KH4 Development Timeline

[bambii (aka foreteller)]

Given its track record so far I see little reason not to regard the Nvidia leak as "best-available data." September 2023 is almost assuredly their internal target. Allowing for likely delays, I think late 2023/early 2024 seems very plausible. Especially if FFXVI is gonna happen later this year or early 2023, they won't want to overlap anyway.

Echoing what others have said, the fact that they're still in world selection is concerning, but the state of the game we saw in the trailer does inspire confidence that development is in a good place. Would have inspired more confidence, though, to see more environments.

I'm still holding out hope for that KHUX remake in the meantime, based on the Nvidia leak. Maybe something they decided to keep in their back pocket to reveal later. I could imagine that being announced several months before release if it's a smaller budget title, or being included as a movie in any 3.5/current gen upgrade set. In fact, I’d be shocked if we didn’t get a “3.5” before KH4.

 

[the red monster]

We could get something UX related at D23/tgs.
maybe they waiting for dark road to be fully done before revealing UX remake/movie. missing link this year, something UX next year, KH4 2024?

 

[Silver_Soul]

Lore should not be put in mobile games full stop

Well this is why this games needs to be remade on consoles.

 

[2 quid is good]

Well this is why this games needs to be remade on consoles.

I think that would just take away resources towards forward momentum on the franchise

 

[Silver_Soul]

I think that would just take away resources towards forward momentum on the franchise

did ReCOM and ReCoded do that?

 

[Chie]

Don't let 2 quid derail the thread, lol.

I know I'm literally always repeating this and people must hate me for it, but "AAA games take 5 years to make" is a very recent thing, and most directors want to find a way to make games faster, even though they rarely succeed. In light of this I want to believe that this game could take shorter than that to make, but then again, perhaps that's just my wishful thinking of Nomura (and devs in general) being allowed to direct more than two games every decade.

Still, 2024 seems about right, unfortunate as that is.

 

[2 quid is good]

did ReCOM and ReCoded do that?

ReCoM did seeing as it was the BBS team making it, Re:coded was outsourced, anyway, Chie is right, this is about KH4 Dev time, not previous/future games

 

[Darkspawn]

13th Vessel on Twitter put together a good graphic for what the previous announcement to release cycles have looked like. Obviously, things are quite different with game development than they were back then and the games were in development prior to being announced, but still interesting to see:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1513889815804194831

 

[Recon]

September 23, 2023 + 6 month delay = Spring 2024

 

[2 quid is good]

September 23, 2023 + 6 month delay = Spring 2024

"Please be excited"

 

[blank points]

13th Vessel on Twitter put together a good graphic for what the previous announcement to release cycles have looked like. Obviously, things are quite different with game development than they were back then and the games were in development prior to being announced, but still interesting to see:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1513889815804194831

It's funny, I almost posted this, but it looks like you beat me to it. The 13th Vessel on Twitter also made a good point about development as well. Another thing to note about KH3's development was that they had to re-build everything from scratch. Up till that point, all KH games were developed on the same general engine, so they could reuse assets. But with KH3, they had to build everything from the ground up again, which was also a factor in the long development time. With KH4, they can reuse assets from KH3, which can help speed things up a bit. That isn't to say that there isn't work to be done, as there is new characters and new worlds to be designed. We likely are going to have a fairly decent wait ahead of us, but I really don't think it's going to be a repeat of KH3.

 

[Chaser]

The assets for the older games also weren’t as detailed and intensive to make as they would be for KH3. Anything new they had to make for BbS and DDD were of a much lower quality, especially being on PSP and 3DS screens.

KH3 had to make large, expansive worlds filled with a bunch of high quality unique assets. There wasn’t any cutting corners, like flat textures for the ground or a thin 2D jpeg hanging about (well not interactive at least. Elsa’s staircase within her castle is a flat jpeg).

I think even Keyblades in the handheld titles were mostly flat instead of being proper models? I think I remember the excitement at 2.5 having Keyblades that were actually had some depth and didn’t vanish if you looked at it in a certain way.

 

[Darkspawn]

It's funny, I almost posted this, but it looks like you beat me to it. The 13th Vessel on Twitter also made a good point about development as well. Another thing to note about KH3's development was that they had to re-build everything from scratch. Up till that point, all KH games were developed on the same general engine, so they could reuse assets. But with KH3, they had to build everything from the ground up again, which was also a factor in the long development time. With KH4, they can reuse assets from KH3, which can help speed things up a bit. That isn't to say that there isn't work to be done, as there is new characters and new worlds to be designed. We likely are going to have a fairly decent wait ahead of us, but I really don't think it's going to be a repeat of KH3.

This made me think of something else. They can likely now borrow assets from other games developed by Square in UE4 like DQXI and FFVIIR. I think those three were really the first major games built in that engine by SE. Now they have three huge games worth of compatible assets that can easily import into other games and repurpose. That saves even more time than just using KH3’s assets alone.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I’m being optimistic. The game might be in “early development” but they seem to have a lot more of the game ready than they did with KH3. It running in real-time with that level of fidelity makes me believe it is father along than they are leading people to believe, but are keeping it close to their chests in the event they do experience issues.

So I’m going to say late 2023/whenever 2024.

"Please be excited"

I know you won’t see this for awhile but I honestly laughed when I read this. Man, I’ve missed KH xD

 

[KudoTsurugi]

I could definitely see this being released within the next year or so. Considering the game will be running on a new version of a software that Square now have experience with, they should‘nt have too much trouble with developing the game this time around.

 

[Face My Fears]

Honestly, I feel like KH IV will come out in January 2024.

The only reason I feel like it might get pushed back more is because development was interrupted by the global pandemic in 2020. Does anyone know if game studios were working remotely at that time or did production on games completely halt?

 

[SuperNova]

I have a feeling that we will be seeing KH4 in Q1 2024 and no time sooner since SE will probably focus on FFXVI next.

 

[Chaser]

Honestly, I feel like KH IV will come out in January 2024.

The only reason I feel like it might get pushed back more is because development was interrupted by the global pandemic in 2020. Does anyone know if game studios were working remotely at that time or did production on games completely halt?

It took a while to get remote work up and running since there weren’t systems in place for that kind of thing but it didn’t come to a complete halt.

 

[Sign]

Honestly, I feel like KH IV will come out in January 2024.

The only reason I feel like it might get pushed back more is because development was interrupted by the global pandemic in 2020. Does anyone know if game studios were working remotely at that time or did production on games completely halt?

They were not. Japan in particular was woefully unprepared to transition to remote work and companies took a long time to get the infrastructure ready for their staff. SE was quicker and more efficient than others but they still suffered significant setbacks in their schedule. That doesn't mean development came to a complete halt until everyone was set up in their homes though.

 

[Chaser]

I forgot Osaka were hiring for their next HD KH game in 2019. UI designers, effect designers, and technical artists.

UI I figured was a later in dev thing since we had trailers with the basic menus but I guess not.

Still, work was being done in 2019 which is a good sign.