Kingdom Hearts 3 Story Discussion

[Squood!]

Love how the end of it has Somnus playing. It may sound different, but that's definitely Somnus.

 

[VoidGear.]

Love how the end of it has Somnus playing. It may sound different, but that's definitely Somnus.

My thought exactly. The first note is practically identical.
I feel like I should gasp and be mad, but honestly? I wish Nomura all the best with whatever ideas he has here. He deserves a second chance at a project that was taken from him for, in my opinion, unfair reasons.

 

[Sakuraba Neku]

And people thought Kingdom Hearts jumped the shark in KH3D with the time travel stuff. That was nothing compared to this.

I really don't know what to think about this. The graphics are amazing, but so far this doesn't make any sense.

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As for Yozora, he has a red eye and a blue eye so my theory is that he is looking over Sora and Riku at the same time. Could it be the real gazing eyes?!

I hope Nomura knows what he's doing and lets his obsession with Final Fantasy 15 go away, but seems like it's too late for that. Even though this will be a new saga, it's important to not forget this franchise's core.

 

[Perkilator]

If I had taken programming classes sooner, maybe I could offer to give Square Enix a Hand with the next Kingdom Hearts game?

 

[Nukara]

People are interested, with the release of a large DLC for KH3, we can expect an extended secret ending, as was the case with the Final mix version of KH1 and KH2?
Most likely we are waiting for a spin-off game with Riku as the main character.

 

[NoWay]

Whatever SE wants to do, I really hope for a new KH game in the next 2-3 years. They could use the assets from KH3 and release KHIV on PS4 and PS5 with enhanced graphics. KHV could be the first using the new engine of the PS5. However, I do think they should reuse KH3’s assets to release KHIV quickly. They cannot let us wait for another 6 years.. It also seems like KH3 ist going to be hit, so why letting people wait?

EDIT: I think we should call it KH4 and not KHIV.

 

[brandedkarma]

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I dunno man. The ending being sequel bait, having the future of the series be based on the story of a gacha game and the secret movie that shows something from the future focusing/parodying on a game Nomura wanted to make but was axed (FF VersusXIII) doesn't fill me with a lot of hype. I'm still gonna play whatever comes next but I'm nowhere near as hyped as I was at the end of KH2, Birth By Sleep or even DDD for the future of the series.

 

[DraceEmpressa]

My knowledge on the subject matter is limited, but Sora looks like he's in Shinjuku near the 109 department store (though it looks like a 104 if you asked me). Riku stands near the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, the place where the Master of Masters stands atop. Horay for being a Digimon fan so you can know all these landmarks.

Oh, hey! I am a Digimon fan too! and I'm still pissed at Toei on how Tri was executed and how they treat Sho isn't any better either!

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And is Yozora is sitting on the Odaiba TV station?

 

[Noivern]

Glad to see fellow Digimon fans here!

Now that I let out some of my steam towards how angry the secret ending made me feel, now I just feel.. empty. Like, this is obvious sequel baiting but we are not in the same place we were for the last 10 years where you could easily develop multiple spin offs reutilizing the same engine, so I'm worried for when said sequel is going to come to continue this story.

My bet is for maybe a new game on the switch with downgraded graphics with someone else as a protagonist (hopefully set in the Eraqus/Xehanort era?).

 

[RevenantMemory]

I can't wait for Sora to drop by the starbucks coffee shop in Shibuya before arriving late to the final boss sipping his large sized choco chip frappucino

 

[zachen]

Gotta love waiting 13 years for a game with a mediocre ending and far too much sequel baiting.
Thanks SE I'll be sure not to be a customer going forward.

 

[eiczerofour]

I loved this ending. I loved the epilouge. I loved the secret movie. It honestly reminds me of kh1 endimg so I really do not understand why people are so upset over this. It was good.

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So Sora died and is now going through the TWEWY game right? Hope he does not lose Kairi as his entry fee lol.

 

[Grono]

Gotta love waiting 13 years for a game with a mediocre ending and far too much sequel baiting.
Thanks SE I'll be sure not to be a customer going forward.

Hey, want to share what you mean by this? I liked the ending quite a bit and I'm totally okay with sequel baiting I mean, it's a KH game, the ending always baits towards a sequel. Kind of comes with the territory.

 

[Neo_]

All the secret ending proved is that we're never getting off this train.

So with that secret ending in mind....

I could see KH4 or whatever game it teases taking place in worlds based on live action Disney properties. With the Caribbean, Nomura said they wanted to prove they could successfully adapt a live action property to KH, so it could have been a test for what he wants to do with the next game.

lol, this is my nightmare, hahaha. I was bummed the oldest world in the game is Toy Story and that there wasn't enough classic hand-drawn Disney representation.

 

[Xblade13]

Glad to see fellow Digimon fans here!

Now that I let out some of my steam towards how angry the secret ending made me feel, now I just feel.. empty. Like, this is obvious sequel baiting but we are not in the same place we were for the last 10 years where you could easily develop multiple spin offs reutilizing the same engine, so I'm worried for when said sequel is going to come to continue this story.

My bet is for maybe a new game on the switch with downgraded graphics with someone else as a protagonist (hopefully set in the Eraqus/Xehanort era?).

I don't understand this argument, nor the argument that we will have to wait "another 13 years" for a Kingdom Hearts game. It is shown by how the pacing of KH3 was handled that it is a lot like the so-called "spinoff" titles. Turns out, those are NOT spinoffs. They are just "the next KH game. Honestly, would anyone have been begging for KH3 if KH2 had been a subtitled game? I feel like people just always beg for things to come in nice fancy sets of 3.

Why wouldn't they use this new engine for a while? They already have character models, physics, lighting, and world assets they could easily use for another game. Most of the work has been done already, and KH3 is a good enough looking game that these graphics could hold for another console gen. They don't have to take a year learning Unreal Engine 4, nor a year to switch engines from Luminous. KH3 will have made a ton of money too, so they could even raise the budget and crew.

I feel like people (not you, just in general) are just salty that they had to wait sooooo long for a new "main game" when it turns out a lot if thise side games have actually been just as if not more important to the narrative then the numbered titles. Heck KH2 was mostly made pointless by BBS and DDD. And honestly I kinda wish KH2 had been a subtitled game just so that the series as a whole would have been treated as one linear story instead of anything "side-game" related. In fact, I'm willing to bet there will never be another numbered installment.

 

[U.N. Owen]

No one exactly waited 13 years for any games. If we wanted to play semantics, the last numbered, non-remake game was 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage which was released in 2017. At most, people waited 2 years between numbered games.

 

[Sephiroth0812]

No one exactly waited 13 years for any games. If we wanted to play semantics, the last numbered, non-remake game was 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage which was released in 2017. At most, people waited 2 years between numbered games.

This constant beef over "numbered" games is one of the main reasons why I hope Nomura will do away with the whole numbering system completely and there will never even be a "KH 4" that actually carries that name.

It wouldn't even make sense since the current saga is over.

 

[Absent]

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Rewatching the final boss I just realized, Daybreak Town is under Scala Ad Caelum! In the water phase you can see the clock palace in the background, even the gears can be seen drifting.

 

[maleficentfan123]

I've been avoiding the forums so as not to spoil myself, but I finished the game last night and just need to share a few thoughts.

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First and foremost, 99.9% of this game was FANTASTIC in my opinion. I loved the gameplay, the visuals, the music, and pretty much everything non-story related. (Although I still wish they would just abandon the gummi ship and make all the worlds connected without forcing us through a segment like that.)

The story was about as good as it could have been, given how much ground they had to cover. While initially I was disappointed to hear that there wouldn't be any FF or SE characters in the game, I have to admit that I think adding more characters to the game (without adding more worlds) would've been overkill. However, I really hope that there is some secret boss/DLC added that includes a Sephiroth battle, with Cloud and maybe a HBRC series of side missions. (Of course, that would basically mean a new world...but I'd be down for that as DLC.)

I really enjoyed every single one of the worlds we got in this game, with two exceptions. I felt like all of the worlds really stood out and were well integrated into the overall narrative without getting to be too much. In particular, the PotC world was 11/10 one of the best worlds that has EVER been in ANY KH game. I also really enjoyed the Toy Story world and the Monsters Inc. world. The character interactions in these worlds were fantastic. Twilight Town was gorgeous and I love that they added a bistro to that world to make it appear more lived in. Olympus was an amazing world, but I love that they decided to use it for the tutorial. I really like that they decided to use a Disney world for that instead of TT. I also really enjoyed that each world saw a different villain appear and saw justification for each villain beyond just seeing Pete over and over again. And I say that as a big fan of Pete and Maleficent. The Tangled world was a lot of fun, and while I haven't seen that world's film yet, it seemed to be a really good fit. The Big Hero 6 world was a laugh and it was interesting to see Sora at that point become attached to the GummiPhone and immediately feel a need to tell Riku about it. (Almost like the game was trying to show us what kids these days are like.)

The two exceptions. Firstly, the Hundred Acre Wood world was way too short. Honestly we should have gotten Radiant Garden as a playable world instead, but if they were going to put it in there, it should have been similar to the first two games where it occurs over time. It also needed about 3-4 more mini-games than it got. Secondly, the Frozen world. Oh, the Frozen world. Easily my least favorite world. At least the Hundred Acre Wood was fun. The Frozen world was BAD. It started out really promising, with Larxene's ice labyrinth. But, I really didn't care for the "climb the mountain, get knocked down the mountain, climb the mountain again" thing they had going for 85% of that world. (Although it was hilarious that Sora voiced my thoughts on it. This game is very self-aware, and I found myself laughing out loud at some of the one-liners which has NEVER happened in a KH game before.) I also felt like that was the one world where SDG didn't...do anything? I mean, they obviously met the characters, but they didn't really help any of them. The entire plot of that world was the movie plot, which in and of itself is okay, but it occurred with SDG and Larxene sitting on the sidelines completely. We didn't even really get a "goodbye" from anyone in that world like we did with the others. If the Frozen world appears in future games, it will be arguable that Elsa and Anna shouldn't even remember SDG. That is how little they contributed to this world. I am planning on replaying the game in the near future and I am already dreading the Frozen world. Ugh. Maybe I'll feel differently on a second playthrough, but right now it was just bad.

I do have another major critique that has been alluded to by other people in this thread. Sora should not have been the one to save EVERYONE. My biggest fear with this game was that 90% of the plot was going to happen in the last 4 hours of the game, and I wasn't exactly wrong. The Keyblade Graveyard could have been the entire game. While obviously the final battle couldn't happen before the end, there were so many opportunities to more evenly balance out the plot within the rest of the game. Why didn't Riku and Mickey (with the player controlling Riku) save Aqua when they initially set out? That in and of itself would have solved this issue. Aqua should have been saved after the first pair of worlds. Ventus should have been saved after the second pair of worlds. Roxas, Namine and Xion could have been saved shortly after Even and AtW joined up with Team Light after the third pair of worlds. There was just so much opportunity to spread the major plot points/saving everyone thing throughout the entire game, and instead it was dumped on us in the last quarter of the game. Honestly, the entire game could have been the Keyblade Graveyard.

Don't misunderstand me, I really enjoyed the Disney worlds and they provided background information and character development for all of the characters. In fact, the Disney worlds weren't my issue with this game (other than Frozen). I thought the Disney worlds were more relevant in this game than they have been since KH1 (not that that's a difficult thing to do, but still). It was how the series took a complete 180 and went from, Sora's not strong enough to save anyone in DDD, to Sora's the only one strong enough to save anyone in KH3. Because they took that turn, the game had to be backloaded with saving people and wielders that, to be frank, didn't even necessarily "need" to be saved because Sora still saved the day in the end anyway and defeated all of the darknesses.

TL;DR I loved the game for its gameplay, visuals and audios. The plot was good, but needed some work in the grand scheme of things.

 

[shady543]

Might post my thoughts on the game so far, since it's going to take me at least a month to finish this game aha. I've decided to look in to a few bits and pieces considering this in mind.

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So far, the disney worlds are a huge improvement over the ones in 2 and BBS and feels more like 1 in that I actually get to explore them and it's not just minigame then cutscene, then minigame. And I love how huge they are. Corona is my favourite so far and I love the added bit of Sora being able to relate to Rapunzel (people are overlooking the true otp sora/rapunzel man). Toy box I actually hated but I was already disappointed in that world from the start since it didn't go in the direction I would have liked (I was hoping it would have been similar to the Toy Story 2 Buzz video game in that we got to explore Andy's house and backyard with similar enemies instead of going to a closed down toy store).

I don't like how the original worlds take the back burner in response to this though. Though I guess considering all the cutscenes and the Disney worlds already being so massive, something has to give. I guess my expectations of actually hoping we could have played as Riku in the dark world, explorable Destiny Island, Radiant Garden, Mysterious Tower, being able to go inside TT's mansion and Train Station, the other playable character being playable in a Disney world or original world, etc, would have required two discs. The gumi ships are a huge step up this time though. I'm also really dissapointed in how pointless Riku's playable sequences are. Aqua's fight is cool and one of the main highlights of KH3, but Riku's seemed like a waste and may have well have been a cutscene. I'm really hoping that wasn't it and we do play as him again properly but I'm starting to doubt it.

To be honest I'd say this is my favourite KH game despite its flaws. I've always been quality over quantity and since the game does do that I feel hypocritical to complain. KH2 does do a lot of stuff better in terms of combat and the original stuff and has FF characters. But the Disney worlds in that game were really bad and the first half was just awful. Gumi ship parts were also bad. That game still has heaps of flaws despite the gameplay being really good. I'm also happy that there is at least original cutscenes between Disney worlds this time instead of going from one to the next.

And I also need to say something in regards to some of my favourite characters because this has been bugging me. I know a few other people have brought up one of them so I'd love to expand on that.

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They have been for awhile Roxas, Vanitas and Sora. I've waited 10 or so years for Roxas to finally escape from Sora so the fact that it actually happens in this game is a blessing. However I'm very pissed that Nomura hyped him up as much as he did, saying that Roxas is the biggest secret of KH3 and all that when he really wasn't. I haven't seen the actual cutscene itself, but I know that all he really does is have like one badass scene. I guess its.... something. But I really wish Nomura didn't state that because it left me with so much hype and coming up with theories of him being a playable character, or even going through an original world playing as him to rescue Sora or something. I still feel that he should have been playable but eh.

As for Vanitas... oh boy. First of all, what happened to his voice. He was okay in Monsters Inc, a little higher pitched than BBS but still fine, but after that it sounded like he was smoking more and more as the game progressed to the point he sounded like a literal gremlin at the end. Also, I'm really starting to feel that Funko diddlyed up and just thought his design was cool or something. I'm frustrated that them choosing him among others (I mean I know other characters weren't revealed at the time, but they could have chosen to just not make a second original character dammit) made me get beyond hyped on what his role could be in KH3. That along with him being diddlying put in the heros and heroines melody.... I really don't get it lol. But I really don't want to ignore that ether considering I doubt he's really gone and Nomura chose to do that...? His general writing in this game also seems to be messy and his voice just gets worse as the game goes on. It feels like as if Nomura doesn't know if Vanitas should stay bad or go in line to his light novel story. I'm also pissed as hell that the other SOD and even diddlying MASTER XEHANORT get redeemed and meanwhile all Vanitas got was an open ending and we don't even know if he's truly gone. I mean I did always preferred him going an anti-hero route so I was glad that it looks like he took that, but then he faded lol. If he is actually gone for good, right after the whole "you can chose what you want to be" finally got brought up into his character, then from a writer's POV that was some huge potential in a character wasted. Considering Ven is strongly related to UX by right his darkness should be too.

I think Sora was the only one I'm happy with so far. I think KH3 has the best writing for him yet.

Now I don't blame the game for failing to meet my hype for Roxas and Vanitas. But the advertising could have not used the hype for these two lol.
I guess in conclusion, I love how something always keeps happening to my favourites. First it was Sora was fine but Roxas is stuck and god knows where Vanitas is, and now we have no clue what happened to Sora and Vanitas and Roxas is the only one who is fine.

Decided to finally create an account to talk KH-Theory with everything that's been going on with KH3, even though I've been following the forums for a few years. I'd like to make my first post about my favorite character since one of his quotes got me thinking a lot, so this is about Vanitas.

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During his final fight and defeat in the Graveyard, there's the whole talk about we choosing what we are and Vanitas choose to be darkness. I've seen someone complaining about it in this thread and I was really waiting on some sort of redemption for him since the BBS novels and so on bring quite a lot to his character.
However, that whole stage of the game is basically a huge [Chi]/Union X reference not only with the Ephemer and the Dandelions scene but with the scenes with Marluxia, Larxene and maybe even Luxord (!!!) and Xigbar (which is more important with his relevance as Luxu and so on). So that got me thinking.

What If there was more to Vanitas choosing darkness than what we are first led to believe? What if it's more than just him being edgy, like how Marluxia talks about remembering his somebody and his purpose (Lauriam) and Larxene seems to have her own hidden agenda for what she's been doing?

For a while I had a theory that the Ventus from Union X was going to be more than what we think and maybe he was the traitor, albeit unknowingly. That he had some sort of connection to the darkness that led him to end up as Xehanort's apprentice, since we weren't completely sure how much Ven remembered of his past before he lost his memories due to the trauma of having his heart thorn in half.

What if this is somehow true, and Vanitas actually knows more than we were led to believe? It's so weird that every other defeated Org Member has some sort of redemption while he has that open ending, but maybe he's hinting that him choosing Darkness was a way to protect Ventus so he could be Light. I don't know, maybe this is just me hoping he'll get more than the poor writing they gave him here.

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I actually do like that he chose to be darkness. It's a more subtle progression into being a more complex character and darkness doesn't always mean pure evil. And even then, I don't know how out the box I'm being here, but when I looked at his body language before saying "I am darkness", to me it really felt like he didn't 100% believe that himself or his ego simply got in the way. I do also like your theory, but I'm actually starting to wonder if his character more went from "evil bastard" to "a character who believes that he is only there to do evil things". Even his other quotes "I am the shadow you cast, how much closer could I possibly be?" and hinting that he shows insecurity of having Sora's face. It was honestly really unclear which is frustrating as hell. But with his master gone, hopefully he can now have a good character arc if he's alive. Also I want to bring in the fact that Nomura placed him in the Heros and Heroines melody which I still don't know why that's the case. He doesn't even join with Ven. So unless that's foreshadowing his future I have no clue at this point. One thing I'm frustrated on is that, as someone who headcanons his light novel backstory as canon, his abusive father figure getting redemption over him does feel pretty bad to me... oof... I'd honestly give anything for a Vanitas POV at this rate because this boy has a lot of inner thoughts that need to be explained because it's ether he is just complex and spewing things out of ego and insecurity or his writing is just all over the place and Nomura doesn't care enough. There is the possibility that we have another Aqua situation where we have a character who is increasing in popularity/love with fans and want the best for him but Nomura doesn't notice or understand why so he gives Vanitas jack shit.

Half of me feels that such a complex character like this should be in a different project and away from Nomura lol considering how poorly he is being handled. But eh.