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Where Kingdom Hearts is failing



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Does anyone else think Disney needs to stop being so involved

  • Yes, we want Kingdom Hearts not a Disney game

  • No, the loading time was worth Disney Cutscenes


Results are only viewable after voting.

kirabook

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I think all the cutscenes involving the org talking to each other were bland. The location is bleh and it's just exposition dumping. The table of villains in KH1 was certainly a lot better because I think it borrowed more from Disney framing and mysteriousness. Nomura just puts a hood on a villain and calls it a day when he's going for "mysterious"
 

disney233

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I think all the cutscenes involving the org talking to each other were bland. The location is bleh and it's just exposition dumping. The table of villains in KH1 was certainly a lot better because I think it borrowed more from Disney framing and mysteriousness. Nomura just puts a hood on a villain and calls it a day when he's going for "mysterious"
Personally, the Disney villain council worked better because of the characters. Something about them communicating or taking shots at each other seemed far more interesting than generic anime villain meeting #710. That's what I miss about KH1, we aren't going to have ANYTHING like that again. The closest we got is the Maleficent & Pete dynamic...and even that feels...off.
 
D

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Kingdom Hearts was pitched as Disney/FF crossover. So I think that's the main appeal for most of the gaming community. Before KH3 released most of the articles I read were about which Disney worlds people wanted.

So I'd advocate using the Disney Characters and Worlds better than scrapping them completely. Like if we could get some of the characters to be Nobodies or to have Union X stumble upon Agrabah centuries ago.

That's a better way to use them than just rehashing the movies. Which only worked in the first game because the plot is more straightforward. For 3/4 of that game, facing the Disney villians were the goal.

3 had the right idea, just do it more often.
 
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Elysium

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I think all the cutscenes involving the org talking to each other were bland. The location is bleh and it's just exposition dumping. The table of villains in KH1 was certainly a lot better because I think it borrowed more from Disney framing and mysteriousness. Nomura just puts a hood on a villain and calls it a day when he's going for "mysterious"
I’d love for the former council (or, well, most of them) and Maleficent to come back together again in the next KH game after the original characters are done with Quadratum. I like the idea of those former villains along with Maleficent functioning as the bosses for an original world, perhaps a world similar to End of the World or Symphony of Sorcerery that has a primordial, dreamy quality that's created by the box if / when Maleficent ever gets her hands on it, where they’re all seeking power-ups since they’ve all failed repeatedly and realize they need to be stronger. Even leaving the council and other villains out of it, I’ve thought for a long time that Maleficent desperately needs a power-up story-wise somehow to make her more threatening.
 
D

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Sometimes I think it might be for the best to split KH into 2 subseries: 1 Disney heavy series & 1 OC heavy series. At least then they can pander to both extremes.
With Yozora, that could be a possibility 🤔
 

KingdomKurdistan

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Sometimes I think it might be for the best to split KH into 2 subseries: 1 Disney heavy series & 1 OC heavy series. At least then they can pander to both extremes.

They shouldn't pander to anyone. Do what they want and we can take it or leave it.
 

Mariya2

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The Content wasn't bad. I didn't say any of the Disney Worlds or the Disney Story was bad. I said the balance was so imperfect. There was more Disney than Kingdom Hearts. The truth is Disney take over everything and make it all about Disney when they see money. They tried it with Pixar, DC Universe, and multiple other platforms.

There just needs to be a good balance. I play Kingdom Hearts to know the story of Sora, Kairi, Riku and every other character solely based on Kingdom Hearts not found else where. The Disney addition is great. But the game is becoming more and more like a Disney game with Riku, Axel, Organisation 13, the Union and so on as side characters to the Disney worlds when it's supposed to be the other way around.

Disney took over MASSIVELY and made it about Disney. That leaves little room for Kingdom Hearts side of the game to have any input. At the end of the day, if Disney don't like an Idea and the Kingdom Hearts team demand their story to get more time in the game, Disney can pull out and say you can't use our characters, then Kingdom Hearts falls apart.


Disney has the final say and people need to understand when people like me complain, it's not about Disney being a part of the game. It's about the game becoming more about disney characters and less about the actual franchise game called Kingdom Hearts.
 

MATGSY

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The Content wasn't bad. I didn't say any of the Disney Worlds or the Disney Story was bad. I said the balance was so imperfect. There was more Disney than Kingdom Hearts. The truth is Disney take over everything and make it all about Disney when they see money. They tried it with Pixar, DC Universe, and multiple other platforms.

There just needs to be a good balance. I play Kingdom Hearts to know the story of Sora, Kairi, Riku and every other character solely based on Kingdom Hearts not found else where. The Disney addition is great. But the game is becoming more and more like a Disney game with Riku, Axel, Organisation 13, the Union and so on as side characters to the Disney worlds when it's supposed to be the other way around.

Disney took over MASSIVELY and made it about Disney. That leaves little room for Kingdom Hearts side of the game to have any input. At the end of the day, if Disney don't like an Idea and the Kingdom Hearts team demand their story to get more time in the game, Disney can pull out and say you can't use our characters, then Kingdom Hearts falls apart.


Disney has the final say and people need to understand when people like me complain, it's not about Disney being a part of the game. It's about the game becoming more about disney characters and less about the actual franchise game called Kingdom Hearts.
See, you're of the opinion that KH is suppose to be about the OCs, I am not. KH IMO was supposed to be a Disney RPG that happened to be made by Square that Nomura's ego carved into something else instead. IIRC it was originally pitched to be a replacement for Super Mario RPG in using popular characters as Square was all in on Playstation at the time.

The 1st game had it right, Disney characters directly part of the plot while original characters were kept to a minimum & serve to compliment the Disney, acting as the glue that held everything together. But after that Nomura went nuts with his world building & dumping every single little idea that enters into his head onto the Disney RPG series that it ceased to be about the Disney anymore. Nomura is as much at fault for the friction between the 2 sides of the franchise as Disney, if not more.
 
D

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I'm not a big Sora fan but I liked him more with the Disney worlds than the original stuff.

So following @MATGSY's suggestion, I'd keep him with the Disney side and have Yozora or Lea etc deal with the original content.

Creating a new lead character also works.

I would've preferred KH as a more episodic series. Both the original characters and plot aren't able to keep me interested for very long.
 
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Mariya2

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See, you're of the opinion that KH is suppose to be about the OCs, I am not. KH IMO was supposed to be a Disney RPG that happened to be made by Square that Nomura's ego carved into something else instead. IIRC it was originally pitched to be a replacement for Super Mario RPG in using popular characters as Square was all in on Playstation at the time.

The 1st game had it right, Disney characters directly part of the plot while original characters were kept to a minimum & serve to compliment the Disney, acting as the glue that held everything together. But after that Nomura went nuts with his world building & dumping every single little idea that enters into his head onto the Disney RPG series that it ceased to be about the Disney anymore. Nomura is as much at fault for the friction between the 2 sides of the franchise as Disney, if not more.
Then you clearly don't know how the game came about. Disney wanted nothing to do with the game. They told Square Enix not to advertise the first game as a Disney game or any heavy Disney link. Disney only let Square Enix use it because they were not making as much around that time and so this would add a little profit. Namura planned and designed the game with his team. He's definitely not perfect, but at the end of the day he balanced the game.

The Disney content in KH3 isn't all bad, its just each cut scene for Disney is sooooooo long and the cutscenes about KH is so short that it's useless. At points its like your just watching small clips of the original Disney movies on repeat. In the first and second KH the Disney world was about KH and the heartless and unversed taking over. In KH3 it was just a Disney stunt to show Disney is all great and mighty that the characters weren't really that involved in the actual KH story itself.
 

AdrianXXII

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The Content wasn't bad. I didn't say any of the Disney Worlds or the Disney Story was bad. I said the balance was so imperfect. There was more Disney than Kingdom Hearts. The truth is Disney take over everything and make it all about Disney when they see money. They tried it with Pixar, DC Universe, and multiple other platforms.
Do you have examples? Also this is a nitpick, but it's Marvel, not DC. Disney buying Marvel had little to no impact on the comics and the movies only became more successful, with Feige seeming to have gained more control over it. The only thing I can think of that got worse after they bought it are the cartoons. Star Wars has been shaped less by Disney and more by it's own new management, the stuff being headlined by Dave Filoni remain pretty darn good. Nowadays Disney tend to let things that work manage themselves.

The Disney worlds have always been front and center in the KH games. Like we usually only get a bit of KH original content in the beginning, middle and end. KH1 managed to integrate the worlds the best into it's main story, but from Chain of Memories on wards the worlds are just retellings of the movie's stories and take up like 2/3 of the game. KH3 kind of truncated the beginning, skipped the middle and botched the ending, but overall the ratio is kind of similar if you consider the intermissions.

I am not sure the issue is just Disney, as much as it's also the scenario writers. The Disney Worlds are the big selling point (Many only pick up the games for the Disney Worlds included), but the original story needs to be solid to properly tie it all together. It could be that Disney has strict rules regarding how many Movies need to be included and how much of the Movie story needs to be retained, but a good creative team can work around that.
In the end we have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, what mandates and restrictions Disney really placed and what poor choices Nomura and Square made while developing the game. I don't see why Sora couldn't have spent more time with the other characters either at the Tower or revisiting the worlds with a friend.

Hopefully with Disney allegedly loosening their rules around their properties we'll get more Main cast interactions and stories in the Disney worlds.
 

Mariya2

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KH side failed simply because Disney did not give them the space to expand. When you are under Disney you have no room to grow. What Disney says, goes. Disney wanted the game to suddenly just expand on the Disney movie characters and didn't really care about the KH characters. It's their only game that has actually grown proper prospect and profit. Games Disney usually release doesn't really get such far reaching and played by numerous age groups. Disney pulled a classic Disney.

They made it about them when they saw money. Its really sad because I genuinely loved the Disney addition in the game. It could've been such a masterpiece.

Could you imagine a more teamwork like story between Disney characters and KH characters? It would be brilliant. Would love to see Axel and Aladdin and Riku and Flynn Rider.

KH3 just seemed too detached from KH.
 

KingdomKurdistan

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Where's the evidence of Disney imposing a higher ratio of other properties compared to OG Kingdom Hearts stuff?

Where's the evidence of Disney not wanting KH to be connected at all?

You're taking some things so far out of context that they might as well be about Call of Duty.

There's no evidence for anything you're saying. You have an idea of what you wanted KH to be, KH3 wasn't that, and you blame the company that owns the stories you feel we're overrepresented.

Disney did this, Disney forced that, Disney imposed this, Disney vetoed that, Disney blocked this and insisted on that. It's all boogymanism.
 

MATGSY

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Then you clearly don't know how the game came about. Disney wanted nothing to do with the game. They told Square Enix not to advertise the first game as a Disney game or any heavy Disney link. Disney only let Square Enix use it because they were not making as much around that time and so this would add a little profit. Namura planned and designed the game with his team. He's definitely not perfect, but at the end of the day he balanced the game.
Protip: don't make it that easy to prove you don't know what you're talking about:
 

Cumguardian69

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The OG KH stuff got sidelined for Disney masturbation and sequelbait dripfeed. We didn't get any meaningful character interactions, any world building; nothing. In fact it felt like the actual KH3 plot was a forgotten holdover from DDD.

•Sora's personality, thoughts, emotions, and struggles should have been focused on in depth.

•Sora, Ven, and Roxas should have had crises to contend with

•Riku should've saved Terra and Aqua, or alternatively Aqua should've been NORTED instead of DARKED.

•Scrap everything related to VR
 

KudoTsurugi

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Mariya, you have the right idea about there needing to be a balance. But as I’ve said before here, Disney content being in the game is not the issue. Again, it’s in the execution of the original stuff.

As we all know, in previous games, there was always a hub world(of sorts) to come back to in the main line games for multiple visits: KH1 had Traverse Town, and KH2 had Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden. And you know these two worlds had in common, that was actually kinda cool? Final Fantasy and Disney characters existing in the same space. You could go see Leon, Aerith and Yuffie in the spare house then go practice magic with Merlin on the Third District, go buy items from Cid or Donald’ nephews and see Pinocchio on the First District, or even visit the Dalmatians on Second District. Then in KH2 you could see Leon and co again and meet Uncle Scrooge and the Gullwing Fairies. And that’s even not mentioning Hundred Acre Wood or Tron, the worlds within worlds.

While Twilight Town filled the hub world role somewhat in KH3, it didn’t have the same balance, or even the same explorability of its previous iteration, which made it feel a bit hollow. They brought the Disney characters in Radiant Garden over to Twilight Town, which is fine, but they took out the FF characters already in Twilight Town by writing them out saying they were going on a “training journey”. I’m not saying it was a bad decision, but it would have been nice to see them.

Again, I won’t harp on about the story execution of KH3, but Adrian brings up a good point about the scenario writers. Look up the main writers credits of all the previous KH games before Dream Drop Distance and you’ll notice none of them were involved in KH3.

I won’t claim to know what’s going on on the Disney side, but the lack of FF characters is definitely on the Square side.
To me, Kingdom Hearts is at its best as a 3-piece pie: the OCs and story, the Disney worlds and the Square characters. You need the right mix of all three to make it work. Sometimes this results in one third getting more focus than the others, but even the best recipes can have flaws depending on the cook. I can understand the disconnect between the previous games and KH3, but I wouldn’t say it’s entirely Disney’s fault. They‘re the ones that have to make sure the characters stay relatively in character, even when they carrying around giant keys, staffs and shields.
 
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KingdomKurdistan

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•Sora's personality, thoughts, emotions, and struggles should have been focused on in depth.

•Sora, Ven, and Roxas should have had crises to contend with

•Riku should've saved Terra and Aqua, or alternatively Aqua should've been NORTED instead of DARKED.

•Scrap everything related to VR

Why does that quote say something I didn't say
 
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