Ready Player Two

In 2015, in an interview with Den of Geek, screenwriter Zak Penn, who wrote the film adaptation of Ready Player One, reported that Ernest Cline was working on a sequel to the original novel.[7] In December 2017, Cline confirmed that he was working on a sequel.[8] Cline stated that the novel would have a different story-line involving all of the characters, while still exploring pop culture references like the first book.[9] Cline announced further developments following the film adaptation of the first novel and cited its critical and financial success, as well as the studio's interest in adapting a sequel, as additional motivation to finish what he had started.[1] Cline later stated that Steven Spielberg contributed to the writing process of the book.[10] Ready Player Two was published and released on November 24, 2020.[2] The Hollywood Reporter announced that Wil Wheaton would do the audio recording for the book, as he had for Ready Player One.[11] A "treasure hunt" promoting the book was held on the video game platform Roblox.[12]

Nine days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest and the arrest of Nolan Sorrento, Wade Watts is informed about a new technology that Halliday created and never released to the general public. Called "Oasis Neural Interface" (ONI), this technology allows users to not only experience the OASIS with all five senses, but also record their experiences in real life.

Wade quickly becomes addicted to the thrills offered by ONI and reveals its existence to the other members of the High Five. Both Shoto and Aech agree to release the product while Art3mis believes that it would only exacerbate the world's issues by making it easier to escape into the OASIS. She also believes that it is dangerous as using it for longer than 12 hours without a 12 hour rest period can result in severe brain damage. The argument over this leads to her and Wade breaking up, particularly after she discovers that he is recording their fight.

Sales of ONI skyrocket and Wade greatly withdraws from the world around him, including his remaining friends. He also begins to alienate his fans, due to misuse of his admin abilities and antisocial behaviors. Shortly after the ONI's launch when the servers reach 7,777,777 simultaneous users, a new four-line riddle appears in the OASIS, dubbed the "Shard Riddle", involving locating seven shards that would reconstruct the Siren's Soul. Wade offers a billion-dollar reward for information leading to the first shard but it goes unclaimed for two years. Ultimately, he ends up paying another Egg Hunter (a.k.a. "Gunter") named L0hengrin (a.k.a. Lo) for exact details to find it, but only an 'heir' of Halliday's can pick up a shard.

After retrieving the first Shard, Wade sees a portion of memories, realizing that they belong to Karen "Kira" Rosalind Underwood (a.k.a. Leucosia), Ogden's wife with whom Halliday was obsessed. Wade also learns that Halliday created an AI of himself, in the form of his OASIS avatar Anorak. Anorak reveals that he has imprisoned Wade and every OASIS user who is logged in with the ONI hardware - the vast majority of OASIS users - and that any attempts to log out will destroy their brain. Anorak wants Wade to collect the shards so he can have the Siren's Soul for himself. He also proves he’s willing to kill whomever it takes, going so far as to make an unsuccessful attempt on Art3mis's life since she does not use ONI. He also imprisons Ogden Morrow (a.k.a. Og), who was temporarily competing with Wade for the shards. This all horrifies Wade as it clashes with his lionizing of Halliday. During the quest, Wade and Samantha's love for each other slowly starts to heal.

As Wade and his friends retrieve the shards, he glimpses more of Kira's memories and realizes that his vision of Halliday is indeed incorrect, revealing Halliday to be a deeply flawed individual with an inappropriate obsession. Ultimately Wade realizes that ONI units are also capable of copying a person's complete memories, which is how Halliday was able to create Anorak. Wade also realizes that Halliday created a copy of Kira's memories without her knowledge, then kept this copy in a private simulation in hopes that he could make her fall in love with him. Og was alerted to the copy's existence and the full capabilities of the ONI unit only after Halliday's death, after which Og completed a "Dorkslayer" capable of destroying Halliday's AI but can only be used by himself.

Wade and his friends manage to use technology and their wiles to hook Og up to an ONI unit so he can battle Anorak. L0hengrin/Lo obtains the Dorkslayer which Og uses to destroy Anorak, releasing the ONI hostages. But Og dies in the process due to grievous wounds he received while in captivity. A day after the battle, Wade assembles the shards, restoring the AI of Kira. She informs Wade that while Halliday was indeed deeply disturbed, he also came to realize his own depravity after watching all of her memories and seeing himself through her eyes; Anorak's instability was the result of Halliday’s attempts to remove undesirable parts of his personality from the AI, but unedited uploads are as stable as the humans they were copied from, if not more so due to being freed from the stresses of a physical existence.

Wade decides to make a digital copy of Og’s consciousness, as he had used the ONI system for the last battle, as well as digital copies of his own and his friends’ conciousnesses. He gives them the interstellar spaceship he had previously been constructing for himself, and they upload to the ship and take off toward a potentially habitable planet (since they are now functionally immortal) while their original biological selves remain on Earth. Back on Earth, Wade marries Samantha and they are expecting a daughter, which they plan to name Kira after Og's late wife, while his friends also start their own families, all while maintaining a long distance friendship with their digital selves.[13]

The novel has received a more lukewarm reception than its predecessor.[14]

Amit Katwala of Wired labeled the novel a "tedious slog through arcane pop culture references sprinkled in [lazily]," calling it "something that’s very similar to the first book, but much more grating the second time around."[15] Samantha Nelson of The A.V. Club and Tom Jorgensen of IGN gave Ready Player Two a C- and 4/10 respectively, with the latter saying that "inside jokes and clear reverence toward the material keep [it] from feeling like a total misfire" but ended by saying that there is "little heart to be found."[16][17] Felecia Wellington Radel of USA Today also called it a dissatisfying sequel.[18]

Cline's writing was notably negatively received. In his review for Wired, Katwala stated "an AI could write a better book," remarking that "Cline is back with a sequel that has all the same flaws as the original, but few of its plus sides."

An aspect that was noted but disparaged heavily was Cline's treatment race, culture, and identity in regards to gender. Radel stated: "It feels more like geekery gatekeeping than a showing off of knowledge and attempts to display diversity in the race and gender identity of the characters rings hollow, almost offensive. In the sequel, making a point of saying a character could be trans or is Black or gay or Japanese and then assigning stereotypical phrases...then never addressing it again does not equal inclusion." Laura Hudson from Slate noted a sexist undertone to Ready Player Two in the novel's treatment of women: "[There is] the idea that after reliving the recorded memories of women, supposedly clueless men experience a moment of enlightenment and now realize that women are people. It never occurs to [Wade] that he also could have come to the same conclusion about [Halliday's misogyny] by using the greatest empathy machine of all, his brain, and running the...program that is listening to other people and believing them about their experiences."[19]

Readers heavily mocked it upon its first day of release, causing Ready Player Two to trend on Twitter when highly-favorited threads chided passages for their blatant pandering and poor prose.[20] Andy Ihnatko commented that "The opening page is what it's like to be stuck on a four hour flight next to a little kid who wants to tell you knock-knock jokes the whole time."

Michael J. Nelson and Conor Lastowka of the podcast 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back have riffed on the novel's greatest shortcomings starting in November 2020 in episode 89.[21]

In November 2017, Cline acknowledged that the resurgence in his motivation to write Ready Player Two was due to working on the first film's script, as well as its successes both financially and critically. The author stated that a sequel may be desired by the film studio.[1] By March 2018, Cline reiterated this, stating, "I think there's a good chance that, if [Ready Player One] does well, Warner Bros. will want to make a sequel. I don't know if Steven [Spielberg] would want to dive back in, because he would know what he is getting into. He's said that it's the third-hardest film he's made, out of dozens and dozens of movies".[22][23] Co-star Olivia Cooke is contractually attached to return in sequels.[24] The cast and crew also want that to be a possibility as seen in an interview a while back when the movie was made. Director Steven Spielberg says this is a possibility but it can not happen anytime soon. In December 2020, Cline confirmed that a film adaption was in the early stages of development.[6]