What would you change about the KHII story?

[Deleted member 246005]

@Zackarix
I'm fine with that.

@magic713
There was a fan rewrite that turned the Nobodies into beings of light. Maybe that would've been easier to handle?

 

[palizinhas]

- Instead of Yen Sid, Sora meets DiZ, and he's the one to tell him everything about Nobodies. DiZ never tries to use Sora despite working to do so for such a long time, and it would fit more with the overall lore that followed to have DiZ be the only one to insist Nobodies don't have hearts.

- Naminé meets Sora at some point earlier in the story to help him with something, but he doesn't learn her name right then. Anything to have Naminé not just... disappear for such a long part of the game.

- After Axel's death, Sora starts to believe Nobodies may have real emotions. No idea how we go from that Axel scene to "You don't even exist!"

 

[Zackarix]

I honestly think that one more draft of the script by a semi-decent novelist or a weighty touch-up by a literary editor and this game could have been perfect.

But, like all KH sequels apart from A Fragmentary Passage, no one seems to have the guts to stay "ehm, this is a rough draft, right?"

Fun fact: Keiko Nobumoto was scenario supervisor for KH1. Yes, Keiko Nobumoto of Cowboy Bebop and Wolf's Rain. I consider her not returning for the sequels to be one of the most unfortunate decisions of the franchise.

 

[Deleted member 246005]

I don't mind keeping the Disney Worlds, I'd scrap the rehashed movie plot. It reduces the world's to feeling like filler and doesn't develop Sora as a character.

I'd probably do what KH3 did. I create a new plot and tie it to the nobodies. Maybe the Organization is doing a recruitment drive and new nobodies are popping up on the Disney worlds?

 

[SweetYetSalty]

KH2's story for me has aged the worst with all the changes that happened within the series. Organization XIII is at the top of that list. I use to love this group at one point in time and I still love certain parts and the idea of it, but the whole Nobodies "don't have hearts" "don't exists" just never really made sense, even before the spinoffs. The games do a lousy job in showcasing why the Organization even need hearts, they function just fine without them. If they remember what it was like to be human then they can simulate it anyway. This has always been a big weakness of the Nobodies in how it's presented. In COM you have Larxene, Axel, and Vexen all reveling in their work and take pleasure in it. Sounds like folks who can feel to me. They are more lively then most characters with actual hearts. So where is the downside? Only Saix and Xemnas feel emotionless in tone and get that part down. Then you have "special" nobodies like Namine who is more of a ghost then a Nobody as she has no real body but is classified as one anyway, and Roxas who exists as Sora's dead discarded body while he has a new one but they have to merge because Sora's incomplete? So what was he at the end of KH1, a humanoid Heartless?

Part of me would be tempted to say, just rebrand them as Replicas. I still love the concept of Organization XIII and their members in the KH universe but just tweak it. Change the "don't exists" angle because if you can see it and it can physically hurt you then it exists. Replicas have that inferiority complex that could have easily translated to most if not all the Organization members, while keeping their core personalities in check without questioning if they have hearts or not. They have data artificial ones. They want KH to make a world without their real counterparts, so they still need the Keyblade to kill Heartless and make the KH moon. They go to Disney Worlds and try to replace the Disney characters with clones that they can control and manipulate Sora through familiar faces. The Dusk and other variants are Replicas that didn't take human form. This is obviously a "what if" scenario. I'm no writer and my ideas are the worst bad fanfics out there.

The reason I would rebrand them is because by KH3 Replicas basically replaced the Nobodies already. The most standout Nobodies were the Dusks, and the new fodder enemy designs. The fact that Luxord, Saix, Larxene, Marluxia, Xigbar, Vexen and Demyx were Nobodies was so unimportant to what they were doing you could have kept them human and the story wouldn't change beyond their deaths, which can easily be changed to defeats. Replicas on the other hand were huge. It was the Replicas and not the Nobodies that Xehanort used as backups for Scala. And they gave the Guardians more trouble then the actual Seekers of Darkness. They remain weird oddities given how they function and how they are created and what they do because it's all so unnatural.

There is more stuff I would tweak such as the "Ansem isn't Ansem" Roxas's overall story and conclusion in KH2, Namine and Sora's lack of a COM ending, and Kairi's role in general but this is already too big.

 

[Elysium]

I had this thought earlier today: They should’ve had Maleficent literally team up with other allies in boss battles against SDG in this game. Seeing as they beat her one-on-one, you’d think she’d have resorted to that as one of her last options. Maleficent and Jafar in 2 versus SDG; Pete and Hades versus SDG in 2. And even besides the logic of it narratively, different villains together in one boss fight is an interesting idea the series hasn’t incorporated before. I’m not sure if Disney wanting the properties to stay separate as much as possible became as restrictive as it did until 3 (where even solo Disney bosses were a rarity…)—Pete and Maleficent are involved in the plot of multiple Disney worlds in 2, for example, rather than simply standing in the background like they did in 3.