any thoughts on duel links lore?
Seto Kaiba built a detailed virtual reality simulation and filled it with AI reconstructions of everyone he knows, including several dead people. It's repeatedly implied if not outright stated that not a single character in this game, besides DSoD Kaiba and Mokuba, are real. A few of them are aware that they are not real or at least have an inkling something is off (Yami Bakura directly compares himself to a ttrpg NPC; Ishizu realizes she shouldn't have the necklace back and is disturbed and upset to be "re-living" a portion of her life she seems to know should be over), while the vast majority are earnestly under the impression that they're just themselves playing a game. Several of them don't seem to understand where they are at all. The fact that the spin-offs are involved implies serious distortions of time, space, and dimension, which isn't mere gameplay abstraction but are directly acknowledged by the characters.
This is insane lore to put into a mobile game designed to let Konami get microtransactions. This isn't movie lore or anything. This is specifically DL lore. This is the entire premise of the game.
Now, if I may be permitted, I will theorycraft for a moment about why:
DSoD Kaiba states, in-game, (and remember, he and Mokuba are the only people who are real), that he cannot give up until Atem gets there, the real one. The lore of DL actually builds pretty consistently on top of everything we already know is achievable in DSoD and Transcend Game. VR simulations, warping or traveling through dimensions, and rebuilding your friends as AI. None of it is new. These are all things we already knew Kaiba knows how or at least wants to do. If Kaiba wanted to smash open dimensional barriers, it wouldn't shock me for him to do it inside a videogame first. Sounds a lot safer, if you're still testing the waters.
Now, if we draw this into the larger lore of TG and DSoD, it's implicit that Kaiba's afterlife trip in the stinger is based off of the cube, substituting the collective consciousness of the kids playing the game he built in TG to power it now that the Plana is gone. That VR game, Duel Links, is of the same name as the one you're playing.
I will say that again: I believe that Duel Links, the mobile game, takes place after DSoD but before the stinger, and that as strongly implied in canon, he is using players to power it.
If you are playing Duel Links (yes, you), then Seto Kaiba is using your brain waves.
And once he has enough, he's going to go see Atem again.
anyway, $1.99 per virtual card pack!
