Lore and Setting

## Past Lore

In the year 2027, technology had slowly but gradually advanced with time, and video gamers everywhere grew bored and tired of the traditional console and computer games, no longer content with just sitting in front of a screen using a controller(or keyboard+mouse) to control their characters. Because of this, Virtual Reality had been the norm for the last half a decade, and in the last year it still proved not to be enough, as even the more advanced headsets are still just that, headsets... They produce sound and carry it into the player's ears, while holding a screen shaped as goggles directly in front of the user's eyes, and sure it even reacts to the player moving their head and body around while wearing the headset, but at the end of the day, it still required the player moving around in the real world just to see and hear the game... Nothing more than a slight evolution from consoles and computers.

Then at the end of 2028, just a month before Christmas, out came a big announcement, a breakthrough in technology made by Virtech Industries, a company dedicated in the research and improvement of Virtual Reality Technology. The owner, CEO and founder himself, Kyuma Yamashita had long been obsessed with Virtual Reality, having started his research into it long before the more recent boom of interest from the general public.

In the year 2029, the breakthrough resulted in the NerveGear, a helmet capable of interacting with the electrical impulses in the brain, allowing players to just put the helmet on their head, go to bed and enter a whole new universe, that of Virtual Reality, while leaving their bodies behind... Finally interacting with all the senses, not just hearing and sight, free from fears of crashing into walls and breaking things.

Trial experiments and beta tests proved that the NerveGear worked better than expected... So it only needed a game to use it... Of course, none existed, but rather than having Virtech license video gaming companies to produce and market games for the NerveGear, Kyuma Yamashita, already having more money than he needed, decided to create the game himself, with a team of engineers of course... So it already promised to be the best game to date, by large margins.

A year later(2030) and the game was complete, yet Kyuma did not release it, claiming in interviews and press releases that "something feels missing in it". No one knew what he meant, and another year passed by, with minor improvements done to the game in the meantime Kyuma tried to figure out just what was missing from it.

Now in the present time, 3rd of November 2031, exactly 3 years since the breakthrough was announced... Kyuma made another sudden and ground breaking announcement... **Unbound Arc Online** is ready to be released! What was the mystery addition that finally fixed it? Nobody knew, but all were sure it had been added, because no amount of public pressure ever made a dent in Kyuma's resolve to complete the game before release. Kyuma never revealed to the public what that addition was, not even his own engineering and production team knew about it, the world's best kept secret! Of course, those who play UAO will find out after logging in, that is all that was promised... And the promise gets delivered!

## Post Launch

Throughout the rest of November, several thousands of NerveGears were sold worldwide, not selling more due only to stock limitations. On December 1st, 2031, UAO was sold online and in stores to all those who had purchased NerveGears, and so on December 2nd 2031, a Tuesday like any other, thousands of players logged into UAO for the first time, experiencing the beauty of true VR... And then just minutes into the game, they were pulled into a large plaza area, muted and frozen in place to hear the most important announcement of their lives... One given by Kyuma Yamashita's holographic avatar: There is no logout button, death in game means death in real life, and if those outside disconnect someone from the game, the disconnected user also dies... And so the death game began.

Sales for NerveGear continued for a couple of hours more before people in the outside world were informed of Kyuma's plans, by Kyuma himself... An attempt at lowering the casualties from random disconnects, though a lot of people didn't listen, dwindling down UAO's player-base numbers and proving Kyuma's words to be true. With the truth out, all future sales of the NerveGear and UAO were completely cancelled and forbidden... But it was already too late for those stuck inside.

Players still stuck in the game were moved to secure government locations where they were kept alive for however long the game lasts... Or until they die in the game. Now, the ones outside can only wait and monitor, nothing else. Those in the game, all they can do is choose... Either end it on their own terms; or live a peaceful live inside of the beautiful world of UAO... Or take on Kyuma's challenge: "Clear all 100 Floors of UAO and you will find me at the end. Defeat me there, and you will be set free."

## Setting

UAO is a Virtual Reality game to the death. What in UAO is called a "Floor", is actually a realm of its own, which can be of many different sizes... Some are as big as a country, others are the size of a continent, and some are even tiny planets (the size of the moon, for example). The setting within each Floor can change drastically from the previous/next Floor, one can be a medieval/dark age setting, the next can be a highly futuristic yet dystopian collection of cities, and anything else in between, even defying the laws of physics, nature, logic and the likes... It is a universe made of Virtual Reality after all, following its own rules and no other.

Each Floor is not (always/necessarily) physically connected to the other Floors, instead using magical gates to cross from one Floor into the next... But said gate is guarded by a Floor Boss, a raid monster capable of incredible feats and very hard to take down.

Even when there are physical ways to cross from one Floor into the next, players are unable to do it before defeating the Floor Boss, even if the way is clear and in front of them, held back by an invisible force field that will not allow them to progress any further until the Floor Boss dies. Most NPCs are not affected by this barrier, allowing them to come and go between Floors as they please... Unless the NPC believes to be a Human Player, programmed that way, they would experience the same thing a player would when trying to enter a locked Floor... This means it's impossible to prove if a Villain is Human or not, because they too can't cross into locked Floors... They might be Humans, they might be highly advanced AI-ran NPCs programmed to think they are Human and have fake memories of a fake life in the real world, coded into them to further sell that lie... Actually, the same can be said of all players, can it not?

## Beta Testers

Though there were trial experiments of the NerveGear, UAO itself was never Beta-Tested by outsiders, just closed alpha-testing by official select Virtech employees. The trial experiments were also limited, just walking on a sidewalk, beach or field of grass, swimming in an ocean, running and little more than that, no actual UAO game elements at work. Because of all of that, every player receives this new beautiful experience when starting to play UAO after the official release.