Sword Art Online

[Kraco]

Episode 3 at 21:45. He opens up a folder containing 3 pics, two of which were X'd out in red and the third was Sinon. He reaches out to caress it in creepy bad guy fashion and cracks a typical "i'm gonna do bad things" smile.

Sort of interesting he seemingly isn't going after Sinon right now, unless what's happening in this episode is only theater and he knows Kirito & Sinon are watching, like I said earlier. Another interesting thing is that if you watch until 21:57 of that same ep 3, another picture has appeared right of Sinon's, though it's not shown fully, so it's a mystery who's that target. It's not just reordering of the same three, though, but a new one. So, he does have more targets preselected, possibly as many as we saw shadows behind the three clear cards at 21:45. He might also not be overly methodological, and those photos could be merely any people he thought interesting at any point, even if not in a lethal manner.

[Crash]

I'm sure he does have other targets. His primary motivation, aside from straight up psychosis, is showing the "strong" people what "true power" is. He's clearly just looking to be renowned/feared/legendary ect. His very public show he made in the beginning is evidence of that. How he chooses the order he takes them, if he even does, is a mystery. He may just take them when he has the opportunity. Then again going by previous events i'm not even sure why he's entering the tournament to begin with. He killed the first guy simply by firing at the screen of a live feed, so why the hell isn't he just standing with the spectators busting off shots at every screen in front of the crowd so they can watch them magically keel over one by one?

None of it makes a great deal of sense, but that's just fine i'm just here for the cool fight scenes anyway.

[Kraco]

Then again going by previous events i'm not even sure why he's entering the tournament to begin with. He killed the first guy simply by firing at the screen of a live feed, so why the hell isn't he just standing with the spectators busting off shots at every screen in front of the crowd so they can watch them magically keel over one by one?

None of it makes a great deal of sense, but that's just fine i'm just here for the cool fight scenes anyway.

I reckon the previous victim could have been either a spur of the moment, that is, he got pissed off by the dude's attitude watching the show, or, in the end, there's not really that many choices as long as he wanted to slay the man during the live feed. It's not like he could have invaded the virtual studio in a sensible manner, most likely. However, Death Gun undoubtly enjoys GGO. He has the super rare silenced sniper rifle, for example, so he must have been playing for a while and found the whatever boss that dropped it. It makes sense he would then enter tournaments as well. I imagine he doesn't kill the small fries of the initial matches for real, only specific targets in the finals. If he finds them interesting enough to kill.

[DarthEnderX]

On rewatching, I still got a different type of creeper vibe from it. More Fatal Attraction and less "The Most Dangerous Game".

Sure. But it doesn't change the fact that he has her on a list along with two people he's already eliminated.

He has the super rare silenced sniper rifle, for example, so he must have been playing for a while and found the whatever boss that dropped it.

Or he's just cheating.

I'm guessing that the guy that has a gun that kills people in the real world is PROBABLY hacking the game somehow. Since I sure as shit don't think the developers put it in there(unless he IS one of the developers of course).

[Kraco]

Or he's just cheating.

I'm guessing that the guy that has a gun that kills people in the real world is PROBABLY hacking the game somehow. Since I sure as shit don't think the developers put it in there(unless he IS one of the developers of course).

Yeah, but there's a distinct difference. Unless the company intended there to be a psychopath in the game who would go around killing players for real (a really smart business move), then they would be as much in the dark about all this as the Japanese officials. However, if a player finds a way to open the console and type "addItem silenced_sniper_rifle 1", it would be something the company admins would be actively monitoring and cautious about as it would be 100% regular cheating and exploiting the system bugs. Death Gun would be banned, which wouldn't serve his purposes. I also really hope he's not so petty that despite being a SAO survivor, he couldn't actually play at all but would instead cheat all the time. He wouldn't be a proper psycho killer hacker anymore, he would be a murderous school bully script kiddie.

[DarthEnderX]

One would think that the FIRST thing that a superhacker that can kill people in the real world would do is make his activities invisible to admins and such.

I mean, seriously, you're overthinking it again. If he's a good enough hacker to send death signals through the internet, then he can damn sure spawn a gun without the administrators seeing it.

[David75]

Hide his presence, have multiple accounts. It's "do it all" plot tool...
Anything is possible then, like in SAO.

[shinta|hikari]

you're overthinking it again.

I think this applies to most of the posts in this thread.

[Kraco]

I mean, seriously, you're overthinking it again. If he's a good enough hacker to send death signals through the internet, then he can damn sure spawn a gun without the administrators seeing it.

That's my point: The admins would have absolutely no reason to monitor death signals through the Internet (nobody even believes in such at this point). But they have every reason to keep an eye on rare weapons suddenly appearing here and there and other such ordinary cheater prone things.

Of course he might have ways to avoid that, and everything else, but like David said, then this would be yet another fight against a game administrator. That would make a laughably circular plot.

[KrayZ33]

I mean, seriously, you're overthinking it again. If he's a good enough hacker to send death signals through the internet, then he can damn sure spawn a gun without the administrators seeing it.

It's not that easy, you might be able to spawn/dupe loot, but its much less possible (I'm not going to say its impossible, but I wouldn't know) to hide their existence - after all, you yourself are telling the server that these items exist after you create/spawn them

edit: makes me wonder how the client-server-modell works with NerveGear, since it's using your brain input or something, is it even possible to run additional programs on it just like that? Is it connected to a PC just like a controller?

[DarthEnderX]

It's not that easy

Yes but, literally EVERYTHING is an easier hack compared to "kill someone over the internet". Since we already know he can do that, then assuming it is hacking, ANYTHING else is within his capabilities.

[KrayZ33]

True,


well...the thought of him sending "death signals" over the internet is absurd anyway and not even worth considering

1. The Amusphere can't damage the brain (so death through hardware failure caused by hacking is out of the question)
2. The company that designed the Amusphere has most likely nothing to do with the company that is running GGO and so far, the only game that experienced something like this was GGO - this is odd
3. They explicitly mentioned that there was nothing wrong with the brain
4. Both cases had heart failures
5. How is it even possible for him to access a very specific client through a game network.... it's not a peer-to-peer network. I might be spouting nonesense here because I'm not Zero Cool and I can't explain it well but wouldn't you need access to the server, then plod through a ton of data sent by whatever huge amount of clients, then determine (I don't think thats possible) that datapackage X belongs to Zexceed and change the datapackage Y that is sent from the *server* to do something odd to Zexceed's Amusphere

the killing itself is a mystery... so far I don't see how Death Gun is able to do this

[Kraco]

Yes but, literally EVERYTHING is an easier hack compared to "kill someone over the internet". Since we already know he can do that, then assuming it is hacking, ANYTHING else is within his capabilities.

I don't see why. If he's indeed doing it over the net and not by finding out who the players are in RL and having a buddy break in to drop some cardiac arrest poison in the players mouth, then it could be either extremely difficult or not difficult at all. Obviously it's a huge weakness in the system, both the GGO game and the headgear hardware, to be exploited. Once the method is established, it not necessarily any harder than summoning a rare gun by cheating. Only nobody's looking for any injected commands that kill a player.

Also, I don't see how a player who couldn't even get a gun normally would go around killing others for thinking they are so mighty players. Death Gun would be motivated by game envy, huh? Couldn't get much more pitiful. I really hope that's not the case.

[Ryllharu]

edit: makes me wonder how the client-server-modell works with NerveGear, since it's using your brain input or something, is it even possible to run additional programs on it just like that? Is it connected to a PC just like a controller?

My understanding from the ALO arc was that the game data is from the server, but your stats and inventory is actually stored locally (or at least can be). That's how Yui was transferred to ALO, and how a player's stats pass to each game spawned from The Seed.

But local inventory might be only the NervGear, the newer model doesn't seem to have the local storage, or the brain-frying microwave emitters.

[DarthEnderX]

I might be spouting nonesense here because I'm not Zero Cool and I can't explain it well but wouldn't you need access to the server

Sure you would. Except this series almost certainly runs on Hollywood Hacking.

[Buffalobiian]

The mechanism of killing that was speculated was that the device would send some form of "panic attack" signal to the brain and you'd run tachycardic for a while before dying of cardiac failure, right?

[Kraco]

Episode 9 - HS






- - - - - - - -



I feel like nothing short of Kirito having used Sinon as a bait will suffice after this. Death Gun is so much better prepared for his mission than Kirito who came out of nowhere as a total GGO n00b. The silenced rifle and now a chameleon cloak. He's accepting no unnecessary risks.

Kirito and Sinon, however... All those assumptions were hilarious, as well as strolling around like there could be no worries in the world. Kirito allowing Sinon to convince him, despite the fact Sinon is playing a game, Kirito is aiding the government to hunt down a murderer. Actually it's kind of funny the ministry dude did absolutely nothing to help Kirito. Maybe he's the fricking Death Gun... You'd think he could have spent some tax payers money to get Kirito good equipment. I imagine it's not necessarily a pay to win game, but enough RL currency and most regular players would have donated good stuff. But no. He will probably deny knowing anything when Asuna contacts him. At least he should.

[David75]

That episode ending came as a real surprise. It's a masterpiece we've never seen before... In the scenarists/novelist head I guess...

That aside, the gun being the same model as in Sinon tragedy, sadly takes us back to the very bad storyline I depicted days ago.

[Buffalobiian]

He's a sniper so he'll do badly on an open plain? Open plains are the best places to snipe in (assuming there's enough distance and your target is also on said open plain). Urban chokepoints are only good when you know someone would move through there.

[MasterOfMoogles]

Well, in GGO, if you can see the sniper and his aim lines, you can just dodge everything, so it would be terrible. Also, there would be no cover to use to get away after making your shot.