Dengeki Online held an around 9 hours long stream on October 6, titled the “Dengeki Bunko Aki no Nama Housou Festival”. The stream had plenty of new announcements regarding franchises linked to Dengeki. Most notably, a new anime season ofThe Irregular at Magic High Schoolgot announced for 2020, along with an anime forMaou Gakuin no Futeki Gousha. But you’ll be able to read about all that in detail on other anime sites, and we’re here instead to report on theSword Art Online Alicization Lycorispart of the stream.
TheSword Art Online Alicization Lycoriscorner featured Kirito’s seiyuu Yoshitsugu Matsuoka and Alice’s seiyuu Ai Kayano.Alicization Lycoris’s Producers Yousuke Futami and Taiichi Kawai were present as well. They revealed new tidbits of info on the game and some short live gameplay featuring Asuna:
The live gameplay features a boss fight against a giant plant monster. They mentioned how the boss has infinite HP for testing purposes, hence why it never dies. Producer Futami mentioned how they focused on giving Asuna a speed-focused fighting style to fit her “Asuna The Flash” nickname.
Producer Yousuke Futami explained howAlicization Lycoris' story follows the first anime season ofSAO Alicizationbut has some major divergences at some point. Hence whyAsuna makes an appearance so early in theAlicizationarc. So you can have a party with Asuna, Alice, Eugeo and Kirito together, something which shouldn’t be possible.
Producer Futami explained how Asuna is also appearing under a different design than in the anime, and basically we’ll have to play the game to figure out what’s going on.
Producer Futami also stated howSAOAlicization Lycoris' “dubbing is pretty much done”. It’s important to note Bandai Namco didn’t give an estimate for release. Not even a simple “2020”. This is just a guess, but I think the dubbing being pretty much done implies that they’ve advanced quite a bit into development. I’d say the game will probably launch in the early second half of 2020.
Shortly after the first sequence, we got to see a little bit more gameplay, with this time Matsuoka controlling Asuna:
Lastly, they revealed which designs won thefan costume contest:
From left to right, we have the winning costumes in the “Japan” category, “America”, “Asia” and “Other parts of the world”. Ai Kayano commented Alice’s costumes, saying she likes the Japanese one a lot and how it mixes cuteness with sexiness. And she also liked the American one and noted it’s interesting how it feels like a Japanese person designed it instead.
These four costumes will be first print bonuses in the Japanese version of the game. In the west, we should get them as free DLC in the digital version. The designers of these four costumes will also have their names (or nicknames if they’d rather wish so) appear in the game’s credits.Update:Bandai Namco confirmed the costumes are preorder bonuses.
Lastly, a very short gameplay video featuring Asuna was also posted on theSAOgames official Twitter. You can find it below.
Sword Art Online Alicization Lycorisis scheduled to launch someday for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The game will also feature anoriginal character named Medina.
