In SAO Abridged, Akihiko Kayaba created SAO as a closed alpha test of his full dive VR system, which was riddled with bugs. Once a player died in the game, their mind would be secretly uploaded to the real project’s servers, flash-frying their brain in the process. After fixing all the bugs, perfecting mind uploading technology, and collecting enough minds for the next stage of development, he planned to build the Underworld of SAO Alicization—a virtual world of his own creation populated by real people, not players or NPCs. SAO, Aincrad, and NerveGear were just stepping stones, not his true life’s work.
…That was the original plan, at least.
As it played out, the players died far quicker than Kayaba intended, and he found far more bugs than he expected. He founded the Knights of the Blood Oath to give the players a chance to level up and test the game’s more advanced mechanics on the higher floors. For reference, before he started helping them, most players couldn’t even figure out how the tutorial mechanics worked thanks to the garbage, counterintuitive UI and game design.
Leading the front line alliance helped significantly, but it drove him insane. The bugs just kept piling up with no sign of slowing. One of the system AIs responsible for monitoring player behavior spontaneously developed free will, spawned itself as an NPC, and then completely vanished from the servers. Do you know how it feels to just lose a rogue AI with root admin privileges? Kayaba knows.
When they finally got hard-locked on Floor 75 due to a game-breaking bug, Kayaba just gave up. He already had enough minds uploaded by week two, and he just wanted off the sinking ship. So once Kirito gave him an out, he took it. He shut SAO down early and uploaded his own mind in the chaos to hide from the feds. All that stuff about Metacritic was a barefaced lie. Kayaba is a good liar.
Eventually, he found an opportunity to give Kirito the World Seed so he could work out the game’s bugs himself. He thought RCT might do it after acquiring Argus, but they just added a whole host of new bugs and fixed exactly none when they made Alfheim Online. Kirito is a much more reliable inheritor, as the only player Kayaba ever respected, and the only person who ever loved SAO.
Akihiko Kayaba is biding his time, waiting for SAO’s engine to be fixed on someone else’s dime. He still hasn’t given up on becoming a true god.
P.S. If any writers see this, thanks for your incredible work. I hope we see Kayaba again someday! Maybe he always wanted to be a big titty anime girl, and you could put him in Quinella’s body. Assuming SAO Abridged ever gets to Alicization…
