Ahead of Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization’s release on November 8 in the West for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, Producer Yosuke Futami was interviewed by Gematsu. In their talk, he revealed that Hollow Realization’s main game is about 30 to 40 hours, and doing everything will take more than 70 hours:
If you just play through the main game, it’s about 30 to 40 hours. Of course, including replayability elements like leveling up to the maximum level, doing all the quests and such, then it’s going to be about 70 to 100 hours of gameplay.
There’s also a post-launch update that will add around 15 to 20 hours of gameplay, and three DLC packs that will each add roughly the same amount of content (in terms of volume) as the update.
Hollow Realization only lets you take control of Kirito, while everyone else is a party member you can give commands to during battle. According to Futami, the amount of characters you can recruit led to this decision. “It takes time to put together your best party members – there’s over 300 to recruit – and if you could control the other party members, I don’t think you’d have the time to find your best to develop and organize,” he said.
They also wanted to create a game where Kirito starts from level 1, and trying to max out his level and skills will take upwards of 60 hours. “If you tried to do that for a bunch of other playable characters, it would take a really long time,” he added.
Asked how the PS Vita version of Hollow Realization is coming along, Futami said, “For the PS Vita version, of course there is a difference in the hardware, so things such as graphics and frame-rate are a little bit downgraded from PlayStation 4.” Other than that, you can expect the same “MMORPG-like gameplay experience” on both platforms.
For the future of Sword Art Online on PS Vita, Futami is still considering the platform “this year and next year, but after that, maybe we need to shift our focus to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam. Maybe I’ll need to focus mainly on those three platforms to create Sword Art Online games. Of course, this is still all just consideration.”
Futami also said that he thinks the future of virtual reality is really bright and he hopes he can “do something involving virtual reality at some point.”
[Source: Gematsu]
