- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I got the book out at the library lol, I don't have it on hand. But basically the conflict turns on Wade discovering a prototype direct brain interface VR technology that Halliday buried which he and three of the other main party from the first book agree to release and which hugely exacerbates the real world problems the OASIS already caused. In her big speech about how dangerous the new technology is Artemis namedrops both The Matrix and Sword Art Online and then splits. Later an evil digital clone of Halliday in his wizard Anorak persona traps everyone currently logged on inside the game, forcing Wade to solve a new quest within twelve hours, the time limit before the interface burns out their brains. When this is revealed Anorak makes fun of them for having put themselves into this situation and pretty much literally says 'didn't you idiots see Sword Art Online?'
For what it's worth I tend to assume that these references are there because the basic premises were essentially forced on Cline and he is simply trying to cover for how obviously lifted they are, but it's still pretty funny. It's hard to know exactly what the source is but I do like to think that it's due to Spielberg somehow having heard about SAO. In general I do think RPT is an improvement over RPO, and it's clear that Cline took the huge volume of criticism to heart (sort of like Michael Z. Williamson and The Weapon). The end result has a somewhat sad element to it, in that people spent ten years saying that this was all childish fantasy and was like 'you're right' and essentially exiles his inner child to space lol
As I said, I don't think it's impossible to do, it just has to be considered. Like fundamentally if someone gets injured in a fight and then just heals it before the next action sequence then they functionally did get away clean, regardless of the injury. That won't matter to every member of the audience but at least to me it's pretty noticeable.