I agree with most of your post, but especially this. I think with Disney Infinity dying, they've put a bigger eye on KH as a gaming source to pimp their new cash cows.
Yup, and while this isn't inherently bad, I just hope it's not as singular a focus as Nomura has been making it sound. Like if Wreck It Ralph
and Frozen
and say The Incredibles make it in over the assorted pre-millennial (or even just post-millennial) properties which don't have ongoing tie-ins or sequel bait to mine, but which are better fits for the franchise and this installment in particular, it's kind of a shame for everyone. Those worlds end up as filler or their relevance is contrived (or both) and the game wastes 2-3 hours of playtime on a Disney plot that could have been stronger down the line.
That's true. Bigger/longer worlds seemed like a better idea when I liked most of the properties being used, lol.
No kidding. I don't really have a huge preference for which animation "era" the worlds are pulled from, as I think Disney has both good and bad stuff from every generation of the studio; and, more to the point, "liking" or "disliking" a property doesn't have a whole lot to do with how appropriate it is for the game. For instance, I like BH6 well enough, but I don't think it has a whole lot of intrinsic value as a world in KH3. I guess my metric for good plotting is a little higher then: SDG arrive having no idea where they are; vague hints are dropped about the dudes in black coats; some version of Xehanort shows up to be cryptic and fill time we could actually be enjoying ourselves with listless exposition.
Didn't Nomura confirm that it's Square Enix who have the final say as to which Disney properties are represented? at best, Disney gives suggestions and recommendations, but it's Square Enix who call the final shots of world selection. I think this misconception of Disney selecting the worlds is probably due to how early Big Hero 6 was announced, and how late in development the world was.
Just mirroring the two posts above me, but when Disney owns a project, they own the project. They've been content to sit on the sidelines and allow Nomura to build castles in their sandbox, but I don't imagine they have any qualms about flexing their intergalactic "we pretty much own the movie industry" muscle if push comes to shove and they feel like they have something to say about the toys they're letting him borrow. That said, what I like about Nomura based on things I've read and heard is that he seems to be in a position to at least argue his vision and I feel that he probably has tempered some of Disney's more business-oriented leanings in the past. But Disney was also really slow to catch on to the relevance of the gaming population to their target demographics and I don't get the sense that they ever leaned that heavily before. KH3 is obviously an event title occurring in a totally different context with regards to media awareness than its most comparable predecessor, KH2. Disney
knows it can hit up the gaming market in an effort to kill two birds with one stone, and I'm worried that they aren't seeing KH3 as it is (the culmination of a long-running narrative carrying all the hopes and dreams of just about anyone who ever owned a PS2) and more as they feel it would be convenient for them: one extended commercial which is being primarily bankrolled by another company altogether. I mean, if I were a Disney exec, I'd be thinking: jackpot!!
