Earlier this week, Square Enix gave us another glimpse at Kingdom Hearts III with new gameplay footage that was shown at Disney’s D23 Expo. In Sony’s latest installment of their Creator’s Interview series, series director Tetsuya Nomura talks about the upcoming game.
Nomura starts out by introducing Kingdom Hearts III as the conclusion of the “Dark Seeker” saga, which has continued for the past ten years. He then talks about the game’s action and how it will differ from previous games in the series.
“The action of Kingdom Hearts continues to evolve, and this time, Kingdom Hearts III will also integrate the ‘Free Run’ [system] that makes it possible to run and climb various areas. Additionally, the ability to fly and jump will be seeing a much greater improvement this time around,” says Nomura. “I believe that thanks to the PlayStation 4, it has been made possible to fight even more enemies in spacious areas.”
“One of the graphic themes for this installment, is how we could represent Disney’s 2D brush-style drawings into 3D,” Nomura shares. “After consulting with our company’s pre-rendering section, called Visual Works, we were able to create various patterns of expression for demo purposes, and we were able to get what you see today.”
“In the Kingdom Hearts series, the protagonist Sora travels alongside the Disney characters Donald and Goofy,” Nomura continues in the video. “When it comes to character personalities, it’s something that Disney characters have already well established, so a part of us wishes to see them act more on their own thoughts. So this time, in terms of AI, Donald and Goofy will be acting more upon their own thoughts in various situations, while better reflecting their own personalities. I believe that you’ll feel a major step-up from past Kingdom Hearts games up until now.”
Many of us have wondered what kind of worlds we’ll be seeing in Kingdom Hearts III. While Nomura doesn’t get into specifics, he adds a little fuel the speculation fire.
“We finished deciding on some of the worlds, and started working on them,” says Nomura. “The characters and worlds that appeared in the series up until now will be changing in appearances; however, there will be many more new worlds. There will be a large quantity of Disney works that have yet to appear in the series.”
Nomura then moves on to the subject of working on the PlayStation 4. (Note that this is from a talk posted on a Sony website.)
“There’s so much you can do with the PlayStation 4, and the more the power of expression increases, the more possibilities that leaves us with,” Nomura offers. “When we’re given such great hardware, us creators would assuredly want to make something just as great. We’ve had various hardware up until now, but I feel that this will be the tallest mountain to overcome, in the best way possible.”
Nomura concludes, “When you take all the past titles into consideration, and their own representations, I believe that [Kingdom Hearts] has become a game [series] of profound depth. We are working hard on development so the day you all will get to play [Kingdom Hearts III] will come sooner. Please look forward to our next announcement.”
Kingdom Hearts III is currently in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
