Bandai Namco Entertainment recently revealed their brand-new action RPG Echoes of Aincrad, scheduled to release on July 9 for the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and on July 10 on Steam. The game puts a spin on the popular Sword Art Online franchise by making you, the player, a main character of the story. The title also features a unique “Death Game” mode inspired by the “in-game death means dying in real life” mechanic of SAO, where getting a game over results in permadeath and deletes all of your save data.
Recently, Famitsu interviewed series producer Yosuke Futami and Echoes of Aincrad head of production Yasuhiro Yahata about the new game, asking them what parts of the original story will be depicted in the game, and how many floors of Aincrad players will actually get to explore.
When asked about whether the game is specifically based on the SAO Progressive spin-off (which digs deeper into the story of Kirito and Asuna clearing each floor of Aincrad), the devs say – not exactly. As Futami explains, the team has incorporated many elements of Progressive into the game while basing it on the beginning of the Aincrad arc. That being said, according to the developers, Echoes of Aincrad will depict only the first and the second floor of the fictional world.
“In the original novel, the Aincrad arc ends with the 75th floor. But since Aincrad’s floors each span across the surface of around 10 square kilometers, if we hypothetically decided to recreate all 100 floors, it would take us around 10 years of development to achieve it,” Futami explains. “Of course, there’s no way we’d make players wait so long, so we decided to summarize the events of the first and the second floor. While an original story will unfold in the game, some episodes from the novel will be taking place in the background.”
Talking about the original approach to the story, Futami highlights how having “normal players” as the protagonists of the game will give the audience a fresh viewpoint of the Aincrad arc – especially when it comes to their perception of Kirito. While everybody knows Kirito is a “good guy,” the producer hints that, from the perspective of the game’s protagonists, he might be taking on more “villainous” role in the story.
On a related note, despite predicting a whopping 10 additional years to cover all floors of Aincrad, Futami says that the Echoes of Aincrad project was kicked off almost 7 years ago, with 4 years of actual development. “We started coming up with the concept of the game around the time the development of Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet had ended, but the project itself was kicked off around 2019. I think it was 2021 when the direction was decided and we actually started production, so I’d say that the actual development period for the game was around 4 years.”
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.
