An MMO universe that made the bold decision to suck like no one's sucked before!
CAUTION: Spoilers. This is purely an opinion piece. If you disagree with my opinions, please keep your disagreements civil and intelligent. Thank you.
What is with a lot of anime today having really bland, uninteresting and rushed pilots?
Seriously, this is the second one I've tried to give a chance lately and it suffers from a lot of the same problems the pilot episode for Attack on Titan suffered from. One thing I'll say in Sword Art Online's defense is, in the two episodes I've seen, it doesn't seem to be trying to be this insightful treatise on human nature that doesn't know what it's trying to say...
... Yet.
So the beginning of this animoo is a bunch of gamer news reporters talking about the impending release of a completely virtual game world, in which players are completely immersed.
Huh. Sounds familiar.
This universe is the titular Sword Art Online, The news people also talk a little bit about how previous attempts at this have failed pretty miserably. They also mention how lucky some of the closed Beta Testers were to get in, and that the keys were gone within 10 seconds, impressed at how fast that was– though given this is 2022 and how long it takes for BlizzCon tickets to sell out, I'm wondering why it took a whole 10 seconds. By then, I'd imagine that stuff would be gone in 5.
We see our main character, Kirito put on the no doubt incredibly expensive VR headgear. This is called the NerveGear, and if you didn't think it had a sinister purpose as soon as you saw it, you're a few paces behind, my friend.
Immersing kids into video game worlds?! WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE?!
We then get a quick glimpse into the game world. By quick glimpse, I mean we just see shots of a town, then a back alley where Kirito meets Klein.
Klein is a noob. He's worse than a noob. He's the kind of noob that gives noobs a bad name. He's the kind of noob every gamer dreads having to meet. Though his desire to ask Kirito for pointers on the basics on the game really makes me wonder about SAO and why it doesn't have a tutorial system. It's 2022 in-universe, for crying out loud. It's 2014 and I can't go on any MMO without having to turn off all the tutorials when I already basically understand the game mechanics. It's not as if tutorials for MMOs are a new thing, so why does he have to go to Kirito for pointers?
Whatever, he fights a boar and gets his ass kicked.
When Kirito points out how to fight the boar properly, it gets wiped out in basically seconds, and Klein says that he thought the boar was a mid-level boss, further cementing him as among the dumbest of noobs.
Pro-tip, guys: if you're playing an MMO and you're fighting a wild pig that's not bigger than you, it's probably not a boss.
The plot begins to thicken when Klein tries to log out to get a pizza he's ordered, only to discover there's no log out button. More than a little distressed at having his brain trapped in a game world, they gather in the main city in this area of the game, and we meet the game creator, whose name I don't care about and from this time forth shall refer to as "Douche McBag."
Douche McBag has now made it clear that he has begun a long-ass chunk of exposition, to ensure that nothing actually happens in this pilot episode beyond what's gone on in the first few minutes. He tells everyone in the game world that they're stuck here, and the fact that there's no logout button is a deliberate part of the game. The people in this game world can't leave until they go up all 100 floors and defeat all the bosses. Were these people anything like real MMO gamers, they'd be calling bullshit right then and there. He's also made it clear that people who've had their NerveGear removed have died because the NerveGear, when the player either dies or is forcefully removed, will release a microwave that fries your brain.
Since this is the meat of the episode, this shall be the meat of the review. Next to no character development has occurred and we know basically nothing about Kirito, who is our main character, and all we know about Klein is that he's a moron. The meat of this review will focus on an aspect of the setting, namely, the MMO.
I get this feeling the writer has never played an MMO in his life.
Was there seriously no quality control that people would have checked with the NerveGear to make sure that such things wouldn't end up happening? Was there no controversy about the massive invasion of privacy the NerveGear represents? The damn thing scans your body and, during the exposition dump, transforms your avatar into your real body. No one ever noticed this? There weren't any product testers or oversight committees it had to go through before getting approved? People flipped out when GoogleGlass was coming out, and that was just an Augmented Reality engine, but recording what people see was a big enough invasion of privacy that it was a pretty big deal for a while.
Something they reference later in the game is that there are limited amounts of monsters and limited amounts of money– wait, seriously? The monsters don't respawn? And there's only so much money in the game world?! Good God, this is such bullshit! Let's ignore the fact that this no longer makes the game fun for a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE-PLAYING GAME if you happen to jump in later, it means that, in the game world, the players are completely capable of destroying the entire ecosystem in a particular region to the point that it can no longer produce any resources. At all.
And then the game's combat system is based entirely on swords? I found out later that they have other weapons, but is it really just melee weapons? As soon as they said no magic, the first word to come out of my mouth was "LAAAAAAME."
Whatever, he fights a boar and gets his ass kicked.
When Kirito points out how to fight the boar properly, it gets wiped out in basically seconds, and Klein says that he thought the boar was a mid-level boss, further cementing him as among the dumbest of noobs.
Pro-tip, guys: if you're playing an MMO and you're fighting a wild pig that's not bigger than you, it's probably not a boss.
The plot begins to thicken when Klein tries to log out to get a pizza he's ordered, only to discover there's no log out button. More than a little distressed at having his brain trapped in a game world, they gather in the main city in this area of the game, and we meet the game creator, whose name I don't care about and from this time forth shall refer to as "Douche McBag."
Douche McBag has now made it clear that he has begun a long-ass chunk of exposition, to ensure that nothing actually happens in this pilot episode beyond what's gone on in the first few minutes. He tells everyone in the game world that they're stuck here, and the fact that there's no logout button is a deliberate part of the game. The people in this game world can't leave until they go up all 100 floors and defeat all the bosses. Were these people anything like real MMO gamers, they'd be calling bullshit right then and there. He's also made it clear that people who've had their NerveGear removed have died because the NerveGear, when the player either dies or is forcefully removed, will release a microwave that fries your brain.
Since this is the meat of the episode, this shall be the meat of the review. Next to no character development has occurred and we know basically nothing about Kirito, who is our main character, and all we know about Klein is that he's a moron. The meat of this review will focus on an aspect of the setting, namely, the MMO.
I get this feeling the writer has never played an MMO in his life.
Was there seriously no quality control that people would have checked with the NerveGear to make sure that such things wouldn't end up happening? Was there no controversy about the massive invasion of privacy the NerveGear represents? The damn thing scans your body and, during the exposition dump, transforms your avatar into your real body. No one ever noticed this? There weren't any product testers or oversight committees it had to go through before getting approved? People flipped out when GoogleGlass was coming out, and that was just an Augmented Reality engine, but recording what people see was a big enough invasion of privacy that it was a pretty big deal for a while.
Something they reference later in the game is that there are limited amounts of monsters and limited amounts of money– wait, seriously? The monsters don't respawn? And there's only so much money in the game world?! Good God, this is such bullshit! Let's ignore the fact that this no longer makes the game fun for a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE-PLAYING GAME if you happen to jump in later, it means that, in the game world, the players are completely capable of destroying the entire ecosystem in a particular region to the point that it can no longer produce any resources. At all.
And then the game's combat system is based entirely on swords? I found out later that they have other weapons, but is it really just melee weapons? As soon as they said no magic, the first word to come out of my mouth was "LAAAAAAME."
Seriously? No magic in an RPG? That's not bold, that's boring. But hey, I guess they might be going for a Monster Hunter type of thing, right? OH, OH YOU'D THINK SO. YOU'D THINK THIS WOULD BE A GAME WHERE YOU GET TO EXPLORE WHERE YOU WANT TO AND FIND COOL STUFF IN THE GAME WORLD, WOULDN'T YOU?!
WRONG.
They have the floors system. They reference it earlier when Kirito reveals he was a Beta-Tester and only got to the 8th Floor of the game, and that's when it hit me that this game has the most artificial regional system ever. Seriously? Floors? And in these floors is a tower with a boss you have to beat to ascend to the next one? What kind of sense does that make? You're in an MMORPG, not in goddamn Donkey Kong.
That's not even touching on the idiotic "100 floors, 100 bosses" thing. Mind you, this is not like the way MMOs tend to work where dungeons have multiple bosses. These are all 100 end bosses. These are 100 final stage bosses. This is a ridiculous amount of content for what's supposed to be a new engine, and given the way this game world works, there's no way anyone's going to complete 100 raids in any reasonable amount of time. Everyone's already dead because they can't ever find these things that fast.
The worst part is just how artificial this is. It's not as if this world has any lore to it, there's no real discovery to make beyond going to the next floor and finding out what mobs are in there for you to kill. It doesn't feel like you're exploring a world so much as you're going into the next stage of a video game. Oh, sure, this is something that isn't generally done in MMOs, and some idiots might call it innovative and new. Thing is, there's being innovative, and then there's PISSING IN A MILKSHAKE.
It's not like this world had much lore to it, everyone knows that the world is built like this because the game designer is Douche McBag and wants to artificially make the game difficult. He's just short of outright telling everyone there that he's making it difficult because he's an asshole. Despite the whole Virtual Reality gimmick bullshit, there's next to no real immersion into the game. The only immersion is that you're stuck in it and you'll die in real life if you die in the game.
With all these blatant problems with the game play and how artificially linear it is, you would think, YOU WOULD THINK, that people would call bullshit on this really quickly and no one would ever buy this piece of shit of a game. With the shitty VR gimmick that probably cost a fuckton of money to get on top of the cost of the game, why would anyone buy this garbage? Why would anyone ever recommend this game to anyone? Why would anyone want to play a game that so severely limits your options and doesn't even have the common decency of compensating you with a decent story? The game is similar enough in its Fully Released form to the Beta that Beta Testers are able to discern familiar patterns, why didn't people call BS on this game sooner? Why would anyone give this game a second chance only to have it THREATEN TO KILL THEM?! It's not even a fun game, it's just a chore that, if you're not one of the first people there, YOU MIGHT AS WELL NOT BOTHER PLAYING.
I mean, the MMORPG anyone ever thinks about when they think about MMORPGs is World of Warcraft. See that first word? World? That's what an MMO should feel like. It's not as if World of Warcraft is something alien to Japan– it is available there, and they have Final Fantasy XIV, which is basically just World of Warcraft mashed together with Guild Wars 2. Your ability to move about the game world should be restricted by the dangers presented in each region, not artificially by some big tower with a boss at the roof that blocks off the entrance to the next area! GOD DAMN, THIS IS STUPID!
So, you may be wondering why I've gone on for so long about the fictional Sword Art Online game. Someone may even point out to me that games within anime or manga tend to be pretty weak anyway and I should just take it at face value...
Except when your WHOLE FUCKING STORY is about an MMORPG, YOU SHOULD KNOW HOW AN MMORPG WORKS.
THIS SHIT IS LAZY. CLEARLY, NO ONE PUT IN THE TIME TO ACTUALLY PLAY AN MMO BEFORE DECIDING THAT THEY SHOULD WRITE A WHOLE STORY ABOUT AN MMO. THIS AUTHOR HAS NO CREDIBILITY, NO GRASP ON HOW TO WRITE CHARACTER, AND CERTAINLY NO GRASP ON HOW TO DEVELOP A SETTING, MUCH FUCKING LESS AN MMO UNIVERSE.
I should give up on this shit right now! It does not deserve any more of my attention! The author didn't put in the effort to do his fucking research or even work in some common fucking sense, so I'm not going to put in any more of the effort to watch this stupid pissed-in milkshake! Fuck this noise!
Timere Defectum, everyone.
Edit: Okay, I've been told that apparently, the limited resource thing was really just that the Beta Testers already knew where all the good grind spots are and left all the new players screwed, but that raises other questions, namely, why not just group up? They have a common enemy in Douche McBag, there's no reason they shouldn't cooperate. Hell, if all the Beta Testers are just taking the good grind spots and the easy quests (which still implies that the easy quests are finite, but whatever), why can't the newbies just wait for them to be cleared? Not like anyone's ever going to complete this game in any reasonable amount of time, might as well wait around to do it right. This show is still dumb.
Sword Art Online belongs to Reki Kawahara. Guild Wars 2 belongs to ArenaNet. World of Warcraft belongs to Blizzard Activision. Final Fantasy XIV belongs to Square. Monster Hunter belongs to Capcom. Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama. .hack//sign belongs to Bandai.
WRONG.
They have the floors system. They reference it earlier when Kirito reveals he was a Beta-Tester and only got to the 8th Floor of the game, and that's when it hit me that this game has the most artificial regional system ever. Seriously? Floors? And in these floors is a tower with a boss you have to beat to ascend to the next one? What kind of sense does that make? You're in an MMORPG, not in goddamn Donkey Kong.
That's not even touching on the idiotic "100 floors, 100 bosses" thing. Mind you, this is not like the way MMOs tend to work where dungeons have multiple bosses. These are all 100 end bosses. These are 100 final stage bosses. This is a ridiculous amount of content for what's supposed to be a new engine, and given the way this game world works, there's no way anyone's going to complete 100 raids in any reasonable amount of time. Everyone's already dead because they can't ever find these things that fast.
The worst part is just how artificial this is. It's not as if this world has any lore to it, there's no real discovery to make beyond going to the next floor and finding out what mobs are in there for you to kill. It doesn't feel like you're exploring a world so much as you're going into the next stage of a video game. Oh, sure, this is something that isn't generally done in MMOs, and some idiots might call it innovative and new. Thing is, there's being innovative, and then there's PISSING IN A MILKSHAKE.
It's not like this world had much lore to it, everyone knows that the world is built like this because the game designer is Douche McBag and wants to artificially make the game difficult. He's just short of outright telling everyone there that he's making it difficult because he's an asshole. Despite the whole Virtual Reality gimmick bullshit, there's next to no real immersion into the game. The only immersion is that you're stuck in it and you'll die in real life if you die in the game.
With all these blatant problems with the game play and how artificially linear it is, you would think, YOU WOULD THINK, that people would call bullshit on this really quickly and no one would ever buy this piece of shit of a game. With the shitty VR gimmick that probably cost a fuckton of money to get on top of the cost of the game, why would anyone buy this garbage? Why would anyone ever recommend this game to anyone? Why would anyone want to play a game that so severely limits your options and doesn't even have the common decency of compensating you with a decent story? The game is similar enough in its Fully Released form to the Beta that Beta Testers are able to discern familiar patterns, why didn't people call BS on this game sooner? Why would anyone give this game a second chance only to have it THREATEN TO KILL THEM?! It's not even a fun game, it's just a chore that, if you're not one of the first people there, YOU MIGHT AS WELL NOT BOTHER PLAYING.
I mean, the MMORPG anyone ever thinks about when they think about MMORPGs is World of Warcraft. See that first word? World? That's what an MMO should feel like. It's not as if World of Warcraft is something alien to Japan– it is available there, and they have Final Fantasy XIV, which is basically just World of Warcraft mashed together with Guild Wars 2. Your ability to move about the game world should be restricted by the dangers presented in each region, not artificially by some big tower with a boss at the roof that blocks off the entrance to the next area! GOD DAMN, THIS IS STUPID!
So, you may be wondering why I've gone on for so long about the fictional Sword Art Online game. Someone may even point out to me that games within anime or manga tend to be pretty weak anyway and I should just take it at face value...
Except when your WHOLE FUCKING STORY is about an MMORPG, YOU SHOULD KNOW HOW AN MMORPG WORKS.
THIS SHIT IS LAZY. CLEARLY, NO ONE PUT IN THE TIME TO ACTUALLY PLAY AN MMO BEFORE DECIDING THAT THEY SHOULD WRITE A WHOLE STORY ABOUT AN MMO. THIS AUTHOR HAS NO CREDIBILITY, NO GRASP ON HOW TO WRITE CHARACTER, AND CERTAINLY NO GRASP ON HOW TO DEVELOP A SETTING, MUCH FUCKING LESS AN MMO UNIVERSE.
I should give up on this shit right now! It does not deserve any more of my attention! The author didn't put in the effort to do his fucking research or even work in some common fucking sense, so I'm not going to put in any more of the effort to watch this stupid pissed-in milkshake! Fuck this noise!
Timere Defectum, everyone.
Edit: Okay, I've been told that apparently, the limited resource thing was really just that the Beta Testers already knew where all the good grind spots are and left all the new players screwed, but that raises other questions, namely, why not just group up? They have a common enemy in Douche McBag, there's no reason they shouldn't cooperate. Hell, if all the Beta Testers are just taking the good grind spots and the easy quests (which still implies that the easy quests are finite, but whatever), why can't the newbies just wait for them to be cleared? Not like anyone's ever going to complete this game in any reasonable amount of time, might as well wait around to do it right. This show is still dumb.
Sword Art Online belongs to Reki Kawahara. Guild Wars 2 belongs to ArenaNet. World of Warcraft belongs to Blizzard Activision. Final Fantasy XIV belongs to Square. Monster Hunter belongs to Capcom. Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama. .hack//sign belongs to Bandai.
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