In 2022, a MMORPG called Sword Art Online was released for the NerveGear, a VR headset that controls game worlds via capturing brain waves. On November 6, 10000 players log into SAO’s launch build for the first time, only to discover that the only way to log out is to beat all 100 floors of the game, and that players who die in the game will die in real life. A certain player dressed in black named Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya was a participant in SAO’s closed beta test, and he is determined to make it out alive. (adapted from Wikipedia)
While most of SAO’s runtime takes place in the worlds of its games, all of its real-world sequences draw from actual landmarks like the Imperial Palace East Garden, minus some of the science fiction angles. Being an ‘AR’ story, Ordinal Scale in particular places a lot of weight on real Tokyo landmarks like Akihabara UDX, the Tokyo Dome, and Yoyogi Park. GGO Alternative also features some spots in Hokkaido.
