Nomura discusses Kingdom Hearts 4, Missing-Link, and Dark Road in extended Famitsu interview

[SweetYetSalty]

Yozora was mostly positively received. I hardly saw any backlash for him, especially after his ReMind battle. His boss battle alone scored him high on many people's tier list, despite not knowing much about him. Sometimes that's all it takes for a video game character.

And hey, this answers my question about the Lost Masters I asked in another thread, making it totally pointless now XD

 

[Liodin]

 Nomura: I'm hoping to put some other stuff together, so please wait for more information from official announcements.

Does this mean there are more projects to be announced? 🤯

 

[Sign]

Does this mean there are more projects to be announced? 🤯

Not necessarily projects, but stuff for the anniversary celebration. Hopefully it doesn't include more merch.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Not necessarily projects, but stuff for the anniversary celebration. Hopefully it doesn't include more merch.

Or if it is more merch, it is reasonably priced and easily accessible.

 

[sdr27]

I like that the series is getting new writers added on, especially the writer for Heavensward. This seems like this arc will tackle more mature themes and elements.

 

[Chaser]

Who's giving wrong information to Nomura?! Because I never got the impression Yozora wasn't well received...
At least now he's aware fans want a Verum Rex game.

Akiko Ishibashi (NEO:TWEWY) is a great addition to the KH writing team. Not if only they got rid of Masaru Oka... A new co-director and cutscene director would be welcomed too...

They are already made clear it will take a while for more KH4 news. I expect them to go radio silence for more than one year and come back in 2024.

He read my posts lol. In early 2019 I hated Yozora and the Versus XIII stuff Nomura was trying to turn KH into. Even during Re Mind I was yelling at the tv to hyuck off with what was being shown.

I’ve mellowed and come around on Yozora and whatnot but I do not want a whole game of that.

 

[The_Echo]

Either he's lurking in the wrong places on the internet or he's being fed inaccurate info. I'm not sure which is the lesser of two evils.

I think it's referring to how Yozora was received when the base game launched.
Which was, of course, "oh, it's just Noctis, Nomura's still mad about Versus XIII."
We had no indication that Yozora would be a major character in the world of KH until Re Mind came out, and of course everyone's tune changed.

 

[Alpha Baymax]

The fact that the three games have female writers makes me hope that the female characters are written better.

This was an inevitable necessity. During the Xehanort saga, we just had Kairi, Larxene, Namine, Xion and Aqua as the central female characters. Now, we have Skuld, Strelitzia, Urd, Vor and Nameless Star.

Nomura can write a female character if they have a central role to the plot, but as soon as they become secondary characters, he jobs them so hard. Namine, Xion and Aqua were well developed characters in the games that centered around them but that wasn't able to translate to Kingdom Hearts III.

 

[Sign]

I think it's referring to how Yozora was received when the base game launched.
Which was, of course, "oh, it's just Noctis, Nomura's still mad about Versus XIII."
We had no indication that Yozora would be a major character in the world of KH until Re Mind came out, and of course everyone's tune changed.

I can understand that, but were there really so many people saying that to make him think it was the majority opinion? The number of people are even aware of his history with Versus are far outnumbered by those who just see a kick-ass CG scene with anime characters and robots.

 

[Chie]

Kingdom Hearts gets a lot of "reactions" from people who aren't actually fans of the game and like to dunk on it for memes when there's news. I kinda wonder if that effects the transfer of information. If you count those people, the "majority opinion" on KH is that it makes zero sense, has too many Nomura characters and should just be a normal Disney game, so...

 

[Sign]

Kingdom Hearts gets a lot of "reactions" from people who aren't actually fans of the game and like to dunk on it for memes when there's news. I kinda wonder if that effects the transfer of information. If you count those people, the "majority opinion" on KH is that it makes zero sense, has too many Nomura characters and should just be a normal Disney game, so...

You've just reminded me that Nomura spends a lot of time on Youtube 😫

 

[2 quid is good]

He read my posts lol. In early 2019 I hated Yozora and the Versus XIII stuff Nomura was trying to turn KH into. Even during Re Mind I was yelling at the tv to hyuck off with what was being shown.

I’ve mellowed and come around on Yozora and whatnot but I do not want a whole game of that.

Me and you both LOL

 

[Alpha Baymax]

He read my posts lol. In early 2019 I hated Yozora and the Versus XIII stuff Nomura was trying to turn KH into. Even during Re Mind I was yelling at the tv to hyuck off with what was being shown.

I’ve mellowed and come around on Yozora and whatnot but I do not want a whole game of that.

I don't blame Nomura for trying to move as much of Final Fantasy Versus XIII into Kingdom Hearts especially when Final Fantasy XV is arguably a new game. That game was being worked on since 2006, I think it's fair that some of the games ideas should stick around in some fashion.

 

[LoneFox]

KH Missing Link takes place about 4 generations after Ephemer's time.

So, I was originally right about Brain having time travelled only a short interval, but then changed my opinion. I did that because the grandfather thing seemed to have more weight than the secret report wording where Luxu says that he gave his keyblade away during the events at the end of UX (and not after them). The question is, can both be true? Four generations is about 100 years, then another 50 or so to Eraqus and young Xehanort, and 85 from there to the end of KH3. That's not long enough, but could there be a break somewhere else? We do know that Eraqus did time travel, because otherwise he would be over 90 years old in BBS. So, maybe Xehanort did too, and there is a long gap just before the scene where he meets the MoM?

Argh!!! Nomura, why can't you just do things in an order that makes sense?

His descendents have each formed their own societies: the main family who carries his bloodline is the "Society of Successors", while the branch family is the "Society of Non-Successors".

I wonder how literally we should take the term bloodline here? I have really hard time believing that Ephemer would have children with anyone else but Skuld, and while she has the option to return to early Scala via time travel, the meaning of her name suggests that her place is in the future. Also, having a literal bloodline of keyblade wielders is by itself problematic, because the keyblade chooses its master, and it's unlikely that there would be worthy wielders in four generations of same family in a row.

Maybe it just means the group of people to whom Ephemer gave the important items (the Box, the Book, and Master's Defender), and the "bloodline" is a bad translation caused by misunderstanding?

 

[Sign]

I wonder how literally we should take the term bloodline here? I have really hard time believing that Ephemer would have children with anyone else but Skuld, and while she has the option to return to early Scala via time travel, the meaning of her name suggests that her place is in the future. Also, having a literal bloodline of keyblade wielders is by itself problematic, because the keyblade chooses its master, and it's unlikely that there would be worthy wielders in four generations of same family in a row.

The idea that blood relations may have an effect on Keyblade wielding isn't exactly new. Everyone's been mulling it over for the past three years, ever since KH3's secret report revealed that Eraqus is descended from one of the first masters. It's something that Xehanort has a bit of an inferiority complex over.

Maybe it just means the group of people to whom Ephemer gave the important items (the Box, the Book, and Master's Defender), and the "bloodline" is a bad translation caused by misunderstanding?

I don't really see how the rest of the answer would make any sense if these people were all just random shmucks. The way they emphasize the setting in relation to Ephemer: how many years it's been since his death, his connection (or lack thereof) to the two societies... The word they use is 血筋 which can have non-familial nuances, but everything about this answer indicates that its in the context of blood relations.

 

[LoneFox]

I don't really see how the rest of the answer would make any sense if these people were all just random shmucks. The way they emphasize the setting in relation to Ephemer: how many years it's been since his death, his connection (or lack thereof) to the two societies... The word they use is 血筋 which can have non-familial nuances, but everything about this answer indicates that its in the context of blood relations.

But isn't stuff like that stereotypical for secret societies? They pretend to be a family?

Then again, maybe I'm simply overestimating the importance of meaningful names, and Skuld did return to this timeline with Ephemer. I guess I'm going to believe that for now.

 

[Absent]

Me reading this interview thinking about the awesome and solid world building in Kingdom Hearts 1 turn to this.

Spoiler Show

God I need therapy

.

 

[2 quid is good]

Me reading this interview thinking about the awesome and solid world building in Kingdom Hearts 1 turn to this.

Spoiler Show

God I need therapy

.

Some days I'm not even sure why I still care ;-;

 

[Alpha Baymax]

I wonder how literally we should take the term bloodline here? I have really hard time believing that Ephemer would have children with anyone else but Skuld, and while she has the option to return to early Scala via time travel, the meaning of her name suggests that her place is in the future. Also, having a literal bloodline of keyblade wielders is by itself problematic, because the keyblade chooses its master, and it's unlikely that there would be worthy wielders in four generations of same family in a row.

Maybe it just means the group of people to whom Ephemer gave the important items (the Box, the Book, and Master's Defender), and the "bloodline" is a bad translation caused by misunderstanding?

Maybe Skuld goes through the same process that Brain does in that two versions of her coexist? A version of Skuld that ends up having a relationship with Ephemer during the Missing Link era and another version of Skuld that gets materialised once someone remembered them during the Birth by Sleep era?

 

[KeybladeLordSora]

I can understand that, but were there really so many people saying that to make him think it was the majority opinion? The number of people are even aware of his history with Versus are far outnumbered by those who just see a kick-ass CG scene with anime characters and robots.

I honestly wonder what version of Versus these people see in their heads when they look at Verum Rex and KH4.