In case you missed it (and I’m not sure how you would), Kingdom Hearts III was officially announced at Sony’s E3 Conference last week, complete with a debut trailer. Now, sure, it may still be a ways off, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get excited. Famitsu (via Polygon) managed to get a hold of Director Tetsuya Nomura and get some more details about the game.
For starters, Kingdom Hearts III picks up where the 3DS title, Dream Drop Distance, left off. Said Nomura, “We’re proceeding along with which worlds we’ll be selecting for the game. It’s the final episode in the ‘Dark Seeker’ saga that began with the original KH, and it’ll depict the final battle with Xehanort.”
In the aforementioned debut trailer, you may have noticed that Sora, the Heartless and the rest of the game looked a lot different; this is a result of Nomura and the rest of the dev team trying to decide on how the game should look.
“Should we go for a more realistic look like in recent projects, or try something else?” he said. “Along the way, we remembered that these KH characters were originally paintbrush art from Disney productions, a texture that was one of our original aims, and that it was time to return to that. So [chief creative director Takeshi] Nozue went through a series of tests, and the results are the visuals that we refer to in the team as the Kingdom Shader. It may look like a pretty drastic change, but I see it as a rich evolution of everything we’ve shown you up to now.”
Nomura continued by talking about the gameplay of Kingdom Hearts III, which may become ‘even crazier’ that what we’re already used to.
“We have a demo version running on the actual hardware, but the action’s pretty frantic. The really bold action we’ve always had is getting even crazier. KH3 has three-person parties, but NPCs and other characters join the fight in each individual world, and the resulting action is really flashy and exciting. The enemy AI is a lot more intricate, too, and I think the gameplay will reflect that new dynamic balance. For example, there’s a foe that’s shaped like a vehicle, and Sora may jump on it and fly around; that’s already implemented.”
Kingdom Hearts III is still pretty early in its development (as stated in the trailer) and even Nomura addressed this while talking to Famitsu; even mentioning that the teams working on Final Fantasy XV and KH3 are well aware of one another.
“They’re constantly honing their work at this point in development. Even though KH3 is still pretty early in development, it’s already producing some great scenes in Square Enix’s internal conferences. We’re discussing new developments never seen in any KH before, so keep an eye on further updates.”
And this news is all well and good, but when is the next time we could see Kingdom Hearts III? Well, according to Nomura, the title could appear at TGS in the Fall or D23 in Japan in October. So close, but still so incredibly far away. But that’s okay, because at least it’s been announced and is being worked on, right?