A hands-on exhibition of “Sword Art Online” will be held, and with VR, you can even participate in “boss battles”!
Sword Art Online – Ex Chronicle – Online Edition” will be held from November 20 to December 7, 2021. The event will be held from November 20 to December 7, 2021. The event will be held from November 20 to December 7, 2021.
|Enjoy the vast number of exhibits in the “virtual space”.
In “Sword Art Online” (from now on referred to as “SAO”), a media mix work that is also very popular overseas, the main character Kirito and his friends are trapped in the VR game “SAO,” which is set in the year 2022. From November 20, 2021 (Saturday) to December 7, 2021 (Tuesday), “Sword Art Online – Ex Chronicle – Online Edition” will be held.
The event will be held at two venues: a smartphone/PC venue that can be enjoyed with a web browser and a VR venue that requires a VR headset. The event will be held at two venues: the Smartphone/PC venue, where you can enjoy it with a web browser, and the VR venue, where you need a VR headset. In this issue, we will report on the “VR venue” that we visited during the press conference held before the opening.
When you put on your VR headset and log in, you will find yourself in the “City of Beginnings,” which is inspired by the town square of the same name in “Floating Castle Aincrad,” the first stage of “SAO. This city is a free area, and anyone can log in after the official opening.
Three exhibition areas require a paid ticket: the Steel Castle, the Underground Labyrinth, and the Research Facility. When you approach the transition gate of the “City of Beginnings,” the familiar “SAO” fan Yui will appear in front of you and start talking (CV Kanae Ito). In the form of a tiny fairy, the AI Yui is also very active in the exhibition area. She follows the user’s movements and provides cute commentary as a voice guide in front of specific exhibits.
The “Steel Castle” is an exhibition area based on the “Floating Castle Aincrad,” divided into four levels, with the walls of each group displaying settings from the “Aincrad Arc” to the theatrical version of “Ordinal Scale.” When you enter the cylindrical “installation area” in the center of the tower, countless setting images fill the walls and rotate around you. The photos change at regular intervals, allowing visitors to view a vast amount of material that would be impossible to see in a virtual exhibition.
The “Underground Labyrinth,” as the name suggests, is a long dungeon with pictures of scenes displayed on the walls. At the most profound part is a four-screen theater room where you can enjoy a video of the adventures of Kirito, the Black Swordsman. This is a reconstruction of the 360° video so popular at the Tokyo and Kyoto venues. You can enjoy many famous scenes familiar to fans with a sense of realism and immersion that only a VR space can provide. At the location where Sachi and Yuki appeared, my VR goggles almost fogged up with tears. ……
|Join forces with your friends and challenge the boss battle!
The “Research Facility” area consists of a tunnel with images on four sides (walls, floor, and ceiling) and a room with the motif of the “Ocean Turtle” research facility that appeared in the theatrical version of “Ordinal Scale. When you get close to the scenes shown on the tunnel walls, the images start to move, and you can enjoy the video as well.
In the futuristic room at the end of the tunnel, materials from the “Alicization Arc” are displayed. Among them are 3D models of the Sword of the Night Sky, the Sword of the Blue Rose, and the Sword of the Golden Rhinoceros, which you can hold in your hands at the VR venue. When you swing the sword, the unique effects of the sword are also generated. These weapons can also be taken out of the “research facility” and used as powerful weapons in the VR-only area “Boss Battle” introduced at the end of this article.
The Boss Battle is an action game where you face off against The Skull Reaper, Aincrad’s 75th layer boss monster. You can also fight in cooperation with other players in the same room. In front of the room where the boss awaits, some swords and guns can be used to attack from a distance. This is a free area, just like the “City of Beginnings,” so you can enjoy it if you have a VR device.
The tickets for “Sword Art Online – Ex Chronicle – Online Edition” are divided into three periods (A to C), and you can enter the exhibition 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no limit to the number of times you can enter within the purchased period. There is also a full ticket valid for all three periods so that you can enjoy the vast amount of material on display to your heart’s content.
Also, although this is a feature only available in the “VR Venue,” users who share a password and enter the same instance (same VR space) can use voice chat with each other. You can enjoy talking about “SAO” with your fellow fans to your heart’s content without worrying about your surroundings.
This time, after experiencing the “VR Venue,” I logged into the “Smartphone/PC Venue” as well. This is a solo mode only, so you can’t view the exhibits with other users, and some gimmicks such as “holding a weapon” are omitted, but most of the shows can be enjoyed in the same way as the VR venue. If you are prone to “VR sickness” and want to enjoy it for a long time, you may want to go to the “Smartphone/PC venue.”
Nevertheless, if you can prepare a viewing environment, I would like you to log in to the “VR venue.” The “full-dive technology” that connects all five senses to the virtual space in the setting of “SAO” has not yet been realized, so that this event will be a visual and auditory experience only. Still, the immersive feeling of the “VR venue” cannot be experienced in the real world. The sensation of enjoying an online exhibition with your friends is also fresh, and fans will indeed find themselves “full-diving” into the world of “SAO” in their hearts.
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