aincrad and the first Aincrad is the fact that New Aincrad isn't a death game. Most of the bosses were redesigned due to the addition of magic from ALO. There have therefore been many full raid wipes in ALO boss fights (also because you can't die for real, so there is less need to scout the fights).

Most of the floors haven't been unlocked. At the moment of Extra Edition, only the first 10 floors are available (higher floors are not accessible. Level 11-20 were opened to conquest around 2 month later than the Extra Edition).

The players are all fairies from ALfheim. New Aincrad is in the air above, and fly above the territories of each race. The players fly from the original ALO land to New Aincrad as they want, but they can't enter inside a floor that has not yet been conquered.

For the two games, they are set in an alternate universe. It would be the first Aincrad, but some of the characters in the games that were not inside the death game (Sinon, Leafa, for example) are still present in those games.

[Nerroth]

I see, thanks.

Spoiler for follow-up questions:

So, does Yui "live" in New Aincrad or on ALfheim? Which one did Kirito and Asuna meet her at in Extra Edition?

And is there some sort of interface that would allow Yui to "see" the outside world, or has that not been considered as of that episode? (She did say she couldn't see what a real whale looked like; but I was wondering how much of that is down to the technology not being in place yet for her to see beyond the confines of ALO, or down to the coding in place to prevent it.)

[daedalron]

Again, answers in spoiler.

Spoiler:

New Aincrad and ALfheim is the same thing. New Aincrad is a place inside ALfheim, like the sylph city Swilvane is. So Yui follow her parents where they go, be it on the land, or the castle in the sky. At the moment of Extra Edition, the appartment in which Kirito and Asuna both live in-game (the place where they first talk about the whale) is in the World-Tree city. They both wish to get back their old house from SAO when the corresponding floor gets available again, though.

After the events from Fairy Dance, and her almost erasure by Sugou, Yui is not stored on the ALO server, but on Kirito's computer. So she can connect from there to the ALO servers, or the phones of her parents, or the internet.

As for some interface for Yui to use to get access to the outside world, at the moment of this movie, she has used a limited interface, on Kirito or Asuna's phone, to see a bit of the real world, and stay in contact with her parents when they're offline. But it's still limited by what the camera on such a device can record.

[Nerroth]

Thanks again.

One last question for now:

Spoiler for question:

How different is New Aincrad physically to the original?

As in, you say that some of the bosses can be changed, but would some of the individual components be up for revision?

Say, for example, if one wanted to have the Hollow Fragment from the Vita game appear there. (Since, if I'm not mistaken, it wasn't there in the old Aincrad from the original timeline?)

Or on a less dramatic level, can Kirito assume that theri old house will be there waiting for them, or that someone else won't swoop in and claim it first?

[Rising Dragon]

Originally Posted by Nerroth

Thanks again.

One last question for now:

Spoiler for question:

How different is New Aincrad physically to the original?

As in, you say that some of the bosses can be changed, but would some of the individual components be up for revision?

Say, for example, if one wanted to have the Hollow Fragment from the Vita game appear there. (Since, if I'm not mistaken, it wasn't there in the old Aincrad from the original timeline?)

Or on a less dramatic level, can Kirito assume that theri old house will be there waiting for them, or that someone else won't swoop in and claim it first?

Spoiler for Response:

New Aincrad seems to be a physical match to old Aincrad. As far as the game goes, they reinstated the Sword Skills of Sword Art Online, which leads to a subset of players (Swordsmen and Fairies, with Swordsmen basically being people who focused on using Sword Skills). The Dual-Wield skill is not present due to ALO mechanics.

As for the old house, it's covered in the novels. Asuna ensures that house will be hers and Kirito's.

[Nerroth]

Spoiler for So...:

If the Hollow Fragment doesn't exist in the original Aincrad, one shouldn't expect it to be there in the new one.

Thanks once again.

[daedalron]

Originally Posted by Nerroth

Spoiler for So...:

If the Hollow Fragment doesn't exist in the original Aincrad, one shouldn't expect it to be there in the new one.

Thanks once again.

Kind of an answer, but i'm not that familiar with the specifics of the subject.

Spoiler:

From what I've read about the game, Hollow fragment was created especially for the game, and there's no mention of it anywhere on the novels, either on old Aincrad, or New Aincrad. Beside, the place where it happens is also kinda blurry. It is said to happen in New Aincrad, but the characters don't match (Kirito and Asuna use their equipment and skin from old Aincrad, characters from New Aincrad (Leafa, Sinon) are there, ...). Like the first game, it clearly is an alternate universe.

[winback]

Am I the only one to notice that in the very first episode that Akihiko Kayaba, SAO's creator, demonstrated that there was no log out option using his "Left" hand instead of his right hand? SAO utilized the right hand and ALO utilized the left hand..... find that interesting.

Anyone else pick up on this?

[daedalron]

Originally Posted by winback

Am I the only one to notice that in the very first episode that Akihiko Kayaba, SAO's creator, demonstrated that there was no log out option using his "Left" hand instead of his right hand? SAO utilized the right hand and ALO utilized the left hand..... find that interesting.

Anyone else pick up on this?

In the novel, Kayaba used his right hand, not his left, to make the mirors appear:

"Then, the red robe that had always been one step ahead of us swept its right glove and started speaking with a voice void of all emotion:
- Then I will show you evidence that this is the only reality. In your inventories, there will be a gift from me. Please confirm this."

So I think we can assume this to be a mistake from the anime. But nice find anyway ^^

[Rising Dragon]

It's hardly the only mistake, also. Remember the one red player that was dual-wielding in Silica's episode?

[winback]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

It's hardly the only mistake, also. Remember the one red player that was dual-wielding in Silica's episode?

I looked for it but I couldn't find the reference. Was it in a specific release version?

[Rising Dragon]

I dunno if it was corrected or not, in the TV airing, at least, one of Rosalia's henchmen was wielding two identical axes at once. Similarly, there was an error when Heathcliff turned off his invincibility, saying "Chaged Into Immortal Object" rather than "Changed into Mortal Object". The latter was later fixed, at least.

[Rageth]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

It's hardly the only mistake, also. Remember the one red player that was dual-wielding in Silica's episode?

And there's how all of Episode 2 was butcher-- wait no, that's not a "mistake," that's a "we don't feel like being accurate"

There's also how in the Silica episode, when inside a restaurant, you can see everyone's cursors, when ME:6 (Algade Showdown) says that cursors don't appear inside of restaurants, because they distract you while trying to eat.

[Rising Dragon]

I can't comment on comparisons between the novels and the anime, but I imagine that the cursors inside restaurants was simply for consistency in the anime, which would likely receive more widespread exposure than the novels. People who hadn't read the novels would likely see it as an inconsistency with the rest of the anime, rather than accuracy to the adaptation.

[c933103]

Originally Posted by winback

Am I the only one to notice that in the very first episode that Akihiko Kayaba, SAO's creator, demonstrated that there was no log out option using his "Left" hand instead of his right hand? SAO utilized the right hand and ALO utilized the left hand..... find that interesting.

Anyone else pick up on this?

...I personally don't think that's hand sensitive....

[daedalron]

Originally Posted by c933103

...I personally don't think that's hand sensitive....

At least in ALO it is, as it doesn't work with the right hand (cf Volume 3 when Kirito first try to summon the menu). For SAO, I don't think it was explictly stated that it works only with the right hand, but I don't think there's any reference of anyone using the left hand to summon the menu.

[winback]

Originally Posted by daedalron

At least in ALO it is, as it doesn't work with the right hand (cf Volume 3 when Kirito first try to summon the menu). For SAO, I don't think it was explictly stated that it works only with the right hand, but I don't think there's any reference of anyone using the left hand to summon the menu.

Sao was specifically right hand only to pull up the menu, same as in the manga. And your reference to Kirito attempting to use the menu in ALO with his right hand and not working and finding out that he has to use the left is completely accurate, also found in the manga.

And yep, the original TV airing did have that immortal error, I remember seeing that one.

[Becca]

(*No Spoilers Please! I’ve only gotten up to Episode 11)
I've never read Sword Art Online's manga or novels, I've only seen the anime, so maybe that's why I'm missing something here. But since I began watching the show I keep wondering how all the real bodies of the trapped players in the game are surviving without any nutrition or, especially, water. I mean, in the beginning of Episode 1, when Kirito was helping Klein learn how fight, Klein remarked how hungry he was starting to feel, and Kirito said something like, "Yeah, too bad the food in here only satisfies your virtual hunger." But after a few years in the game, when players would eat, they acted like their actual hunger was gone.

I know that the NerveGear simulated the five senses, so I know that when the trapped players eat food in-game they can definitely taste it, but it still shouldn't satisfy their real-world hunger. And water is even more important. So will the answer to that be revealed later or something?

The only explanation I can come up with is that at the end of the series it's going to turn out to be a trick and all the players just thought they were there for years but were really only there for a few hours, but I know that’s a stretch. So is there something I’m missing?