The Gummiphone. It’s basically Jiminy’s journal with a camera attached, so it’s fine. I enjoyed taking photos, finding Lucky Emblems and Data Greeting way more than I thought I would. (Though the fact that so many of the Emblems were just indentations was really dull.) What I really don’t care for is the ‘social media’ aspect that came with it.
tl;dr: it’s weird but I hope they expand on it to make it worthwhile since there are so many possibilities for character interactions that are sorely lacking. For my full thoughts (i.e. incoherent rambling) I’ll put in spoilers so gloss over if you don’t care:
Kingdom Hearts has been leaning more into a weird mishmash of fairytale and sci-fi since II but the introduction of modern real world tech like a smartphone breaks verisimilitude for me. The computers and science-woo that came with Radiant Garden and Ansem’s lot at least felt self-contained within that one world/context, bleeding into some of the Organization/TWTNW stuff too. It was weird but these not-quite-FF animu characters already struck a weird juxtaposition with most of the other characters and worlds anyway, so their being all science-y and shit fit a little.
I feel like the social media stuff was added because it’s kind of been so normalized in real life that it’s become expected, even though it makes no sense within the context of Kingdom Hearts. (I only played it briefly but Ni No Kuni 2 also had this social media thing in-universe and it immediately just made me go ???whatwhy???)
“Oh yeah, the worlds are all like, distant, not connected, far away from each other, and have been since a fairytale, time immemorial age, oh but also here’s this social media app that everybody and their grandma gets and can post photographs which clearly show entirely separate realities.” Bzwhuh?
I know the ‘phones are limited to the heroes and all, it just feels weird, out of left field and so bizarre to me. I have no rationale. I’m not gonna try and convince anyone I’m “right” since it’s not a right-wrong thing. It’s just one of those things I look at and go ‘It’s dumb’ because it just makes zero sense to me. Jut the very image of Sora taking selfies or Ienzo using social media is just… like… Nomura. Nomura, are you actually a fourteen-year-old girl? Yes, Definitely, Absolutely??? I am bemused. So bemused.
I just hope for the social media stuff, they actually
do something interesting with it. I’m not optimistic it’s gonna be utilized in any interesting way beyond info dumps/loading screen fillers like we got in III. I’d like to be wrong but I know this series too well at this point, haha.
I absolutely don’t want the Gummiphone to be used in place of characters meeting face-to-face (like in III how SDG never met Ienzo in RG), but it should also be used to get character interactions we’ve never had before or which wouldn’t be otherwise feasible (gimme Pence, Chip, Dale and Ienzo developing friendships over their nerdy computer shit, stuff like that). Even if it’s just character fluff via texts or chatrooms, I’d take that over no meaningful or face-to-face interactions at all.
It would be a nice way of implementing plot point segues/side quests, too. Scenarios like what GreyouTT and FudgemintGuardian suggested would be great.
Ingredients. It didn’t feel balanced to me. I never felt the need to use any food to get past any bosses or hurdles in the game. I only did it to fill out the menu/Gummiphone/get a trophy. If they retain this feature as-is I hope they fine-tune it so it’s not necessary for the main game but maybe the optional/super bosses are made more manageable with it? Easier said than done, though; balancing something like that is difficult.
What I’d actually like is for cooking to take on an entirely new dimension if it’s retained. Something this series lacks is character interactions. What’s an easy way of getting someone to sit down with you and talk? Offer them free food. Boom.
Like, you gather ingredients. Sora bakes a cake. “Oh, I should share this with someone because friendship and stuff!” After baking, you get an option to select someone. “Hey, I wanna hang out with Ven!” and we get a scene of SDG and Ven eating cake or whatever and talking about… stuff. I don’t mean to say there would be reams and reams of animated and fully voiced scenes, just one or two meaningful ones (relevant to the plot maybe or what have you), and the rest could just be relegated to social media posts or whatever. Cut to black or a generic unvoiced scene then after you get a message notification. Check the Gummiphone. “Hey, Sora, thanks for the cake, not as good as Aqua’s though lol, it was awesome seeing you again, don’t do anything stupid to put you back to level 1 for the next game, all right, byyyyeeee.”
I’d just be nice see these supposed friends actually do friend stuff for once during the calmer moments in the story. Also, jeez, give these kids a break! Provide us with some more scenes of levity for these poor unfortunate souls.
And I’m instantly three thumbs up if cooking with Tiana is a thing, heck yet, I wanna go to New Orleans!