Hollie B from Playstation Access went to Tokyo and was in the audience during the Kingdom Hearts Fan Event on February 10th. Playstation Access have since published a video discussing 10 things that were confirmed during that presentation.
1) Development is thought of as split into three parts – beginning, middle and end. Part one is 90% complete. Part two is about 60-70%. Part 3 did not get a percentage. Nomura confirms that he is working on “something incredible” for that final world, something he has always wanted to do ever since his Final Fantasy days.
2) 100 people from the Tokyo office are helping out the Osaka team development. They compared developing one whole new world with developing one of the older games.
3) When developing the game, they start with a story board then write the scripts and then they do the animation, which Hollie says is backwards when compared to other game development procedures.
4) They have a dedicated lighting team and dedicated facial animation team.
5) This is the biggest ever Background Music Team that Square has ever had.
6) Rapunzel was kept out of trailers for so long as the team struggled to work with her long hair. There are lots of different ways her hair will be used in battle, and the D23 exclusive “making of” video showed the problems Rapunzel’s hair has brought, such as clipping through the environment.
7) The town from Tangled was shown, and Hollie B speaks highly of the volume of NPC’s that were shown in that area.
8) The Gummi Ship has been split into two parts. There will be an open world style of exploration when flying between worlds, but there will also be battles and combat. There are more enemies to fight when flying the Gummi Ship than ever before.
9) There is a mini-game based on ‘Game and Watch’.
10) Square Enix discussed how they developed each Keyblade, and the challenges each one brought. The Monsters Inc Keyblade, for example, had to feel so true to this world. They made several designs and worked down to two designs, and Nomura chose the final design.
