I can't believe I'm going to say this, but SAO:Alicization actually sort of did that, with a driving theme of "the artificial human souls in this simulated world are still ultimately human and deserve their own liberation and safety, while the imperialist warmongers fucking with them to make automated weapons are ontologically evil". It even made the point that the "evil" races of the world were also still literally just people who were being forced into a role they didn't want and in fact actively rebelled against.
It's just that it's still SAO and has more of the other kind of SA than ever before too. But on the other hand it does have Kirito depowered and/or in a coma for like 95% of it.
It's not good by any measure, but it's the least bad that mainline SAO ever was. It's an enjoyable hate-watch that somehow ends up with sort of ok major themes to it.