The VR “Online RPG” Age of Heroes could be a step towards Sword Art Online. But this future is still a long way off.
In the anime “Sword Art Online”, the virtual reality of an MMORPG becomes reality for its players. The popular anime revolves around the “Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game” Sword Art Online.
Players immerse themselves in this fantasy world, become the heroes and characters they play, experience adventures there, and can no longer log out. Those who die in the game are also dead in real life. The complete virtual experience.
Sword Art Online – the dream
For some, what is described in the anime is the complete merging with a character in a fantasy world, a beautiful dream, an ideal concept. Escapism in its purest form to escape the banalities of everyday life.
When IBM announced in 2016 as part of a promotional campaign that they would create a kind of demo for “Sword Art Online”, a fan said he would give 100 years of his life just to spend 1 year in Sword Art Online.
Yet Sword Art Online was written in 2002 and takes place in the then-distant future, in the year 2022.
In the real year 2017, virtual reality is still in its infancy. Most “Virtual Reality” games are experiments and simulate movements or simple activities. We are still some way from an immersive world. But: There are advances.
Age of Heroes Greenlight on Steam
The Chinese developer Omnigames has presented a “Multiplayer Co-Op RPG”. It’s called Age of Heroes. There are four classes. With Mage, Warlock, Archer or Priest, players explore a fantasy world. There are dungeon crawls, spells and battles.
In a video about the game, you can see how the player performs gestures in the real world and then casts spells, draws the bow, or strikes with their character. The developer estimates the gameplay duration of his game at 90 minutes.
Still a good way from “Sword Art Online”, but it is a step in that direction that fans yearn for. Age of Heroes has at least received Greenlight on Steam. Here is the Greenlight page for Age of Heroes.
Age of Heroes is being developed for Oculus Rift, Vive and PlayStation VR.
What you can currently play on the relatively inexpensive PSVR, we demonstrate here:
PlayStation VR: The best games of 2017 – These PSVR games we are looking forward to
