The writing team on the series has shrunk dramatically

[LucemFerto]

I'm super interested in how the Kingdom Hearts games are written and for my LP/Analysis-series, I've been scrubbing the credits of all the games (at least all the credits, I could read. I think the original Chi-credits are only available in Japanese).

I've noticed that during Kingdom Heart to coded, the writing teams of the games usually consisted of between 4 and 6 people - but from Dream Drop Distance onward it has only been Tetsuya Nomura and Masaru Oka. Only with Dark Road have we returned to a four-person writing staff.

Has that shift at all been noticeable to anyone else? Dream Drop Distance - in my opinion - was pretty bad, but KHIII - which is super massive - was on the level again, but it's still super interesting to consider.

Attached is a little table of all the writers I could find in the credits (I'd also be super interested what a Text Planner does, exactly):

Writer

KHI

CoM

KHII

Days

BBS

coded

3D

XBC

0.2

KHIII

UX

MoM

DR

Keiko Nobumoto

Scenario Supervisor

Jun Akiyama

Scenario Writer

Daisuke Watanabe

Scenario Writer

Scenario Writer

Text Planner

Scenario Supervisor

Scenario Plot

Scenario Supervisor

Kazushige Nojima

Scenario Writer

Scenario Supervisor

Scenario

Tetsuya Nomura

Scenario Supervisor

Base Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Story

Harunori Sakemi

Text Planner (Re)

Text Planner

Text Planner

Scenario

Tomoko Kanemaki

Scenario

Plot Design

Yukari Ishida

Scenario

Scenario

Kazuhiko Yajima

Text Planner

Masaru Oka

Base Story

Scenario

Scenario

Scenario

Scenario

Scenario

Scenario

Scenario

Yusuke Matsuda

Plot Design

 

[Phoenix]

I wonder if there's something to be said for Nomura being balanced out by other writers, if he's the only one involved anymore. This was always a product of his mind, but the KH1 opening is pretty far from a shot for shot scene recreation of a game he was shuffled away from. I'm not sure that happens if there's other people in the room with any amount of power over the story.

 

[Launchpad]

the shift also happens to coincide with the series entering a portion of time where it stopped introducing new characters (animal mask gang from mobile games aside) and started table-setting for KH3 and beyond. all the characters, locations, and ideas were a known quantity, which freed Nomura up to singularly dictate the story direction. It's tough to say whether or not it's Nomura's fault or a failing of the format that KH3 felt so plot-driven instead of being character-driven, but I'm hoping that with KH4 expanding the world and starting a new saga, there might be more hands on deck to keep things varied.

KH1, COM, KH2, and Days feel more focused on the characters, their feelings, their relationships, and their longing to be together. BBS attempts this as well with TVA, but BBS definitely began Nomura's foray into putting more effort into the universal mechanics and world history than the characters themselves, and it's interesting to see so many of the old hands disappear after that game.

 

[Sonofjafar]

Not sure if this is the reason for the large amounts of exposition crammed into every story-related cutscene in KH3 but it might

 

[Zackarix]

I'm still sad we only had Keiko Nobumoto for one game. She was a real legend.