Celebrating the 20th anniversary this year, ‘Tokyo Game Show 2016,’ the show that represents Japan, is co-hosted by Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) and Nikkei BP, and specially cooperated with DWANGO. The event is organized into a business-day on September 15 and 16, when only game business people and mass communication officials can enter, and a public-day on September 17 and 18, when all the visitors can enter.
Before the opening of ‘Tokyo Game Show 2016,’ Bandai Namco Entertainment (BNEI) progressed a presentation event ‘2016 Pre-TGS Press Tour,’ which introduces the new titles from its office located in Tokyo. In this event, it presented the major titles facing releases from BNEI and explained their features.
Through this presentation, ‘Sword Art Online Hollow Realization’ session was progressed. Yosuke Hutami and Satoshi Hirayaye, Producer and Game Designer of BNEI, respectively, explained features of the game.
Based on the new game ‘Sword Art: Origin’ as the stage, ‘Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization’ draws the story of connectivity between human and A.I. In ‘Sword Art: Origin,’ the main character meets one NPC girl, and users can experience the story of the NPC girl having human’s emotion and growing by meeting people.
‘Sword Art: Origin’ and Ainground, the stages where a new story takes place, provide different environment from the previous works. Thus, they let users experience the world that they have never met before. Also, as it is a newly published game, all the characters will play the game from level 1.
The interface of ‘Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization’ is different from original works, like MMORPG’s interface. When following the original work without any adjustment, the control could be uncomfortable. Therefore, with considering convenience in controlling at the same time, the production team wanted to apply the interface which could be applied on one day in the future when VR is actually applied.
A likability system, which plays an important role in human relationship, deals with likability toward human’s emotions and characters’ dates in VR environment. For that, it put great importance on showing other characters’ emotion, and the assessment is linked to likability.
About additional content, Hutami showed the confidence of the game content by saying “Before selling three types of paid-DLC after the release of the game, we will have free major update. The scale of this update almost corresponds to paid-DLC, so you can decide whether to buy paid-DLC or not after enjoying the free major update.”
‘Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization’ will be released on October 27.
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▲ Producer Yosuke Hutami and game designer Satoshi Hirayaye explained ‘Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization.’
