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My thoughts on the Kingdom hearts 3 ending and Nomura SPOILERS



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Sync645

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First I wanted to apologize since this will be a bit of a rant. So please hear me out before attacking and understand this is my opinion. I'm open to discussing things. The ending for Kingdom Hearts 3 has left me questioning my stance on the franchise going forward and if I even want to take the time to play the game. I play this games primarily for the story and this game is a let down on so many levels in that department. Nomura claimed this game would at least wrap up Sora's story. I expected some sequel tease but for a new story and set of characters. We are left with so many unanswered questions and a dissatisfying ending. To make matters worse we're sequel baited incredibly hard. It's also lazy writing on Nomura's part. Sora leaves to find Kairi then suddenly we see them together before Sora disappears. We aren't told how he found her or why he disappeared or if what we're seeing really was her back. It's just left there unexplained and it's is definitely not a wrap to Sora's story. Now we have to wait and hope the next game does wrap things up there are so many ways this could of been written better and still set up a sequel while still giving people a conclusion if they wanted to stop here the epilogue just sequel baits us more and still leaves so many things unanswered. I expect the secret ending to do the same as well. This is just disappointing for how long we were kept waiting for this. I'm not sure if I want to stick with the franchise going forward if Nomura is involved. I've excepted the convoluted story in the past games hoping he would land the story to a good conclusion here. Instead he lands it lazily and sequel baits hard. This story has to end at some point and this was the perfect time and it's disrespectful to the fans who have waited and stuck with this franchise. On to my thoughts with Nomura himself. I'll admit I've never really been a fan of him as a person. In interviews he's always rubbed me in the wrong way but his recent interview pushed me over. His statements on worldwide releases are inconsiderate to the fanbase outside of Japan and would not fix a thing. Also this game wasn't a world wide simalteanous release anyways. I understand his frustration but how he reacted towards the leaks was overboard and he needs to understand we have been waiting awhile for this game. Again I apologize for ranting and thanks for your patience with this.
 

Griewer

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I don't really remember him stating that he'd wrap up Sora's story. He said this is the final game of the Seeker of Darkness / Xehanort Saga and it really does seem like it. He actually said that Sora would remain the protagonist in future games as far as I can recall.

How the game ends holds many questions, yes, but I don't really think that is a problem. If the game ends in a kind of disharmony or cliffhanger, it gives a rather good reason for us to wait for the next one. Every game, including Kingdom Hearts 2, left off with a promise of a next adventure, and KH3 is no different in that sense.

It could've been written better, I agree with that. Possibly EVERY story in the world could've been written better. But please let go of this "still giving people a conclusion if they wanted to stop here" idea. No game will ever in the world do this, because what sort of author, creator would think that people want to stop following their stories? That is just a weird way of thinking. Quite the opposite would be true for anyone - they would want even more people to follow the story further.
 
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It's true that stories can always be written better but that's not really my main problem imo. I really hate the secret ending. The epilogue was cool but this secret ending is jusg the worst imo. It's not giving me much hype going forward to continue with the series. All the secret ending did was tell me that Sora is in fact still alive in someone way or going to be brought back. It's anticlimactic when Nomura has told us Sora will be the main character going forward. That fact is even more annoying when people try to say every fan doesn't know Sora will continue being the main character. Yes everyone who plays kh does not know but anyone deep enough into the lore of the game(such as people who watch the secert endings) will have read or heard about Sora's continuation as the main character as well as Xehanort's end of the Dark Seeker saga. Hell they'd even hear these things from a youtuber. I am so dissapointed in that secret ending yall. I wanna be hype for KH4 but now im in this weird limbo where I don't know if it's worth looking forward to anymore.
 

Nazo

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I understand where you're coming from, but I think your frustration stems from the expectation that this game would give us full closure to everything thus far. It's been stated for years that KH3 will not be the end of the series and will only conclude this current arc of the franchise. Nomura kept his promise. The Xehanort Saga has concluded. Everything related to Xehanort and the plot threads of all previous games have been resolved. But we were never promised a perfectly happy ending where you could "stop here if you wanted to". We were only promised the resolution of the Xehanort plotline and that's exactly what we got.
 

SerDuncan

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I think my biggest issue, and where I agree with OP on... is that this game DID give closure to most of what we've been building up to. It just gave us really rushed, awfully written closure. I don't want closure for the sea salt and BBS trios if it's going to be a 2 minute cutscene apiece after years of buildup and character development.
 

Sephiroth0812

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I think my biggest issue, and where I agree with OP on... is that this game DID give closure to most of what we've been building up to. It just gave us really rushed, awfully written closure. I don't want closure for the sea salt and BBS trios if it's going to be a 2 minute cutscene apiece after years of buildup and character development.


I generally am in agreement with the apparently widely held sentiment that the characters who got saved more or less fell into obscurity and background eye candy after their reunion scenes and that certainly could be handled leagues better, especially when it comes to interacting with each other and the other supposed main trios.
Like what the regular ending shows with the whole big beach party would have been an even bigger impact if we could have seen all those characters bond more beforehand with each other.
Now that ending feels not entirely like a reward for the build up throughout the just closed saga but partly like a sort of "appetizer" in vein of "look, now they're no longer captive or comatose somewhere and everyone can start to bond with everyone for real".

Or to put it shorter: It comes over partly as if the saved characters are also used as sequel bait just like the whole Union X-shenanigans.
 

Aws

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I am in agreement with OP as well.
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Audo

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Aws

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Of course, but the wait between KH3 and whatever comes next is going to be murderous with all this sequel baiting and lack of closure, which given the length of the game should not have been necessarily the case. (KH3 is shorter than KH2, at least that was the case for me).
 

SerDuncan

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mmmmm I dunno about what you just said, Sephiroth. I mean, many of the characters who are never showing again (I'd say almost confirmed) didn't really get proper send offs.

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It is very cathartic to talk these things through with people. I played the game with my old roommate, but I feel bad just flooding him with my criticism, so it's nice to have someplace to talk about all this.
 

mriku90

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Of course, but the wait between KH3 and whatever comes next is going to be murderous with all this sequel baiting and lack of closure, which given the length of the game should not have been necessarily the case. (KH3 is shorter than KH2, at least that was the case for me).

Disagree, I highly doubt we'll be waiting as long as we did for KH3 for the next installment, traditionally Nomura gives us a KH title every 3 years. I'd probably wager 4 years with the next one.

And if you're rushing the game then yes it is shorter then KH2, but I'm not rushing it. I'm taking my time enjoying all the immersive environments and doing all the side quest things and doing all the photo ops and there's plenty to do. Right now I just hit 28 hrs and I beat Pirates and I still have one more Disney world plus all the endgame stuff. I've been playing the game since Tuesday.

You rushed and that's your choice and enough with the "sequel baiting". Nomura even said in an interview he's gonna focus on the next part rather then crap out a year long DLC expansion ala FFXV. That is the farthest thing from baiting.

Nomura made it perfectly clear that this was not gonna be the end of KH nor Sora's story. You thought it would be closure for the series despite everything Nomura said is on you, nobody else.
 
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SerDuncan

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I think you misunderstand a lot of our points here, mriku90. Firstly, if you were to say, take your time with KH2, as you imply we didn't with this game, KH2 would end up even more significantly longer than this game. The average play time for this game seems anywhere between 25-40 hours, realistically, with all the endgame content being fiddly grindy and luck based content. Of course, KH2 at launch had many of the same issues with it's postgame, so that comparison is true. Kh2 tends to take anywhere from 30-50 hours. Besides that's not really the point. How a person plays the game doesn't invalidate their opinion, or devalue it. I could just as easily say "well, taking a long time means you're not experiencing the game quickly enough, you're losing plot points best experienced one after the other." It's not a valid position to argue upon.

Secondly, when we speak of sequel baiting, we're not talking about interviews, or anything outside the game. We're talking purely in game content. No other Kingdom Hearts games has quite as much foreshadowing or plot points that are irrelevant to the current game. Every other game in the franchise is essentially it's own self contained story. Instead, KH3 features many red herrings, entire world plotlines dedicated to unnecessary and unexplained arcs and threads, and ends without conclusively tying up much of what Nomura himself said would get tied up this game.

You can disagree with our opinion, that's fine. But you simply cannot take what we experienced and felt frustrated by, and say it's entirely our own fault when there is clear evidence to the contrary.
 

Aws

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Disagree, I highly doubt we'll be waiting as long as we did for KH3 for the next installment, traditionally Nomura gives us a KH title every 3 years. I'd probably wager 4 years with the next one.

And if you're rushing the game then yes it is shorter then KH2, but I'm not rushing it. I'm taking my time enjoying all the immersive environments and doing all the side quest things and doing all the photo ops and there's plenty to do. Right now I just hit 28 hrs and I beat Pirates and I still have one more Disney world plus all the endgame stuff. I've been playing the game since Tuesday.

You rushed and that's your choice and enough with the "sequel baiting". Nomura even said in an interview he's gonna focus on the next part rather then crap out a year long DLC expansion ala FFXV. That is the farthest thing from baiting.

Nomura made it perfectly clear that this was not gonna be the end of KH nor Sora's story. You thought it would be closure for the series despite everything Nomura said is on you, nobody else.

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Hardback247

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Nomura even said in an interview he's gonna focus on the next part rather then crap out a year long DLC expansion ala FFXV. That is the farthest thing from baiting.

I think that Nomura is now putting his full attention on the Final Fantasy VII Remake.
 

Taochan

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Sync645 said:
Nomura claimed this game would at least wrap up Sora's story. I expected some sequel tease but for a new story and set of characters. We are left with so many unanswered questions and a dissatisfying ending. To make matters worse we're sequel baited incredibly hard.

No he didn't? He said it was the end of the Xehanort Saga, which it is. And it's been pretty clear that UX's story would span the current saga and the next saga, which it does.

I think you had expectations for the game that were never going to happen given what Nomura has said in interviews over the years. Like it or not, that's absolutely fine but he didn't make you any of those promises and it seems silly to me to criticize it for your misconceptions of the plan for the series.
 

Johnny

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This game should have been wrapped up better at the end. They did well with the other trio's, but flopped with Sora Kairi and Riku.

Sora deserved a happy ending. I was more annoyed than anything that he wasn't on DI with everyone he saved having fun. Even more annoyed that Riku didnt say to him "I'm coming with you" and just let him go alone.

Time constraints and pressure to get the game created and done made it this way probably.
 
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