Bandai Namco Entertainment just dropped a bombshell by revealing Echoes of Aincrad, a brand-new action RPG based on the popular Sword Art Online franchise. Scheduled to release on July 9 for the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and on July 10 on Steam, the singleplayer title will have “you” trapped in the titular MMORPG where in-game death means dying in real life. Drawing from this, Echoes of Aincrad features a “Death Game Mode,” in which getting a game over means permadeath for your character and deletion of your save data.
In a recent interview with Denfaminicogamer, SAO series producer Yosuke Futami and Echoes of Aincrad head of production Yasuhiro Yahata talked about how the new title’s “Death Game Mode” came to be, and how they handled the game’s difficulty settings.
According to Futami, the original plan for Echoes of Aincrad was a “game in which you truly die,” and was apparently much more survival-focused, with players having to properly balance their stamina, energy and resources if they wanted to stay alive. This concept was further polished and shifted towards more action-oriented gameplay.
When it comes to the Death Game Mode itself, Futami came up with it when trying to figure out how to leverage the “uniqueness” of the SAO series while also making it entertaining for streamers and players. “I thought it would be nice to have a separate mode where gameplay would be like: If you fell asleep, you could get beaten by an enemy, and all of your save data would disappear,” he adds.
“If you just level your characters and work on their builds, I think you can clear this game without dying too often. However, trying your best to avoid enemy attacks – that tension-filled playstyle has the essence of SAO, so we implemented it into the game.” As Futami mentions, while there may be those like Kirito, who level up and raise the bar bit by bit, there will also be people who clear the game on their first try, and most certainly, those who get destroyed midway through.
According to Yahata, Echoes of Aincrad will feature four distinct difficulty modes (Story, Normal, Hard and Very Hard), and each of them can be combined with the Death Game Mode (Death Game Mode is not a separate difficulty). This allows players to choose their own preferred playstyle. For example, if you want to go for a challenge, you can play the Death Game Mode on Very Hard difficulty, but if you just want to feel the thrill of the game itself, you can go for Death Game Mode on the Story difficulty setting.
Though, the developers warn that it’s still “very easy to die” in Aincrad. “I can’t say there aren’t any unfair enemies, especially for those who are playing for the first time,” Yahata says. “[…] I’m sure there are people who’ll go ‘Oh!’ when put in situations where they have to fight multiple enemies. There’s a great variety of bosses, so playing for the first time is probably going to be the most fun and thrilling, and the shock you get while facing them is huge,” Futami adds. To avoid confusion, Yahata notes that the Death Game Mode was originally intended to be played after clearing the whole story.
But while they cite some “unfair” enemies and dungeon traps which bring out lots of monsters when activated, the developers argue that their game is not a soulslike. “Echoes of Aincrad is not a soulslike. It’s an action RPG. We wanted to draw the line there, and make a game that’s supposed to be enjoyed as an action RPG.”
Echoes of Aincrad is set to on July 9 release for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with a Steam port coming on July 10.
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