News ► Kingdom Hearts III to be developed on Unreal Engine 4!

[Oracle Spockanort]

KH3 is completely goddamn new. They can't reuse anything. It's some hard work, and the detail is a lot higher now, judging from the alpha models we've seen, so that's why it's taking so long. You can't gauge the game's development with patterns.

No truer a words have been spoken. Rome wasn't built in a day, and developing games certainly are like building multiple massive cities.

Not only it requiring new assets, but it also means new animations and a new approach to cutscene cinematography in order to create more dynamic scenes and ahhhh this is so exciting.

 

[Nazo]

Sick! I think the Unreal Engines are the best looking game engines, personally. The Infinity Blade series is one of the nicest looking games I've ever played, and that was Unreal Engine 3 on an iOS device. I can only imagine what UE4 on a PS4 will look like. Plus, maybe it's just me, but I tend to think that cel-shaded games in HD overall look better. Just take 1.5, 2.5, Okami HD, and Wind Waker HD for example. They're not hyper-realistic, yet they're somehow more impressive looking to me than something like CoD: Advanced Warfare. Maybe it's just because they age better?

Regardless, given that KH3 will be next-gen cel-shaded on UE4, I can't wait to see the final result. Could quite possibly end up being the best graphics I've ever seen thus far, given my preference for HD cel-shading.

No truer a words have been spoken. Rome wasn't built in a day, and developing games certainly are like building multiple massive cities.

Not only it requiring new assets, but it also means new animations and a new approach to cutscene cinematography in order to create more dynamic scenes and ahhhh this is so exciting.

I didn't even think about that. The cutscenes in KH3 are going to be amazing! The pre-rendered clip from E3 2013 of Sora on the beach already looked damn good. And after seeing those Re:coded fight scenes in 2.5 all smooth and HD looking, seeing that kind of action with the new graphics and engines and animations is going to be absolutely astounding.

I'm really trying not over-hype myself for KH3, just to be safe. The track record of next-gen hype has been awful so far (Watch Dogs, Titanfall, Destiny, etc). But damn, I'm getting so excited for this.

 

[MATGSY]

Fine so long as Epic fixed that delayed texture loading issue that plagued UE3 games (flashbacks of ME1 on 360, *shudder*)

 

[ultima-demi]

Lol so what would Luminous have done that the unreal engine 4 couldn't do anyway.

Well anyway..i'm guessing this is good....news?

 

[Face My Fears]

The reason I brought up KH1 and KH2 wasn't comparing KH3 to them. I was just wondering if KH1 and KH2 used an "in-house engine" that Square-Enix made.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

The reason I brought up KH1 and KH2 wasn't comparing KH3 to them. I was just wondering if KH1 and KH2 used an "in-house engine" that Square-Enix made.

It was an in-house engine, most likely. The thing is, making games for these past consoles was much different than it is now and with the strive to have more realistic real-world physics along with stunning graphics and high quality assets, you need more advanced engines with the toolsets that can do all of this already. It's meant to lower costs of development (or increase them if you are making a multi-million custom engine along with your multi-million dollar game) as well as ease the workload of developers.

 

[Alpha Sonix]

Just looked at the games using UE4. If KH3 looks as good as Rime does, I'll be happy. At least it means there's a chance it will come out before 2020 then.

 

[Kingnice92]

Wow, what an engine! It sure looks great!

 

[Gray Aria]

I take this as good news. It's unfortunate that they had problems with Luminous but I'm glad they made the decision to go with UE4 instead of trying to wrestle with Luminous to get it to work. I also appreciate their openness about the situation. If this was the SE of 2-3 years ago they would have told us nothing and just said the same old lines "Your patience is appreciated. Please look forward to it." etc

 

[Chaser]

Translation from Goldpanner!

---Once more, may we as about the state of development on KH3?

Nomura: It’s moving steadily along the estimated schedule. As an effect of us changing the game engine to Unreal Engine 4, which we did for several reasons, we had a lot of problems with the image creation, but we have been able to progress without incident with the collaboration of Epic Games.

 

[rokudamia2]

So it sounds like this was a smart move and it seems like smooth sailing after asking Epic games for help.

 

[Sign]

It helps that Epic now has an office in Japan~

 

[WaveK89]

All this is doing is getting me more psyched! I can't wait to see the next future trailer. I'm really glad Epic is giving their helping hand as well.

 

[Pestilence]

Best decision in a long time. Luminous seems to be another disaster for SE.

 

[Magnus]

Honestly, I wish Square Enix would just give up their ambition to have the prettiest graphics in town and spend more time and effort on making good games, Not that they're not making good games right now, but they take forever and we get so few because they spend way too much time making sure they look like movies.

 

[OathkeeperRoxas XIII]

Consider the fact most want good animations and graphics, I rather it be pretty and worry about controls later. Don't ask.

 

[Lnds500]

Getting agitated over this since I have no idea what it means exactly for the game's visuals and development.

So what does this mean for the kingdom shader?

Nothing. The Kingdom Shader was never an engine component. It's just an umbrella term for the effect Nomura will use on the main cast when visiting various worlds.

People need to stop comparing KH3 to KH1 and KH2. KH1 and 2 are similar in that they share the same engine (I believe) and reuse all the assets. The graphics are the same. This is actually true for EVERY KINGDOM HEARTS GAME BESIDES CHAIN OF MEMORIES. Yeah, even the DS games just use lower poly versions of the very same PS2 models.

So much misinformation in 4 sentences. Of course they are different engines, with some of them being improved versions of others.

Sick! I think the Unreal Engines are the best looking game engines, personally. The Infinity Blade series is one of the nicest looking games I've ever played, and that was Unreal Engine 3 on an iOS device. I can only imagine what UE4 on a PS4 will look like. Plus, maybe it's just me, but I tend to think that cel-shaded games in HD overall look better. Just take 1.5, 2.5, Okami HD, and Wind Waker HD for example. They're not hyper-realistic, yet they're somehow more impressive looking to me than something like CoD: Advanced Warfare. Maybe it's just because they age better?

Regardless, given that KH3 will be next-gen cel-shaded on UE4, I can't wait to see the final result. Could quite possibly end up being the best graphics I've ever seen thus far, given my preference for HD cel-shading.

Only Okami + Wind Waker are cel-shaded. KH has never been.

 

[Vaxyle]

I just remind you people that the Batman "Arkham" series was made on UE3 and it looks awesome so don't worry, KHIII is gonna look EPIC (no pun intended).

 

[Launchpad]

It's just an umbrella term for the effect Nomura will use on the main cast when visiting various worlds.

Yeah, a lot of people have blown this out of proportion. It basically means 'we're using lighting now to avoid dissonance between characters and locations'.

So much misinformation in 4 sentences. Of course they are different engines, with some of them being improved versions of others.

5 sentences. I'm assuming they all run on the same graphic engine, not stating they're exactly the same. And yes, all the assets are reused in KH games. Don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Deleted member 230586]

I do agree that UE4 look really freaking beautiful.
But correct me if I'm wrong, but would the development time increase even more, since they have to transfer all the work the have done up to this point from their current enige, to UE4?

I mean I'm happy that they made the dicision to switch engins to speed up the development, but wouldn't there only be more time added now they have to tranfer. Only wondering, that's all...