Need help understanding something

[AR829038]

So, it's been almost two years now since KH3 released, and easily the most difficult-to-follow segment of the game for me was the first half of the endgame segment at the Keyblade Graveyard. Now, thanks to some of Nomura's interviews and a reasonably unhealthy amount of mental gymnastics, I think I finally understand the bulk of what actually went on during that segment, particularly with regards to the time rewrite. But there are still two things I don't understand, and I was hoping to probe the knowledge of the fanbase to see if anyone knew or could think of any explanations.
1) Does anybody know what Young Xehanort meant when he said "the power of waking is for traversing hearts to reach worlds, not traversing worlds to reach hearts"? I think by now most of us understand that the power of waking is supposed to be an ability that lets you restore a heart to its original state (and apparently in inexperienced hands it can bring people straight up back from the dead). But that doesn't really mesh with what YX is talking about. What does "traversing hearts to reach worlds" have to do with restoring hearts to their original state? Or is this just another fault of awkward translation?
2) I don't really understand the logistics of the Lich segment. I understand that it's a special grim reaper-type Heartless that exists to drag hearts down to the abyss, but what I don't understand is why Sora's friend's hearts have been scattered throughout all the Disney worlds? None of them have any special connections to the places where we find them, and wouldn't it make more sense for all their hearts to be located at the place where they were slain?

 

[Elysium]

I know I'm not the most knowledgeable, so you'll need help from someone else with the first question. The best I can think of is that he dives into his own heart to reach Kairi's heart through the connection that's held between their two hearts and into the "world" of sleep that's close to death where her heart would be?

But for the second, I think it's more that hearts simply scatter and it was supposed to be seen as completely random as to where they might be after they've been separated from the body. They just decided to use the world roster in 3 because it was convenient from the perspective of designing the game. Although it would've been cute if they had made tiny areas from places like the Pride Lands, Never Land, etc. to be where the hearts might be.

 

[AdrianXXII]

My Take on the "traversing hearts to reach worlds" and "traversing worlds to reach hearts" things is the difference of how Riku and Sora seemed to use it.

In DDD Riku uses it to enter Sora's heart and that leads him to Dream/Heart!Destiny Island.

Where as in KH3 Sora uses the Power of Waking to travel between Worlds to reach the Hearts of his friends.

 

[AegisXIII]

Traversing hearts to reach worlds is what Sora does in ReMind. He goes to the station of awakenikg, aka the heart of someone and unlocks it to reach another heart, world, etc. That's what Riku does at the end of DDD. He traverses Sora's heart and reaches a dream destiny islands.

If you do it the other way, it's by using darkness corridors and so you endup destroying yourself. The lych took the Hearts of people and scattered them in many worlds so that Sora has to travel longer distance with no protection and destroy his heart.
As to why it rewrite the timeline, I have no clue and hope it is gonna be developped later.

Note that I think all of this is probably easier to understand in japanese than in english, I assume.

 

[Cumguardian69]

It rewrote the timeline because the lich basically has a contract with nature - people who are slain have their hearts taken by the lich and then they are pronounced "dead dead" aka gone forever, not "KH dead". By breaking that nature rool an arbitrary amount of times, Sora got hisself whisked away from the RoL (and maybe even the RoD/RoS). We can assume hes on the "other side" of the Final World but, Nomura hasnt exactly developed it just yet

 

[AR829038]

Traversing hearts to reach worlds is what Sora does in ReMind. He goes to the station of awakenikg, aka the heart of someone and unlocks it to reach another heart, world, etc. That's what Riku does at the end of DDD. He traverses Sora's heart and reaches a dream destiny islands.

If you do it the other way, it's by using darkness corridors and so you endup destroying yourself. The lych took the Hearts of people and scattered them in many worlds so that Sora has to travel longer distance with no protection and destroy his heart.
As to why it rewrite the timeline, I have no clue and hope it is gonna be developped later.

Note that I think all of this is probably easier to understand in japanese than in english, I assume.

Yeah, I think I understand, but it's just weird to me that the power of waking has this sudden dual functionality where one use is so radically unconnected with the other. On the one hand, it restores a heart to its original state, on the other, it's for going inside people's hearts and using them to experience worlds. Now, I guess that makes sense when you think about it, but then, if that's the case, then it bears explaining why Sora's vanishing only occurred after using the power of waking the second time, which by your account seems to be the more proper method of using it. Or are we to understand that Sora was just on borrowed time from the Lich escapade? If that's the case, it bugs me, because why would there be such a delay?

 

[Sephiroth0812]

I dunno if it is really that unconnected but rather a safe and an unsafe way to use it. If you use it the correct way, you start inside a heart connected to the heart(s) you want to restore/save and trace these connections to reach the worlds inside those hearts, not the actual worlds open to outer influence.
When Riku uses the power correctly in Dream Drop Distance it has no harmful side effects and the Destiny Islands he reaches (where the data-Ansem the Wise and Roxas, Ventus and Xion are) is literally inside Sora's heart, not the actual world.

The first time he uses the power himself in KH 3 Sora ironically does it correctly as well, when he wakes up Ventus at Land of Departure.
Later he uses the unsafe way too often in quick succession by chasing the lost hearts around across the worlds. When Young Xehanort is finally defeated in the last battle (alongside Xemnas and Ansem SoD) he does implicate that Sora is running on borrowed time ever since he pulled the multiple power of waking stunt. The damage was already there, like a festering wound that slowly got worse so it did not really matter if he did it correctly the second time around in Re: Mind.

 

[AR829038]

I dunno if it is really that unconnected but rather a safe and an unsafe way to use it. If you use it the correct way, you start inside a heart connected to the heart(s) you want to restore/save and trace these connections to reach the worlds inside those hearts, not the actual worlds open to outer influence.
When Riku uses the power correctly in Dream Drop Distance it has no harmful side effects and the Destiny Islands he reaches (where the data-Ansem the Wise and Roxas, Ventus and Xion are) is literally inside Sora's heart, not the actual world.

The first time he uses the power himself in KH 3 Sora ironically does it correctly as well, when he wakes up Ventus at Land of Departure.
Later he uses the unsafe way too often in quick succession by chasing the lost hearts around across the worlds. When Young Xehanort is finally defeated in the last battle (alongside Xemnas and Ansem SoD) he does implicate that Sora is running on borrowed time ever since he pulled the multiple power of waking stunt. The damage was already there, like a festering wound that slowly got worse so it did not really matter if he did it correctly the second time around in Re: Mind.

Okay, I think I can see the logic there. I guess that also clarifies the Scala ad Caelum thing—I was always unclear whether they actually travelled to the past or if they were just going into Xehanort's memory of Scala, but thinking about the power of waking in this way makes the answer a bit more clear.

 

[AegisXIII]

Yeah, I think I understand, but it's just weird to me that the power of waking has this sudden dual functionality where one use is so radically unconnected with the other. On the one hand, it restores a heart to its original state, on the other, it's for going inside people's hearts and using them to experience worlds. Now, I guess that makes sense when you think about it, but then, if that's the case, then it bears explaining why Sora's vanishing only occurred after using the power of waking the second time, which by your account seems to be the more proper method of using it. Or are we to understand that Sora was just on borrowed time from the Lich escapade? If that's the case, it bugs me, because why would there be such a delay?

I would say it is meant to be fuzzy right now. Ddd introduced dream worlds. We know the next step will be linked with Yozora which is a reboot of Versus 13, which was tightly linked to the notion of sleep. Since this game was in developpement for 10 years, I assume there is a lot of the lore that will be transfered to the future of the KH serie. So, a lot of exposition will come I think.

Although If anyone knows : does Power of Waking has the same meaning in japanese?

 

[bcsimaoo]

Sora used the PoW correctly in Re:Mind, but just part time... When he gets to Scala he is using it to traverse worlds once again. And for saving his companions and retrieving Kairi's heart at the end, he uses it wrong one last time, triggering his banishment once and for all.
Chirity explains at the begining of the episode, that he must follow the hearts till the very end, so he remains close to the original purpose of the PoW. But he knows that in the end he would need to traverse a world to reach Kairi's heart.