Why the PSP?
Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 had both been on the PlayStation 2 and there has been a spin-off on the DS and GBA so far, but with the apparent speedy delivery and quality of the Birth by Sleep, it was a fair question to ask why they decided to head to a portable system instead of on the next generation consoles. Nomura’s answer to this was a technical one. He explained that the similarity in the development process and performance between PSP and PS2 games is quite similar, thus making Birth by Sleep a PSP game, it streamlined the technical processes.
Since Birth by Sleep is the first prequel to enter the franchise, are there any plans for more prequels to the series? I.E. To explain the Keyblade Wars?
He answered with a rather indefinite response; he wasn’t sure as of yet, but did explain that the possibility certainly exists because Birth by Sleep’s ending leaves the story open to such a possibility. The ending will likely leave you hanging and wanting to know more of the future rather than more prequel-type information. There are no plans as of yet to explore the Keyblade Wars via a prequel title.
Are there many new worlds to explore that we will see in Birth by Sleep that are new to the Kingdom Hearts series?
Yes, there would be both new worlds and you will also be able to explore the worlds of some of the princesses such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and the universe of Lilo and Stitch, since Stitch was featured as a summon before, but the actual Lilo and Stitch universe has yet to be featured in a Kingdom Hearts game.
What changes or additions will the North American version of Birth by Sleep see?
His answer was that there would be many changes and additions. For one, there would be several completely original, optional bosses for North American fans to tackle. These bosses would also be significantly more difficult than anything the Japanese players had gotten to experience in their release. Nomura said something that surprised us all as well, he told us that North American gamers expected harder games than the Japanese, who he said were almost more casual in their approach to difficulty in video games, that there were more “hardcore gamers” in American than there are in Japan. I think this surprised everyone in the room who wasn’t actually Japanese. In the West, we tend to look at Japanese gaming as the Holy Grail of gaming history. They have the harder games, the longer games, the crazier games. Japan has historically been the center of our universe in regards to hardware and software, and while the West has seen a significant rise in the past decade, to hear someone say that our games are more difficult was a bit surprising. Aside from the new bosses, Nomura explained that there would be new items, new mini-games, and even new difficulty level settings.
He brought up that one of the optional bosses though that was added into the North American release, the Japanese testers found it so ridiculously difficult that they would cringe and complain about how excruciatingly challenging it was to fight them.
Will there be a Final Mix version of Birth by Sleep like some of the previous Kingdom Hearts games?
The answer was that no plans had been announced yet, but that Nomura thinks some Japanese gamers might appreciate a Final Mix version that mirrors the North American version due to the additional optional boss fights and new items involved.
