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Dark Road ► So we are in May now...



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A while back in January, this post was made stating a new game is coming out in Spring, that game having now revealed to be Dark Road.

Now we are in May, which is the last month of Spring and so far from what I can tell, there hasn't been any information in regards to it, especially given the Covid-19 situation going on. I would understand if the game was delayed because of this but if it were, wouldn't there at least be a announcement on it?

The Official Twitter for the game hasn't made a post since February, I don't even know if Japan has an account for it.
It's gone very quiet...
 

Chaser

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It's highly likely that it has been internally delayed to the second half of 2020.

It's also likely that it'll drop on the last day of Spring. Square Enix loves pushing those kinds of seasonal boundaries (like when they said BBS would release Summer 2010 and then it released September 10th, and while true to one seasonal calendar, people were like "BUT THEY SAID SUMMMERRRR".... also see KH Re MIND coming winter and then people thinking it was cancelled because it wasn't releasing December)
 

The_Echo

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I think if there were a delay we'd have heard about it by now, surely
But the fact that there has been complete radio silence for going on three straight months is a bit worrying
 

OneDandelion

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Developers rarely hold to a release date unless they give a specific date. That's the benefit of giving a vague release like "spring 2020" or "early 2020". More than likely what SE wanted to do was build hype as if we were getting one kingdom hearts game after another. They say "spring 2020" because the release of REmind was relatively close to the beginning of spring and they want people to frequently check news sites for updates all season long.

For a game like this to be delayed, that is so clearly built off of their phone game, is pretty damn sad though. Unfortunately it seems SE thinks KH isn't worth the trouble and are more content with pumping out an abundance of FF7 sequels. I mean honestly, if they can't find time to properly develop a shitty phone game, based on a story that's already been made obselete, then it's hard to look at the future of this series with hope.
 

Sign

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Developers rarely hold to a release date unless they give a specific date. That's the benefit of giving a vague release like "spring 2020" or "early 2020". More than likely what SE wanted to do was build hype as if we were getting one kingdom hearts game after another. They say "spring 2020" because the release of REmind was relatively close to the beginning of spring and they want people to frequently check news sites for updates all season long.

For a game like this to be delayed, that is so clearly built off of their phone game, is pretty damn sad though. Unfortunately it seems SE thinks KH isn't worth the trouble and are more content with pumping out an abundance of FF7 sequels. I mean honestly, if they can't find time to properly develop a shitty phone game, based on a story that's already been made obselete, then it's hard to look at the future of this series with hope.

This game isn't made internally so FF7 has absolutely nothing to do with it.
 

Oracle Spockanort

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Developers rarely hold to a release date unless they give a specific date. That's the benefit of giving a vague release like "spring 2020" or "early 2020". More than likely what SE wanted to do was build hype as if we were getting one kingdom hearts game after another. They say "spring 2020" because the release of REmind was relatively close to the beginning of spring and they want people to frequently check news sites for updates all season long.

For a game like this to be delayed, that is so clearly built off of their phone game, is pretty damn sad though. Unfortunately it seems SE thinks KH isn't worth the trouble and are more content with pumping out an abundance of FF7 sequels. I mean honestly, if they can't find time to properly develop a shitty phone game, based on a story that's already been made obselete, then it's hard to look at the future of this series with hope.

There is a literal pandemic going on. No game developer is working at full capacity atm. The UX staff are probably hard at work developing this game under these strange circumstances, but that is literally the ONLY reason this game is probably delayed.

FF7 definitely has nothing to do with it. That department doesn’t even work on mobile games.
 

OneDandelion

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Speculate however you want, resources not spent on KH goes elsewhere whether they outsource the game or not. Square Enix is solely responsible for funding the games development.

And the pandemic has only been a hindrance in the last few months, this has been an ongoing issue with Square Enix for years. Kingdom Hearts has slowly fallen to the wayside and the few developments there has been were used to exploit the fan base.

Imo, if they were far enough along that they could confidently say it would be released in "spring 2020" then the coronavirus wouldn't hinder it much anyway, but they haven't even bothered putting out a statement.
 

Oracle Spockanort

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Speculate however you want, resources not spent on KH goes elsewhere whether they outsource the game or not. Square Enix is solely responsible for funding the games development.

I mean...yeah? Resources are always going to be allocated to projects depending on scale and importance. Also, Disney partially funds Kingdom Hearts.

FF7 is going to obviously get more of Square Enix's money than KH because it is a project they have full control over and finance on their own (with some of Sony's money). KH is not under SE's full control, so it gets less funding from them. And it gets exactly whatever Disney is willing to give because Disney is Disney.

And the pandemic has only been a hindrance in the last few months, this has been an ongoing issue with Square Enix for years. Kingdom Hearts has slowly fallen to the wayside and the few developments there has been were used to exploit the fan base.

KH has always been the odd ball project of the company. It's been clear since 2002 when the game first released. It's never been allocated the kind of resources you'd think it would deserve, and it has always been under FF. It always will be.

KH hasn't fallen to the wayside. It's exactly where it has been for almost 20 years: considered important but less important than their other flagship property, and KH3 has really only just brought it out into the limelight and solidified it as a true tentpole for the company.

Regardless, I think your argument goes against fact. We have multiple projects in development for Kingdom Hearts, one of which they intend to announce "soon". Dark Road is a smaller project, and likely more of a passion project for Nomura and the UX team given the fact that this game wasn't going to exist at all until the UX team took it up.

Just because this one game is probably delayed doesn't mean Kingdom Hearts is some neglected and under-appreciated project at SE and is having all of its resources siphoned by the FF7R team. There is a whole department whose main task is making Kingdom Hearts games with multiple teams within that department working on individual projects. They have a lot of money to work with thanks to the success of KH3, and Disney seems to actually recognize it as something worth putting more of their own resources into now because of KH3.

If Kingdom Hearts was in a bad place, we'd know it. We know it isn't because Nomura would not have been quick to announce multiple projects being in development. There would have been a lot of "well, we can't talk about anything atm" or "we are in talks" or "there is nothing to announce". Instead, flat out we got "There is one game coming before KH4, and we also have four teams working on KH projects"

Like that doesn't sound like throwing KH to the wayside to me. Sounds like we've got more projects coming our way than we are anticipating. We've got the Osaka team that just came off of Remind, UX/DR team, a team working on the project coming "soon", and a mystery team making who knows what.

Imo, if they were far enough along that they could confidently say it would be released in "spring 2020" then the coronavirus wouldn't hinder it much anyway, but they haven't even bothered putting out a statement.

They have production schedules. This virus has interrupted those schedules. I don't think it is hard to figure out what is happening here with this project.
 

OneDandelion

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Regardless, I think your argument goes against fact. We have multiple projects in development for Kingdom Hearts, one of which they intend to announce "soon". Dark Road is a smaller project, and likely more of a passion project for Nomura and the UX team given the fact that this game wasn't going to exist at all until the UX team took it up.

I'm glad to hear you're still holding out for it. To be honest, Re:mind was the straw that broke the camels back for me. Over the last ten years Square Enix has been manipulating it's fans into buying/investing in game series and making promises that they can't keep. And if that's not enough for you then the pace of their storytelling should be.

KH3 was not a full game even with Remind. FF7R was not a full game. These projects are being dragged out in the same way that Peter Jackson dragged out the Hobbit, only worse because it costs you more money. And they're hiding behind their graphics department in order to justify burning a hole in our wallets.

So I'm skeptical of what "multiple projects" even means for the series at this point. I used to believe Nomura could do no wrong and KH is still one of my favorite franchises, but the quality has shifted.

Frankly, at this point, no one should be trusting Disney or Square Enix to put out quality games. And any time that Disney or Square Enix is (intentionally) vague or leaves you on a cliff hanger you can fuckin bet that you're not going to get what you want before they get their pay day
 

Zephyr

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Frankly, at this point, no one should be trusting Disney or Square Enix to put out quality games.
Doesn't KH3 technically have more content than KH2/KH1 and it's still not a full game? We also have to consider that the content of Final Mixes did not originally appear in their base/vanilla versions.

If the content of FF7R was stretched out, wouldn't it "lose its quality" to accommodate the whole story? Or unless you mean in terms of gameplay? Square Enix is trying to approach the FF7 universe with modern sensibilities and the extra character fleshing for not-so-important NPCs like Jessie/Biggs/etc is appreciated.
 

OneDandelion

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Doesn't KH3 technically have more content than KH2/KH1 and it's still not a full game? We also have to consider that the content of Final Mixes did not originally appear in their base/vanilla versions.

If the content of FF7R was stretched out, wouldn't it "lose its quality" to accommodate the whole story? Or unless you mean in terms of gameplay? Square Enix is trying to approach the FF7 universe with modern sensibilities and the extra character fleshing for not-so-important NPCs like Jessie/Biggs/etc is appreciated.
Look, you can call it a full game if you want but if we're comparing JRPGs now by the standards of JRPGs of the past then there is a very clear drop in gameplay and story pacing that anyone whose familiar with oldschool JRPGs should understand.

If you are willing to accept fluff and cutscenes in exchange for gameplay then of course you would have no problem with this.

I don't intend to turn this into an FF7 thread so I'm only going to say this - SE has the capability of creating huge overworlds and they've been included in $60 games before. Midgar was not that. Midgar alone did not need to be it's own game even with the extra minor character development. If you've played FF15 there is no explanation for FF7R to be as small of a game as it was for $60. If you enjoyed it then I'm happy for you, but you shouldn't pretend that it's content is comparable even to games in their [recent] past.
 

GreyouTT

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If Kingdom Hearts was in a bad place, we'd know it. We know it isn't because Nomura would not have been quick to announce multiple projects being in development. There would have been a lot of "well, we can't talk about anything atm" or "we are in talks" or "there is nothing to announce". Instead, flat out we got "There is one game coming before KH4, and we also have four teams working on KH projects"

Like that doesn't sound like throwing KH to the wayside to me. Sounds like we've got more projects coming our way than we are anticipating. We've got the Osaka team that just came off of Remind, UX/DR team, a team working on the project coming "soon", and a mystery team making who knows what.

Wasn't it just one new team in addition to Osaka and BitGroove? Like there was a KH3 team, but I think that was just a small part of the Osaka team that stayed to make the DLC while the rest started the next project.


Edit: Well this happened.

 
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Sign

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Wasn't it just one new team in addition to Osaka and BitGroove? Like there was a KH3 team, but I think that was just a small part of the Osaka team that stayed to make the DLC while the rest started the next project.


Edit: Well this happened.


No, there are two additional teams:

We still need some time with regards to main line Kingdom Hearts, but first up the KH UX team will have a surprising announcement tomorrow. Aside from the KH3 and KH UX teams, we actually have two new teams in operation, and from them one title will be coming surprisingly soon.

"KH3 Team" refers to Osaka Team as a whole.
 
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