Re: Kingdom Hearts Union X English Story Won't Be Up To Date When Kingdom Hearts III Launches
I agree with the whole situation being jacked, and I’ll also admit having characters like Ventus, and Marluxia’s Somebody may have only been done more so to reel more people into playing the game than anything else. (Marluxia even more so) But I do think that given Xehanorts extreme interest and obsession with Ventus going as far as to still obtain his comatose body even after the events of BBS, makes sense and fits with narrative to have Ventus be from the time of the Keyblade War which Xehanort has dedicated most of his life over. Giving Ventus’s a backstory on anything that didn’t involve the Keyblade War wouldn’t have logically made him stand out at all to Xehanort when he made him an apprentice. He needed a strong darkness so picking someone as defiant and pure as Ventus rather than finding someone else more naturally inclined to the darkness makes less sense when you don’t take his backstory into consideration. Could it have been handled better yes but literally everything in The X series could have been handled better.
Not "may" I'd say. Ven and Marluxia being included I'm pretty sure was done mainly to goad more people into playing the game and firmly force the direct connection with the present day era, characters and KH III.
We do not know why Xehanort has such an obsessive interest in Ventus though nor if he's interested in the whole being or really just the comatose body which would point towards an interest solely because of needing another vessel.
All Nomura had to say about it in the BBS Ultimania when asked was:
BBS Ultimania said:
- So then, why is Xemnas of Organization XIII searching for Ven?
Well, there’s still some time between the ending of 'Birth by Sleep’ and 'KHI’, so…
- So you’re saying you can’t tell us yet (laughs).
In the BBS reports he states he got interested in Ventus mainly due to him sensing the great potential in the kid, but that can mean
anything and if Xehanort knew beforehand about any possible "prominence" of Ven in relation to the Keyblade War-era would he really have carelessly used him for one of his experiments like he ultimatively did before and during BBS?
The BBS flashbacks show that he was trying to coerce/force Ventus to give in to/use his darkness but failed at every turn, hence why he resorted to ultimately creating Vanitas, but that was all done in relation to his plans to try and get a shortcut to the X-blade as far as we know.
In DDD towards Mickey he decribes Ven as the "broken boy who failed to be the blade" again referencing his actions and plans from BBS.
We know from Days and assorted supplementary material that Xemnas was searching obsessively for Ventus, yet no implication as to why (although once the vessel-horcrux stuff came up fandom pretty quickly interpreted this as trying to make Ven's body another vessel) and the notion that the main Xehanort shares this interest was brought up only in 0.2, yet neither Terra-Xehanort nor Terra give any hint towards the reasons.
Thing is though that this seems to be a plot point they're having dangled in our faces for pretty long by now just like idk two dozen others without any substantial progress made which seem to be poised to get an unnecessary over the top extraâ„¢ explanation for shock value instead of something logical and coherent.
Granted, Ventus' dive to the heart does depict the Keyblade Graveyard/the Badlands as the location background in both versions that are seen of it, so a
connection is certainly there, although it might be also because this location is where Vanitas was created and we only see Ven's station after Vanitas' creation already happened.
Still, even if we do count it as a direct reference to the Keyblade War and associated stuff, a
connection, even a direct one, would have been enough and less fantastic and over the top than actually have him originate from that very era.
We came for the story, stayed for the time-gap fill and promise of "the juicy story stuff is coming, we promise".
And now here we are. Chi's canon placement in the timeline was used as the primary bait to get people playing the game, and now that very same thing is being made to seem unimportant after all this time. It really feels like a bait and switch, honestly.
To think I can dig this old thing from 2015 back up because it fits:
Lol, what a deja-vu especially with the not-delivery afterwards.
As long as his story is well written and well executed it doesn't haft to be original.
Won't deny that there are better ways to tell a backstory for Ven, but right now, with the decision of this ESV trio, being the most 1 dimensional character, Ven needs some serious update and character development. What I find very dissaponiting from SE and the (so called writers from KH3) Is that they have had a whole year to tell a compelling story and further explore the main 5 leaders. Especially Ven, for his foreshadowing important role for KH3. Having a whole year, you can find ways to not only create complex arcs but also eventually lead to the events that tie into his first appearance in BBS. Or so just leave a hint of where he was discovered by Master Xehanort.
I just have this gut feeling that Nomura always wanted the KHUX arc to end with a tragedy, and I truly believe that it will lead to where Ven is found.
Lost memory, trapped in a different realm, separated, betrayed, sacrifice there are so many ways to make for a strong close for Ven as a very different person, and that alone would make his character interesting. But if Nomura instead wants Ven to be an innocent victim running into someone's trap, I don't know what I want to believe and I will not treat it as canon if he's going to stay 1 dimensional.
Better write my own backstory for him in the near future, if that's the case.
So far there is no execution and no writing at all on that front though, lol.
The KH series as a whole, but Ux in particular (see Strelitzia) also has not a good track record in this area so you'll have to forgive me for remaining skeptical.
That I have quite some love for most of the KH original characters is independent from my loathing of the presentation and execution of the story.
Of course I agree on this notion, they wasted a whole year in which they could have fleshed out and make the audience care for all five new union leaders and Strelitzia, give each of them depth, compelling relationships and interactions with each other to, y'know, make them true
characters, but nope, they had to park the entire narrative in Fillerville of the Boredom Kingdom.
There's nothing contradicting or false about Ven being innocent or a victim, both Blaine and Xehanort (in his reports) have implied that due to being overly benevolent Ven is more poised to be victimized.
There isn't even a huge need to make him a vastly different person as that would clash with the established facts about him generally being a kind and friendly guy, which is a established fact about him in
both BBS and Ux. Fleshing a character out means adding more facets to the initial core traits, not completely change them up to something vastly different.
UX is a goddamn mess. All this talk about how important it will be and how "the main story is just beginning" and this is what we get.
UX might as well be non-canon aside from MoM, Luxu, the book, and the box.
Maybe we just misunderstood from the beginning and what was actually said is "You'll only see the
beginning of the story", as that's what the status is at since September 2017 and as far as it stands now it is to remain that way at least for global Ux. *derp*
For the sake of coherency and better accessibility for all parts of the fandom it would probably be better if everything was non-canon or at least not overly relevant beyond some background story.
The box is a literal shoehorned in extra plot device KH III certainly doesn't need with all that already is on the plate to address.
Unfortunately she's wrong, and Nomura has clearly reversed course completely to undo whatever good will he managed to build up with the complete package of HD remixes. Sure, let's shoehorn in another extraneous mystery box to further complicate KH3's tangle of obligations to preceding and concurrent narratives that nooobody asked for.
I dunno if Nomura even realizes the possible ramifications that arise from this kind of policy as I've a hard time imagining people constantly repeating the same errors.
Sadly this seems to be the usual modus operandi of Nomura in general. Instead of expanding and developing existing concepts, themes, narratives and characters he keeps introducing new additional stuff to further complicate things just for the sake of being "surprising".
The most jarring thing about this is that the man himself once admitted that KH III has become so huge in scale because so many unfinished things have piled up. If you know that, one would expect you to start untangle the pile, bring order to it and develop the many parts, not add even more parts to the already big pile.
All this and if I'm not mistaken we still don't even know wtf is going on in Ux for real? Like isn't there still the possibility it's all Ven's dream/Realm of Sleep/some magical book antics? What are the chances everyone's been red herring'd for years and years, I mean both X and Ux are canon but Nomura insists they're different somehow and that's gotta be explained. Still. (Somebody please do correct me if I'm wrong.)
That comes on top too, yeah.
Most people (me included up until you mentioned it now) have by now probably forgotten about the issue that the mystery of the actual nature of the "Unchained realm" and everything connected to it still isn't an inch closer to be resolved than the moment it was first mentioned. There are also several other things that were brought up/shown in Browser Chi (like Ephemer meeting a black coat) which are not addressed in the slightest so far.
It's mystery heaped upon mystery with zero enlightenment down the whole road.