KINGDOM HEARTS Missing Link Coming 2025, Probably!

[Darkspawn]

One of the developers of ML who posted the above footage has shared some details on the game on his website.

It appears ML is being developed entirely in-house by CBU1 rather than being outsourced like UX/DR. Development started in January 2019 and is using UE5.

There’s also a character piece based on Tidus shown in one of the gifs, which we haven’t seen before.

EDIT: Removing the link to the dev’s portfolio as he’s requested that it not be used as a source of game information.

 

[Launchpad]

6 years of active development? If that's true, holy fuck how irresponsible and embarrassing to spend that much time and money on an extremely risky mobile game with such an incredibly narrow target audience.

It using UE5 makes me slightly suspicious of this info, however, considering KH4 only began using UE5 in mid 2022.

 

[Darkspawn]

6 years of active development? If that's true, holy fuck how irresponsible and embarrassing to spend that much time and money on an extremely risky mobile game with such an incredibly narrow target audience.

It using UE5 makes me slightly suspicious of this info, however, considering KH4 only began using UE5 in mid 2022.

I’m guessing they probably switched for ML around the same time and that contributed to it taking so long. Developing both in the same engine probably makes asset sharing easier. And 2019 probably includes pre-production work.

Him posting clean footage of the prototype build, when all the previous footage was scrubbed, and footage with previously unseen pieces is enough proof for me that it’s legit. I just wonder why he’s able to share this out now.

This also seemingly means they have two full internal dev teams now for KH within CBU1/Creative Studio 1, which is interesting.

 

[Dandelion]

6 years of active development? If that's true, holy fuck how irresponsible and embarrassing to spend that much time and money on an extremely risky mobile game with such an incredibly narrow target audience.

It using UE5 makes me slightly suspicious of this info, however, considering KH4 only began using UE5 in mid 2022.

The link is legit.

 

[Perkilator]

>The game is still mobile

 

[Chaser]

Neeeeed him to have worked on KH4 at the start and make a post so we can see if Missing-Link or KH4 has been in development longer.

 

[Phoenix]

If they really did spend 6 years of actual production dev time in this, this is a catastrophe. They've spent serious money on a genre that even Harry Potter flopped at, and where even Pokemon is now struggling. But Kingdom fucking Hearts is going to outdo those two?

 

[Dandelion]

To be fair, Missing Link is the byproduct of an experimental build using KHIII's tech that was built in 2018 and approved to be made into its own game. He may be counting the time of experimental dev which would have been when KHIII was released, in January 2019, which coincides with what his site says. At that point, he mentions that he was the only person working on the project to get it greenlit, so it's not like the entire 100 person team was working on it for six years.

 

[2 quid is good]

Everything else at Squeenix is getting cancelled but the mobile game makes the cut??? Are they stupid?

This has to be just sunk cost fallacy. I hope they find their whales and can wrap up this rubbish quickly once they turn a profit - if they ever do after a 6 year dev cycle with presumably 2 of it spent on UE5.

Urgh, oh God this is a real head in my hand moment. Its not even outsourced. They've genuinely spent all that time dedicating one of their dev teams to a phone game - we could have literally anything else like the remakes of various games that various parts of the fandom have been clamouring for. They would have been quicker and some guaranteed money at least!

 

[Launchpad]

This whole thing makes me realize how relatively smoothly the franchise has moved til recently. We've never seen KH hit such an obvious snag and experience so much difficulty until ML.

I'm looking forward to ML finally coming out so I can kinda just pore over the stuff that interests me (the music, Scala, story shit... the character designs seem really weak for a KH game so I don't care about those) and then just kinda watch it all fall apart and go into EoS. I don't want KH to become synonymous with failure, but the mismanagement here is fucking stunning.

They are simultaneously unable to wipe the dollar signs out of their eyes and they're unable to just make a simple, achievable KH gachaslop game that'd be infinitely more profitable and easy to manipulate the masses with. Hello?? Daily pull to try and get Sleepy Time Goofy, Bikini Aqua, and Gimp Suit Xemnas?? Infinite money glitch??

 

[Revenge]

I think there is a lot of overreaction in this thread. I do not believe the game has been in active development since 2019, but more brainstorming, pre-planning, and pre-production. I would like to believe Square Enix has the data that would imply a successful venture here, regardless of the wait time.

Kingdom Hearts fans are passionate, so there will be whales, and there will be those who continue playing long after KH4 is out or ML's story concludes.

 

[Launchpad]

I think there is a lot of overreaction in this thread. I do not believe the game has been in active development since 2019, but more brainstorming, pre-planning, and pre-production. I would like to believe Square Enix has the data that would imply a successful venture here, regardless of the wait time.

Kingdom Hearts fans are passionate, so there will be whales, and there will be those who continue playing long after KH4 is out or ML's story concludes.

Might be a bold take, but I think creating a product that can only succeed by preying upon a small sect of vulnerable, financially irresponsible people is actually a bad thing!

 

[Darkspawn]

My ideal scenario here is that by the time they launch it, the core team will have fully developed a good 2-3 years worth of future content for the game. From there, a core team can stay behind to support the game while the rest can start up another console project (maybe UX/DR remake). If it’s an asset flip, they could probably have something released by 2028/29 after KH4 releases in 26/27. Then we could get in a rhythm of a KH game every 2 years or so. ML could be like a long training project for this new team like BBS-2.8 were for the KH3/KH4 teams, And it could potentially finance the next few games in the series if it gets anywhere near DQ Walk’s revenue.

I tend to look on the optimistic side, but I think it SE didn’t see strong potential in the game, it would have been scrapped along with the other content cuts. Developing it internally, using a new engine for it, and taking the extra time to fix whatever issues they ran into shows this isn’t intended to just be a low effort cash grab.

I will also admit I am excited for the potential of the game to provide a steady stream of KH content. That was an under-appreciated aspect of UX, even if it wasn’t always consistent. ML honestly could have unlimited potential if you’re a creative person who likes to role play. You can team up with your real world friends, go on an adventure to free a section of the map from darkness, and make your own little KH story out of it.

The gacha element is obviously the biggest drawback. I wish they’d just have paid story episodes plus the money they make from selling location data and from in game items like raid tickets, AP refreshers, cosmetics, etc. But since the target audience in Japan loves gacha stuff, it’s not likely to change.

Since we now know it’s using UE5, something noteworthy is that the engine had a version 5.5 update back in November that focused a lot on improvements for mobile game development. The ML team may have wanted to take advantage of the new and improved features before launching it. Apparently UE hasn’t been the best engine historically for mobile game development, so that may have been the source of some of their struggles.

 

[MATGSY]

Might be a bold take, but I think creating a product that can only succeed by preying upon a small sect of vulnerable, financially irresponsible people is actually a bad thing!

It's how all mobile games work, sadly.

 

[Chaser]

Anyone roughly remember when the Missing-Link website first said "pre-registration information coming soon"? I'm kinda hoping we get to a year of "coming soon."

 

[Launchpad]

to be honest I'd love to see a fanbase-wide poll to determine how many fans are actually going to try Missing Link. I don't have a phone powerful enough to run it and I don't want to do any fancy emulator stuff to try to get it working on PC so I'm pretty much out

 

[Darkspawn]

Anyone roughly remember when the Missing-Link website first said "pre-registration information coming soon"? I'm kinda hoping we get to a year of "coming soon."

Around May 24th. You were the one who told us. lol

English website updated too but it's very plain - https://www.kingdomhearts.com/missinglink/en-gb/

Funny enough, the Linking Hearts thing starts May 23rd.

 

[Chaser]

yay for timeless river past me

 

[Phoenix]

to be honest I'd love to see a fanbase-wide poll to determine how many fans are actually going to try Missing Link. I don't have a phone powerful enough to run it and I don't want to do any fancy emulator stuff to try to get it working on PC so I'm pretty much out

My plan is to watch the cutscenes on YouTube. Or more likely, read the wiki summary.

 

[LucemFerto]

The only way I'll play it is if they also release it on PC and/or consoles like Ever Crisis (which, incidentally, is the only way this project could possibly work out, I think).