At Tokyo Game Show 2019, a special stage event was held for the Sword Art Online franchise, so naturally there was some news for their upcoming console game, Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris. First off, Yosuke Futami (the SAO Gameverse producer) said they would not give an official release date yet. Second, he confirmed that the game would be in a separate canon from the light novels/anime. Based on the slide shown, it appears the branching point occurs at what would be the 24th episode of the Alicization anime. The events of the light novels/anime canon lead into the War of Underworld anime while the events of Alicization Lycoris lead into a different path.
After this, they showcased some gameplay. The gameplay shown consists of material already shown in a Dengeki stream from September 12. You can check out the 10 minutes of gameplay from the 9/12 stream below (thanks to Gamerturk).
It was also announced that Ronye, Tiese, Cardinal and Selka would appear in the game. Their character models were revealed and some in-game clips were shown for Ronye, Tiese and Cardinal. You can check that out below.
【SAOAL】
TGSのSAOゲームステージで先行公開された
「ロニエ」「ティーゼ」「カーディナル」のキャラクター紹介動画を公開！#SAO #SAOAL pic.twitter.com/Nip7BBDvqo— ソードアート・オンライン ゲーム公式情報 (@sao_gameinfo) September 14, 2019
After this, a collector’s edition for Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris was revealed. This edition will include Drama CD’s for the first time ever and recording for them is not complete yet. You can check out the Collector’s Edition below.
Some other things to take note of:
- Dengeki Bunko Autumn Festival takes place on October 6, 2019 and more information for the game will be revealed there.
- Edith Synthesis Ten (CV. Kana Hanazawa), an original character introduced in the upcoming mobile game Alicization Rising Steel, will appear in Alicization Lycoris.
The candidates for the costume design contest were also revealed for each region. There are 3 costumes per region and fans can vote for their favorite one. You can check them out below. Voting has already begun for the candidates in Japan.
At the end of the event after the guests exited the stage, a brand new PV was shown for Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris. The PV featured a mix of in-game cutscenes and some keyframes from scenes still in-development. You can check that out below.
Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is set to launch for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC via Steam. You can check out more information on the game at its official website HERE and the game series’ official Twitter account HERE.
