Re: Kingdom Hearts Union X English Story Won't Be Up To Date When Kingdom Hearts III Launches
Now, if bringing down the entire things sounds like too much, I'd settle for a middle ground solution: un-canonize Ux. Or even better, canonize it, but go back to it being what X was, just a glimpse on the past and the War. Treat it like some sort of Expanded Universe.
In that case then yes, people who don't like it can just walk away and the rest can keep playing.
I think strategically sinking it is the best solution because, as it stands, Ux is setting a new precedent for the series. Keep in mind that all indications are that this is the game that everything post-KH3 will be launched from: consider that if things are this bad
now, how bad are they going to be when Ux is the actual originator of major plot content for the franchise. It's basically going to define the future of KH, and for the past couple of years SE has been pushing and pushing to see just how far the global fandom will go and just how much it will take. Even if Ux itself doesn't go on forever (it probably won't), players who stick with it when they're actively unhappy and feel the game isn't doing anything for them, or isn't doing enough for them, are giving SE the leverage to continue making and running games like it, and implementing similar features, with the knowledge that they'll be able to get fans on board using brand name alone.
So to me, it's more about setting clear boundaries with Disney and SE as to what kinds of risks they can afford to run with the series. Of course it's their IP and they can do whatever they want with it, but they aren't entitled to popular support and if their endgame is to hold the story hostage behind a phone app that doesn't deliver on the promise of the series, I think the audience is accountable for drawing a hard line and making that hard choice to give it up and send a message.
In other words, I don't negotiate with corporations.
And I don't just mean SENA, I mean corporate as a whole. That's why the original Chi ended its PC service and was turned into a mobile game. Square saw the dollar signs in making it a mobile phone game, they marketed it as a crucial addition to the story, fans who were enlivened by the KH3 hype downloaded it quickly, and then the promise of crucial story content was used to get players to stay.
With this in mind, let's take a minute to recognize that the stated justification for developing
Ux at the time was to make the story of browser
X accessible to the international audience. Then it took forever to localize, which was the first indication that there was a disconnect between what Nomura et al. had advocated and what was actually taking place. Cut to two (and a half) years later, and the new narrative is that the story shouldn't really be of concern to global audiences even as Nomura is emerging with even stronger indications that the story of Unchained is more significant than ever: I don't know that there has ever been a through line from Nomura's stated intentions to SE's output with reference to this title.
That's not to say I believe that Nomura is naive to all this, I'd disagree with you there. As director of the series, he signs off on all this nonsense, and the buck stops with him. And even if he isn't micromanaging the Ux team, by now he must be aware of the regular mistreatment of Western players, the notable discrepancies between the Japanese and global versions, and of course is directly involved in pushing out new story content using this structure in spite of the problems it presents for those of us on the receiving end-- on the contrary, I think he views Ux as his little pet project and he is willing to spite the fanbase in order to drive it towards success, which is why he made it canon in the first place. He knew he wasn't going to get enough people on board with a true spinoff title,
especially one that operates under the slot machine style, profit-driven chaos of gacha gaming, with which a lot of non-Japanese mobile gamers have little familiarity and are probably averse to on principle. If it wasn't a KH game, how many of us would be actively seeking this kind of thing out? I could always be wrong, but again, I operate under the suspicion that a lot, like a lot a lot, of people don't stick with Ux because it's what they've always wanted out of a KH game: they stick with it because it's a KH game. And Square is just going to continue manipulating that tendency fans have to forgive their favorite franchise as long as it has the leverage to do so.
