Why is Kingdom Hearts so deep?

[EarMedicine]

I was sitting in my room, hands down my pants reading some KH fanfiction, and it dawned upon me how deep of a story Kingdom Hearts has, deeps and mart symbolism, evil versus good, and what is actually evil, all in a children's video game, why is KH so deep? What does it mean to the soul?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPdrwOG405Q

 

[Auron0521]

Kingdom Hearts is deep because it's a children's game. Many games today are very simple and not complex, and teach you nothing about the emotions of the people going through the adventure. Other games tend to throw you in a battle of good vs. evil, teach you nothing about what being evil means, and expect you to ruthlessly kill thousands of enemies. Square Enix is good at doing the exact opposite. They take character development to a whole new level, and they do the same with good vs. evil. Kingdom Hearts is just a prime example, especially since it did it with an E-E10+ rating. It gives people who play the games more insight into the characters' psyque. Thus, it grows the players' soul as the franchise grows. They have a deeper understanding of what it would actually be like to be going through such a situation.

 

[Love Machine]

If you dumb everything down, it's pretty simple, really.

 

[Lanydx reborn]

Well the games are simple and deep at the same time. It's a good vs. Evil story, but how they do it is deep.

 

[Ikkin]

Troll thread is trolling. Badly. -_-

Ignoring Mr. Maturity over here, though, Kingdom Hearts is the way it is because Nomura likes the idea of leaving things ambiguous so there's room for fans to theorize and imagine things the way they see them. Sometimes it leads to good things, like KH1's ending, and sometimes it leads to not-so-good things, like the billion or so holes left open in KH2, but it seems like after KH2, the plot ambiguity was (fortunately) left behind and traded for moral ambiguity, which is something Nomura's a big fan of.

I think the best thing about KH in its current state, though, is the way that it shows things from multiple limited perspectives and creates catastrophic conflict between characters with similar good intentions. The idea that people can hurt each other without anyone actually acting maliciously is honestly quite rare in videogames, and KH takes full advantage of it by showing why everyone always thinks they're right despite the problems they cause for everyone else.

 

[D.D.D]

Of course Kingdom Hearts is deep! It came from a very deep place within Nomura...his ass.
Nah, just kidding. In all seriousness(even though the thread opener is joking, I think), KH is very deep. Underneath all those childish, bright, Disney exteriors, there's a story about how destiny winds itself around us, making our decisions affect others and ourselves in ways we cannot even imagine. Plus, there's the whole thing about how darkness isn't necessarily evil, and light isn't necessarily good. It's like how it is in real life. Most of the time, people on opposite sides of a war are both evil and good in some ways.
The games also teach selflessness, optimism, the importance of friendship, forgiveness, the dangers of blindly following what you've been taught and/or believe, independence, faith in others, and many other moral lessons that I think modern society needs to learn.
Something Disney seems to have forgotten to put into most of their modern cartoons. Thankfully, when I'm older I can just pop in an old Disney movie for my kids. Hopefully by then, Disney will have gotten their old 'spark' back, and will have already started making masterpieces once more. Don't get me wrong, most of the Pixar movies and Tangled were AMAZING, but everything else in this modern day is bleh.
Back to KH. Yes. It's a deep story. Which I enjoy very much, since plot and characters are the most important things to me in a video game.

 

[Shinjuku]

My god this game isn't deep it's just overly complex for no reason. In fact like someone said if you dumb it down you'll see it's one of the more simple game series to date.

Looking back at the thread title if you're talking about the series as a whole this post would apply to that. If you're only talking about the first game then this doesn't.

 

[Shamdeo]

Deep












































Dive

 

[Haeralis]

It really isn't that deep in my opinion.

 

[Odysseus]

It touches on some themes other games don't really attempt to tackle (at least not at the same time), but whether or not that makes it deep is up in the air for me.

 

[Chuman]

If you think about it, study it, read up about it, and piece together all of it's fiction, it really isn't that complex. Maybe it was because Square Enix and Disney created it, and they both love their money, so, they make as many sequels as possible and flesh out the story into a complex and rich game. At least they're also expaning the gameplay, otherwise, many fans would lose interest.

 

[Ikkin]

In fact like someone said if you dumb it down you'll see it's one of the more simple game series to date.

Uh, could you make a more specious argument?

"If you 'dumb it down,' it's really simple!" Yeah, and if you freeze steam, it's really cold... but it's not really steam anymore, either, is it? =P

I mean, it's perfectly acceptable to take KH at its shallow surface level, or say that it's convoluted rather than deep. But denying the existence of anything under that surface ignores at least half of what this series is, to the point that you might as well be talking about something else entirely.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Lol implying KH fic is good enough to turn somebody on lolololol

Joking aside, I don't think it is extremely deep, but it is like Ikkin said. Nomura likes his moral ambiguity and we see it a lot in the game:

• Riku who thinks he is doing the right thing for Kairi and believes Sora doesn't care about either of them
• Master Eraqus who loved Ven as a son, but made the decision to destroy him because it would stop Master Xehanort's plans
• Master Xehanort who seem to want to reshape the universe where Light and Darkness are equal in order to live out the Keyblade war again which was a goal born out of curiosity
• DiZ in CoM
• Naminé in CoM
• Axel in general
• Ansem the Wise who forced Roxas into a digital world, treated him and Naminé cruelly, but did al of these things to help Sora
• Terra who believed fighting his father by using the power of Darkness was the right thing to do to save Ven even though it led to MX killing Eraqus
• Etc...

Then there are also the themes of friendship and trust, and yeah I'm done talking now.

My god this game isn't deep it's just overly complex for no reason. In fact like someone said if you dumb it down you'll see it's one of the more simple game series to date.

Looking back at the thread title if you're talking about the series as a whole this post would apply to that. If you're only talking about the first game then this doesn't.

It isn't that complex to me. :\

 

[Love Machine]

Just read the whole series' summaries once and you'll understand.

 

[Zul]

I learned something from Kingdom Hearts.


If you want to be a hero, you gotta learn to break pots.

 

[D.D.D]

I learned something from Kingdom Hearts.


If you want to be a hero, you gotta learn to break pots.

And jump up on the Hydra's back.
But like others have said, KH isn't extremely complex. It's simple ideas, but they are deep.

 

[Zul]

The complexity imo, results more often from the poor explanation, retcons, and muddled, confusing reports/interviews combined with our community of 20+ year old elderly farts breaking and tearing into every little aspect of a game catered towards young teens(me being one of these old farts).

The series as a whole has a relatively simple theme. The heart is something more powerful than anything else, and can not fully be understood, the strength of friendship bonds outweighs any individual power..ect.

 

[Chuman]

The complexity imo, results more often from the poor explanation, retcons, and muddled, confusing reports/interviews combined with our community of 20+ year old elderly farts breaking and tearing into every little aspect of a game catered towards young teens(me being one of these old farts).

The series as a whole has a relatively simple theme. The heart is something more powerful than anything else, and can not fully be understood, the strength of friendship bonds outweighs any individual power..ect.

Or, maybe, just maybe, people who can't understand certain things scream plothole. Hell, they scream plothole just because some things haven't been explained yet.

 

[Realm Walker]

I learned something from Kingdom Hearts.


If you want to be a hero, you gotta learn to break pots.

You also have to break into other people's houses--oh wait, wrong game.

 

[Jelai]

My god this game isn't deep it's just overly complex for no reason. In fact like someone said if you dumb it down you'll see it's one of the more simple game series to date.

Looking back at the thread title if you're talking about the series as a whole this post would apply to that. If you're only talking about the first game then this doesn't.

This. To me, Kingdom Hearts overall has this sort of "kitsch deepness" going on, like a lot of postmodern art. Or, kind of like Fake Difficulty, Kingdom Hearts has fake deepness going on.

Perhaps the only deep thing to me in KH is the introduction of family-friendly existentialist philosophy in KH2. That's something unexpected from a childrens' game.