News ► Kingdom Hearts Dark Road details revealed

[Hirokey123]

My guess is that from the sound of it YX met and was betrayed by someone, like how Sora suffered a serious betrayal by Riku, Donald, and Goofy in KH1. But unlike Sora who can understand hearts and the emotions within and was able to bounce back and take it in stride. YX who finds understanding hearts difficult ultimately took his betrayal to heart and it literally killed his hope for the people and the world, turning him pessimistic and hopeless.

 

[The_Echo]

Which is why they should have just revealed these little details to begin with to keep from the unnecessary speculation and wild guessing. All it did was create disappointment, not hype.

I disagree with the notion of organizing news releases around an unreasonable fanbase, but that's neither here nor there.

Also I can see why people thought it might be 3D. They marketed the game with a screenshot from KH3. Even X[chi] was tactful enough to be marketed using an illustration with the target art design of the game.

They used a shot of Xehanort from KHIII because he's the star of the game. χ[chi] had no such cast members they could market with pre-existing assets.
They also teased the announcement the day prior with an illustration in the same vein as UX's current key art.

We know what lessons Xehanort takes away from his journey, so at the moment I'm just scratching my head at what else could we possibly learn from this story when we know the end result?

We knew Riku would defeat Roxas and DiZ would stick him in a computer.
We knew Xehanort would become Ansem's apprentice.
We knew the Keyblade War would happen.

Obviously more will happen in Dark Road than what we know. There's a reason they blurred out most of the key art.

 

[Chaser]

My guess is that from the sound of it YX met and was betrayed by someone, like how Sora suffered a serious betrayal by Riku, Donald, and Goofy in KH1. But unlike Sora who can understand hearts and the emotions within and was able to bounce back and take it in stride. YX who finds understanding hearts difficult ultimately took his betrayal to heart and it literally killed his hope for the people and the world, turning him pessimistic and hopeless.

It’s Kingdom Hearts, Frozen style!

Obviously more will happen in Dark Road than what we know. There's a reason they blurred out most of the key art.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Bit hard to care about new characters when they haven’t existed anywhere else and the mobile game characters get thrown to the side and the story is dragged out over four years.

 

[Sign]

I'm mostly okay with this because UX's main story is hands down KH at its best. If Nomura can match that quality of writing for DR then I'm fine with putting up with more of, well, this.

 

[Face My Fears]

If Nomura was going to reuse assets, why didn't he just make Dark Road like 0.2. Throw in Young Xehanort and Eraqus. Have them visit the Disney worlds that we visited in KH3 and that's it. Even if it's just 3 of those worlds, I can see Toy Box (using Stinky Pete or Lotso Bear's backstory as the story they witness), Monsters University (or Waternoose's backstory), and an original story with Calypso in The Caribbean.

After all the spinoffs that we've endured, THIS is how Xehanort gets his story told!? We get two separate games that are basically KH1 retellings (CoM/Coded), one game that explained stuff that should have been in KH2 and also went out of its way to introduce then write out a character (Days), and another game to set-up KH3 because Nomura ended KH2 somewhat definitively and decided to retcon/add story elements (BbS). Nomura went out of his way to have actual console releases for those games and Xehanort, one of the games most interesting characters with a backstory EVERY FAN is curious about and clearly a backstory RELEVANT to the main plot... gets a mobile game with visits to Agrabah for the millionth time?

Referencing another thread, I'd rather any Disney straight to VHS film plot in a main console game over a mobile game visit to Wonderland/Agrabah that's data/foretold in the Book of Prophecies/whatever... and we all know that's coming in this game.

 

[Hirokey123]

Hey did anyone notice that there seems to be new attributes in play?

At first it looks like it's just red=power, green=speed, and blue=magic like Chi. However on the page that shows more details there is a blue rhapsody heartless card with a blue icon but the icon is a dream wand not the sword. There is also a red card that is a potion with the shield. So all and all we see..

Red, blue, and Green Cards
Upright and Reverse Cards
Sword, Wand, and Shield cards

Also I think this game will probably be structured more like an actual adventure, because this looks like it was YX/YE's pilgrimage that changed Xehanort. It was a journey not a day to day life for years on end, that heartless counter up there also implies either you kill or have to kill a lot of heartless meaning a large world or at least more enemies to fight. KHUX missions did not have anything close to 64 heartless in its missions they were much more bite sized.

 

[OneDandelion]

If Nomura was going to reuse assets, why didn't he just make Dark Road like 0.2.

Call it what it is. It's a shameless money grab gotcha game that they know will make profits. They even had the nerve to advertise it as a new game when it's reusing assets and launched from within the KHUX app.

The .2 route is what they should have done and what the fans deserve after the complete mess that was KH3, but they're just exploiting us with this. Frankly, it should be seen as an insult and Nomura had his role in trying to hype it up as well as their twitter contest.

It's 100% a gotcha game scam and they're including it within KHUX so you're tempted to download both and be exploited by 2 gotcha games at the same time. And while I do enjoy the story of KHUX it's taken them years to construct a narrative that amounts to around 10 pages of a novel. The pace is abysmal, and now we're expected to believe they can maintain two of these games and that its worth investing time into. Ugh, I'll be honest I want this game to flop, hard.

 

[GreyouTT]

Referencing another thread, I'd rather any Disney straight to VHS film plot in a main console game over a mobile game visit to Wonderland/Agrabah that's data/foretold in the Book of Prophecies/whatever... and we all know that's coming in this game.

I would be happy and mad if Aladdin 3 was in Dark Road.

Happy that Aladdin 3 is finally a thing in KH.
Mad that it's not in 3D for the glorious turtle city.

 

[Absent]

Can’t wait for the subtext between Xehanort and Eraqus.

 

[Sign]

i need
better quality artwork



Edit: Here's another one:

 

[SuperSaiyanSora]

Is Xehanort going to fight Jafar and send him to the lamp for the 100th time in this series?

Yknow, if this actually happens... Seeing as how 75+ years later, he gets shoved in a lamp AGAIN by a goofy teenager, a dog and a duck, maybe the guy should retire. Just go be an accountant or something.

If Xehanort is touring worlds projected from the future, then it's no wonder why he considers them a mess. The future worlds are ravaged by darkness because of what his future self does.

If this is what happens, then the Master of Masters must be laughing deep to his core. Poor kid never stood a chance. And the MoM is just gonna stand there and be like "Oh yeah, it's a shame about the the worlds, darkness really sucks, huh?"

I'm mostly okay with this because UX's main story is hands down KH at its best. If Nomura can match that quality of writing for DR then I'm fine with putting up with more of, well, this.

Yeah, I've always said this, but if UX ever gets the full console treatment, it'd be the best Kingdom Hearts game to date (plot-wise).

 

[Hirokey123]

i need
better quality artwork

View attachment 12268

Man if there wasn't already enough evidence that Brain was the Dandelion that Eraqus was descended from, your comparison makes it even more obvious.

 

[kristi-swat]

I have an idea how emblem heartless works: it’s MoM following Xehanort from behind the scenes and using his Book of Prophecies

 

[Deleted member 252753]

Hey did anyone notice that there seems to be new attributes in play?

At first it looks like it's just red=power, green=speed, and blue=magic like Chi. However on the page that shows more details there is a blue rhapsody heartless card with a blue icon but the icon is a dream wand not the sword. There is also a red card that is a potion with the shield. So all and all we see..

Red, blue, and Green Cards
Upright and Reverse Cards
Sword, Wand, and Shield cards

Also I think this game will probably be structured more like an actual adventure, because this looks like it was YX/YE's pilgrimage that changed Xehanort. It was a journey not a day to day life for years on end, that heartless counter up there also implies either you kill or have to kill a lot of heartless meaning a large world or at least more enemies to fight. KHUX missions did not have anything close to 64 heartless in its missions they were much more bite sized.

I really hope that you are right but am not sure, particularly about the structure of the story. The journey that YX takes described in the Secret Reports is taken without Eraqus, so I think what we see could be the boys' training using the BoP, allowing the same slow paced, disjointed narrative of KHUX. Although if there are fewer main characters it might not be so bad.

The gameplay does look more fun than UX, but that isn't hard; it's the most boring thing I have ever played and I forgive the KH games a lot of stuff but I couldn't slog through all the tedious gameplay to earn the cutscenes myself. Despite all this, I have already redownloaded the app and am playing again to get a bigger bonus when DR goes live, so I guess it's not a bad business model.

 

[AdrianXXII]

So much for hoping this would be a more fun and fulfilling experience than Union Cross... Not that I could even play it, seeing Union Cross hasn't opened up on my phone for months now.

Also it's pretty telling that all reactions I've seen to this so far have ranged from "meh" to "Thanks I hate it". This is a story that many were curious about for years and the moment we get any detail on it, all excitement just died. It seems to me that they'll just be reusing assets from UX, if Agrabah isn't just a placeholder, which isn't all that promising either.

Seeing this is the double feature, I take it UX and DR will play into each other, which could be interesting in 2 to 5 years when the story really gets going. It feels a bit silly to call these two games when they're in the same app and basically running on the same system.

 

[EternalDream]

E...emblem heartless?

Nomura why.

Stop. Just stop. Anything but fighting the very things he himself creates 65 odd years into the future. Not like this.

It being essentially an add-on to UX really doesn't do it any favours. I wasn't expecting a different art style or significantly different gameplay, but I had some hope it would at least make SENSE without being shoehorned in with time travel/projection bs like UX.

Sigh.

If Xehanort is touring worlds projected from the future, then it's no wonder why he considers them a mess. The future worlds are ravaged by darkness because of what his future self does.

Wouldn't this completely undermine Xehanort's character if it turns out it was all set up by the MoM and his BoP anyway? I like the MoM and all, he looks and sounds like a really great 'villain'. But I'd rather not have that be at the expense of Xehanort...

 

[TheGreatEphemera]

Whilst everyone is talking about the game being mobile.
Can I just say that the screenshot depicting cartoon Scala Ad Caelum looks amazing.

 

[MrFranklin95]

*sigh* ... I just... I mean... well... god, I got the biggest headache reading this.

Does... does Noruma care? Like, does he actually care about any of this? I'm not saying giving what the fans want and only that but the way he's telling this story; is this truly the best he and his team can do with this material?

I dont know. I REALLY don't want to sound ungrateful because I love this series. I really do. I just spent the last six hours STILL trying to beat Yozora and still failing miserably because I enjoy KH that much. I liked KH3 despite it's still many glaring issues that Noruma seems to want to ignore. But there's still some genuine merit left for this series and it's not like these mobile games are easy to make. Clearly, the devs still work hard on these games...but good lord man... what the actual ....

I'll admit, maybe I'm being slightly dramatic but man, I'm generally more optimistic about KH then most fans I listen or talk too. Even when I have problems, I still find ways to have fun with this series for what it is. I even had my fun with UX despite its darker moments but this is just... this just left biggest taste of "you've got to be kidding me" in my mouth. Like, I'm honestly baffled.

Why are we doing this? And especially like this? Do they not know that UX's numbers are just going down for VERY obvious reasons. Do they not know that this whole thing would be much better off and probably more successful as an online MMO console game with a complete story we don't have to wait months for and without having like three or four different versions of it? A Xehanort game that doesn't included a card system that NO ONE asked for?

Look, I'm still a fan, I dont think I'm anywhere near abandoning the series because there are things the recent entries have done right and at the end of the day, they don't really owe us anything. If this is how they want to tell the story, fine. You do you but I'm gonna be honest, this is making me worried for the future of this series and this is already on top of a lot of questionable decisions the series is already making.

Could this be fun? I honestly doubt it. If this is a way for them to breathe some new life into UX, this is a horrible strategy. I can't see this doing anything but pissing people off. Say what you want about the impossibility of a console version of UX and A Xehanort game but those titles would've been far more well received and garnered some actual hype this whatever the hell this is. This just does not look fun at all.

And if this is all just for money, then again, this is not a good strategy. Because the only people playing UX are hardcore fans and even they are getting sick of it. And now you add this on top of that. Sure, a console version of these games would cost a pretty penny but I have no doubt in my mind that they would have a higher percentage of getting its money back then this.

I don't know what more I can say about it, this is just mind boggling. This is the first thing in KH that I can honestly say that I really hate. And I know, I havent played the game yet and I'm not going too. I honestly see no reason for this game to exist in it's current form and its gameplay system is a HUGE turn-off.

Holy mother of God and I thought the whole Yozora thing was really unnecessary and one of the possible bad signs of where this series is going but that has some genuine intrigue, at the very least (and a pretty fun boss fight.) This is just... *sigh* what are we doing...?

Well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see. At least it'll make for some nice YT videos.

 

[Violet Pluto]

Kind of tired, just woke up. This is exactly what I expected. A game that uses the UX graphics seeing that we knew it was by the same team, happy that they didn't just reuse the battle system of UX, though didn't expect that they both launched from the same app (unfortunate seeing that my phone doesn't have enough space to download UX) also glad because maybe the staff can make a better balanced game this time.

Knew that the fans would be disappointed but it's nothing new. Still irritated that people are blaming Nomura for this, when this is the only way he was ever going to put this story out. Square shut the first version of this down after all, and I'd rather a mobile game than not have it at all. Also yes, this is a cheap alternative to actually making a new game; that's probably why Square greenlit it.

Emblem Heartless are back (?) development picture, but they could have used Shadows if they wanted to though it might just be an oversight or placeholder. If they are Emblem Heartless, it might have something to do with the fact that the emblem in KH3 can be seen in Scala ad Caelum as a part of their Language so it could be that Xehanort used a previously existing symbol on those Heartless. Iunno.

 

[okhi12]

We can definitely say that the KH series took the dark road.
I knew this would happen... what a let down, anyway. Well, as many others I won't invest my time in this kind of game and will follow the story on youtube instead.
I really hope this thing doesn't succeed and more and more people keep leaving Union X. I hate all gacha games in existence. I never wanted KH to follow this path, but X/UX paved the way and here we are. And it will get worse until people stop playing these things so that they are not profitable anymore.
Please Square, start development of DDD2 or whatever the next proper game is and forget about smartphone games forever.