Anyone else know about
Cyberpunk RED's free
Elfline Online DLC? Because I forgot about it until I was rewatching the new
SAO Abridged episode (man, I wasn't expecting that), and it left me with a plotbunny...so here we go:
Ready Player One: Sword Art Online (a R. Talsorian Cyberpunk Story):
by Dave Alistair and Mike Pondsmith [ Novel (LitRPG) / Cartoon (Anime) | Cyberpunk / Adventure ]
Backstory:
In the 1980s, following a rise in violence initiated by the Cartels in Central America that eventually spills over onto American soil (an event that rumors have said was instigated by a joint ATF and CIA operation), the United States becomes embroiled in the major conflict, causing a significant economic collapse that ends with a military coup results in the European Common Market and Japan rising as superpowers, with the Soviet Union pulling itself back from the brink of collapse, and is coupled with the development of orbital habitats that eventually developed into independent states and the rise of megacorporations that fight amongst themselves for dominance. Other disasters have included food blights causing disastrous famines, and by the late 1990s, the Middle East is a radioactive desert after a nuclear conflict, which initiates a global food and energy crisis with the total annihilation of their crop production and the burning of their oil fields. Bioengineering, against a backdrop of warfare, has resulted in the rapid development of cybernetic prosthetics and direct human-machine interfaces. With the lack of government and police due to the Central American wars and economic situation, casual violence is endemic. Many also suffer from "technoshock", an inability to cope with a world of synthetic muscle tissue, organic circuits, and designer drugs.
Among the many corporations vying for power is Gregarious Games, who rebrand themselves to Gregarious Simulation Systems, after the launch of their flagship Virtual Reality videogame console, the OASIS, accessible by players through the use of visors and haptic technology, created by the company's co-founder, James Halliday. A welcome respite to the decline their world is facing, people turn to the OASIS as an escape, as it functions both as an MMORPG and as a virtual world, with its currency being one of the most stable in the real world. With its success, it creates an automatic monopoly that crashes the rest of their market, leaving one of their major competitors, Akihiko Kayaba, to begin to take drastic measures after being pressured by his parent company, The Arasaka Corporation, who are outraged that their efforts in creating the NerveGear have gone to waste after being outperformed by an
American...as well as the potential rating for his life's passion,
Sword Art Online as set in his old homebrew setting, Aincrad. Eventually, this culminates in the game becoming a Death Game, purely by accident on the increasingly sleep-deprived and unstable Kayaba's part.
Story:
Sword Art Online, a VRMMORPG exclusive to Arasaka's line of OASIS haptic consoles, the NerveGear, is released to a select 25K+ players on 1300 JST on August 20th, 2024, as part of its gamma testing. At 1317 JST the first players notice the logout button is missing and report it to staff. At 1329 all players are teleported to the Starting Town's Central Square, where Kayaba announces the start of the Death Game.
Kirito, player handle of one Kazuto Kirigaya, a seasoned veteran of these types of VRMMORPGs, takes to this...poorly. Already an extremely snarky, sarcastic, and antisocial Jerkass with a low opinion of pretty much everybody who isn't him, though deep down he actually does care about others...it's just that it takes quite a bit to bring this out, he heads out and trys to make something of himself in a world where the wrong move can mean certain death...but given he's one of the best players already out of the gate, having participated as part of the Alpha and Beta tests beforehand, it starts as a terrible joke with an even worse punchline for him.
And then, as everything else, this game he only bought into because he was having fun, takes a few turns for the worse.
Focus:
An in depth exploration (and supposition) of the type of society that MMORPG players create, before delving into the more cynical aspects of a Death Game.
[EDIT2:
Future Seasons:
S1: Follows Kazuto Kirigaya [Kirito] as MC (Title:
Sword Art Online)
S2: Wade Watts [Parzival] as MC (Title:
Gunter Online)
S3: Suguha Kirigaya [Leafa] as MC (Title:
Elfline Online)
S4: Karen Kohiruimaki [Ren] as MC (Title:
Gun Gale Call of Duty Online),
S5 (Final Season): Follows the full ensemble, with the creation of their pseduo Edgerunner hacker society, and ends with Bartmoss' DataKrash. (Title:
DataKrash)]
A/N: Feels like a fever dream, but I've done it. If it wasn't obvious, this is an unholy amalgamation of a take on SAO Abridged as set in R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk, with Ernest Cline's Ready Player One sprinkled in, with the series itself intended to be launched as a Cartoon (Anime), but failing that in a timely manner, as a novelization.
[EDIT:
Some of the dumbshit players will likely
get up to in the background:
]
