What we know? Kingdom Hearts III (PS4/Xbox One)

"What we know?" will be a frequently infrequent series of articles about what we know  (& some speculation) about upcoming games that are still ways off and thus still somewhat shrouded in mystery. I'll try to summarize as much as we know about the projects based on interviews, preview, official announcements and, if possible, what we know based on prequels. This is the first article in this series and it is about a game that has been on my Most Wanted list ever since I finished Kingdom Hearts II in Spring 2006.

Basic info:
Platform(s): PlayStation 4 & Xbox One
Release date: TBA
Director(s): Tai Yasue & Tetsuya Nomura

Background
Kingdom Hearts III is the next installment in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. It has been a long time coming. Kingdom Hearts II was originally released in December 2005 in Japan and after that the franchise has seen numerous spin-offs on handhelds, which are meant to expand the story & set up Kingdom Hearts III in numerous ways. After somewhat lackluster sales of the few last handheld KH titles and the state of handheld gaming outside Japan, SQEX made the decision that Kingdom Hearts needs to return to home consoles as soon as possible (since the best selling KH titles are still the original two PS2 KHs games), which possibly lead them to scrap Birth By Sleep Vol. 2 and make Dream Drop Distance instead, which would bridge the gap between the end of KHII and beginning of KHIII. And so, after almost a decade of waiting, the third mainline Kingdom Hearts title is now actively in development.

Development
Kingdom Hearts III is being developed by Square Enix's Osaka-based team which Tetsuya Nomura has dubbed as the reigning "Kingdom Hearts Team" after the original KH Team spent years with Nomura on Final Fantasy Versus XIII/XV. They are quite likely developing the game with help from the Tokyo offices and probably with plenty of outsourcing as well, as the Osaka Team isn't big enough to handle the development of a PS4 level Kingdom Hearts game alone (though they have been hiring lately).

The development of Kingdom Hearts III began soon after Osaka team was done with the last entry in the series, Dream Drop Distance for 3DS, although at the time and until recently the team has also developed the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 & 2.5 HD ReMixes concurrently, with team members switching between working on KHIII & the ReMixes as need be.

The earliest hints of Osaka Team working on KHIII came in the months following DDD's western release. It was hinted that Osaka team had a new project underway and that this project would be much bigger than anything they had worked on by that point. Given that the next step from Dream Drop Distance for the KH franchise could be nothing else but Kingdom Hearts III and how Nomura had dubbed the Osaka Team as the new "official" KH team, it was pretty clear that this project could be nothing else but Kingdom Hearts III.

Luckily we didn't have to wait for too long for the confirmation that this is the case, as Tetsuya Nomura announced Kingdom Hearts III during Sony's E3 2013 press conference. Unfortunately, the game was still early in development so they didn't really have much to show, but at least it was confirmed that the game was in development and had been for some time by that point.

In addition to the short announcement teaser trailer at E3 2013, Kingdom Hearts III made another brief appearance at a Disney event in Japan in Fall 2013, which showed the first glimpses of an early playable build with some of the new gameplay features they were planning for KHIII. This would turn out to be the last time we'd see KHIII in public in 1,5 years and counting (excluding the short footage shown to a small group of priviliged fans who were at KH2.5's launch party, which hasn't leaked to the general public).

Since it's 2013 showings, not much has been shown of KHIII, but there has been some information about the game. Most recent big news headlines were caused by the announcements that Tetsuya Nomura was the director of FFXV no more to focus on KHIII and that KHIII would be using the Unreal Engine 4 instead of Square Enix's own Luminous Studios like was originally announced. This is presumably because the Luminous team has been integrated into Final Fantasy XV's development team, which is bad for KHIII because Osaka team admitted that they'd need the full support of the Luminous team to help them get up to par with current gen level game development as well as helping with some more technical problems they run into, and they actually thought they would get that support around E3 2013. Since then, situations have changed, so either they had to wait for the Luminous team to be freed from FFXV, or they could switch to UE4 and get Epic's support immediately. Tai Yasue has guaranteed that this switch has not affected KHIII's development much at all nor does it mean they have scrapped any of the work done so far. The biggest problems seem to have been with the "Kingdom Shader" technology they were creating to create a unique look to different worlds and getting that to work with UE4.

Beyond that they have talked a little about the world choosing process and how they had yet to choose all the worlds by Fall 2014, so don't expect KHIII to be released anytime soon. Late 2016 is probably the earliest anyone should expect to play KHIII, though it's likely that the game will not be released until we are further into 2017.

Story
Kingdom Hearts III will be the end of the "Dark Seeker Saga" that focuses on the villain Xehanort. In Dream Drop Distance it was revealed that Master Xehanort's reincarnated human form is trying to arrange a clash between 7 warriors of light and 13 seekers of darkness (the "real" Organization XIII) that will help with reforging the X-blade that will give its wielder access to the mysterious Kingdom Hearts & all its powers.

Kingdom Hearts III's story will focus at least partly in the good guys preparing for the eventual final battle with Master Xehanort & his other incarnations. This means that the good guys need to fill out their ranks, as currently the only keyblade wielders capable of fighting are Sora, Mickey, Riku & Lea. So who are these 7 lights & 13 darknesses? Well, potentially Sora, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, Lea, Aqua & Ventus will make the 7 lights, though don't be surprised if somehow people like Xion & Roxas enter the fray if something happens to one or more of those seven (Sora's struggles with the darkness inside him might mean he could be out of the picture if something bad happens to him). The problem with this is that only Sora, Riku & Mickey are actually available and ready for battle. Kairi isnt' really a Keyblade wielder yet & Lea had barely gotten to the point that he can summon a Keyblade at will by the end of DDD, so they will still need to be trained to become strong enough Keyblade wielders to help with the fight against the 13 darknesses. In addition to that, Aqua is lost in the Realm of Darkness and Ventus is locked away in Castle Oblivion, which was - coinsidentally - "made" by Aqua, so they'll need her to rescue Ven. 

Riku gained the power to awaken sleeping hearts in Dream Drop Distance, so his skills are probably crucial to the story of KHIII. In addition to that, it seems they need the "Key to Return Hearts", which is one thing that Sora is seemingly going to search for in KHIII.

The 13 darknesses are harder to pin down too accurately. Young Xehanort, Fake Ansem, Xemnas, Braig/Xigbar, Isa/Saix, Terra and Master Xehanort are the ones that we can be certain are currently part of the 13 as they have been shown or, in Terra's case, heavily hinted at being one of them. That's only 7 out of 13, so there are still 6 seekers of darkness we can't be too sure about. They could be old Organization XIII members Nomura didn't want to reveal in Dream Drop Distance or Xehanort-created creatures of darkness like Vanitas. It's also possible that the relatively recently made relevant KH Chi will introduce one of the 13, considering they are building up its importance. And there's always the possibility that one of the lights turns to the dark side (Sora seems like a real possibility).

So, to recap, KHIII's story seems to focus at least partly in the preparations to fight against Master Xehanort and the other 12 seekers of darkness. To do this, they'll first need to find the Key to Return Hearts and rescue Aqua from the Realm of Darkness. After this, Aqua can restore Castle Oblivion into its original state, the Land of Departure from BBS. Then, they'll possibly use the Key to Return Hearts to return Ven's heart to himself from inside Sora, after which Riku can use his powers to awaken Ven's heart.That should theoretically mean they have the 7 lights all ready to fight Xehanort, but we know KH likes to throw curve balls at us so expect some surprises along the way.

Another aspect of KHIII's story will tie into things that are happening in KH Chi right now. While Chi seems to take place in the distant past, around the time of the Keyblade War that lead to the separation of worlds, they seem to be introducing new plot threads that seemingly have a connection to Master Xehanort. We have a KHIII video where we hear two characters speaking about the Keyblade War and lost masters (see HERE), these characters might be Young Xehanort and a young Eraqus. It seems that what happened all those years ago in the Keyblade War has a lot of relevance to what is going to happen in KHIII. 

Gameplay
Not much has been said about the gameplay. Supposedly they'll move away from BBS/ReCoded/DDD type command deck and make something more like the other mainline KHs, though they won't necessarily abandon everything related to the command deck and they won't develop KHIII without utilising some of their experience with those three games and adding their own touch to the original KH combat. In relation to the combat, Nomura has made a funny remark that he had been testing some end game build of Sora and had asked Osaka Team to maybe tone it down a little bit because Sora was simply too overpowered & unbeatable.

So far they've only shown a couple of new combat features. The first one is something that isn't a completely new concept for the franchise although they haven't been featured as player usable skills yet. I'm talking about Keyblade transformations. For example, Sora's Keyblade is seen transforming into two guns that shoot fireballs. The other new combat feature takes inspiration from Disney park attractions/rides, the two examples shown so far is a pirate swingboat and a rollercoaster like train ride.

It's still unclear whether Kingdom Hearts III will only allow gamers to control Sora like the other two  mainline titles (apart from some prologue and a random special occasions) or if the game will have a multiple playable main characters like BBS, Chain of Memories & DDD. Nomura has repeated many times that he considers the mainline KH saga as Sora's story and he will always be the main character of these mainline titles, so that could. On the other hand, so many KH games have featured more than one playable character by now that it would be somewhat of a shame if Kingdom Hearts III returned to a single character game like its mainline predecessors.

Other small tidbits about the gameplay include a comment from Nomura where he claims that they'll really improve the AI in Kingdom Hearts III. Hopefully this is true because Donald, Goofy & other AI controlled characters have been almost useless in past KH games. They will also aim to make Sora more agile in KHIII, so we'll probably see something akin to the DDD's Flowmotion moves that gives Sora more movement options when running around the game's environments, although I doubt they'll repeat the somewhat criticized Flowmotion feature as is.


Summary
So, at this point we don't really know a whole lot of concrete info about Kingdom Hearts III, but there are enough snippets of info and some pretty solid ground for speculation that we can make some educated guesses into some aspects of the game. Hopefully 2015 brings along at least a couple of trailers featuring gameplay and the first proper look at the story of KHIII to clear up some confusion. At 2.5's launch party, Tai Yasue mentioned that they would likely show & talk more about Kingdom Hearts III in 2015, so expect KHIII to maybe be at this year's E3 or at least at a Japanese event like Tokyo Game Show in September or Jump Festa in December.

DriveClub (PS4)

DriveClub was among the first PS4 games announced and after a few updates it's easily among the best games of this generation, but its road to greatness was not without a few bigger bumps. Its first trailers wowed gamers but subsequent gameplay showings failed to impress as much. The game still looked rough a couple of months prior to PS4's launch, which wasn't a good sign for what was intended to be a console-purchase-justifying showcase launch (era) title. In the end, the game was delayed by almost a year and even then the game's online features were horribly broken at launch. Luckily, if you weathered through the shit storm near the launch of the game, what emerged from the train-wreck of a launch is easily one of the finest pure racing games of all time.

These vistas just beg you to come play the game

Focus on the road

DriveClub is a fairly simple game. The focus isn't on The Crew like Ubisoft design philosophies where you repeat pointless tasks around an open world to garner some form of experience points and/or cash you can use to improve your avatar's driving skills or cars. You don't drive around a city to break stuff in the environment and there is no superficial story that gives context to the races. You don't begin as some kind of newbie racer who has to compete in beginner class races to get cash to buy faster cars to enter higher class races. The focus is on racing, pure and simple. You choose your event or track, then the car selection pops up and then you are usually already in a race after a shortish loading screen. It's a no BS racing experience where the actual racing is the focus. And what magnificent racing it has.

DriveClub is considered a simcade racer. It's not Burnout or Ridge Racer like arcade racing where the laws of physics are not just bended but blasted away with a hydrogen bomb, yet it's not Gran Turismo level racing simulation either, let alone like the truly hardcore racing simulations like iRacing. It inserts some level of realism into how different attributes of the car affects the handling somewhat realistically and the handling has somewhat realistic weight to it, but driving isn't quite as punishing as more realistic racing simulations. You won't be nailing all corners in the game without taking your foot of the gas pedal and drifting isn't as efficient way to get through corners as it is in Ridge Racers, either. You need to learn optimal driving lines and learn when to brake and then throttle again when going through corners. Shaving off seconds with skilled driving feels extremely satisfying.

Not only does the handling feel good, DriveClub really nails the sense of speed. From the visual effects to the actual speed of movement and tire screeches & engine sounds as you push the car to its limits, driving feels exciting. When you're driving at 270km/h in DriveClub, it really feels like it.  You feel like any bump in the road can send you flying towards the rails on the side of the road and ruin your perfect lap. The sense of speed makes driving through the beautiful landscapes equal amounts exciting & terrifying. Even more terrifying are the rain conditions that were introduced in the December update. Rain combined with dark night is something to behold and be experienced. DriveClub has, without a doubt, the most impressive rain & wet road effects & physics of any videogame ever.

I challenge thee!

As far as gameplay modes go, DriveClub has a basic campaign mode where you advance quite straightforwardly through a few different types of preset events, starting with slower Hot Hatch cars and working your way up to the super fast Hyper class cars. There are a few different types of events: races, time trials, drift events and multi-race cups. In races & cups you race against 9-11 AI drivers, in time trials you try to get your own time below set times and in drift challenges you'll try to get tons of points by drifting and driving as long & fast as possible. All of these have three challenges that earn you stars that are used to open up more events. The event specific challenges range from your basic "win the race" types to reaching some level of average speed or getting enough points in cornering face-offs.

You can customize your own kind of events in Single Events mode. You can freely choose the track, car, type of event, time of day, weather and other such options and drive to your heart's content. You have the same time trials, races & drift events as in the campaign mode except with total freedom over all aspects of them. Single events aren't the most exciting thing by themselves, but the challenges (which I'll talk more about later in this review) really make it a worthwhile game mode even for people who aren't necessarily interested in shaving off that 0.010 your best times. Driving some random track with whatever car and then sending that time as a challenge to another player is a really fun way to play the game, a kind of asynchronous multiplayer that helps you circumvent some of the annoyances & obstacles of the actual online multiplayer. You don't have to figure out times when all friends can play the game together and there are less problems with online lobbies dropping players or timing out.

Then there's the online multiplayer. In the online multiplayer, currently all you can do is to drive either with max five of your driveclub friends against other clubs (or individuals) or drive alone. You cannot create races yourself, but the game has a constant flow of changing multiplayer events you can join if you wish. They mix different kinds of events pretty well, so you don't feel like you're just driving the same races with the same cars constantly. All the DLC content is in rotation enough as well. Sadly, there aren't any private lobbies or ways of playing only with friends yet. Evolution has promised it will come sooner rather than later, but it's somewhat disappointing that they are still missing.

While the online multiplayer is a bit barebones still, the most interesting & perhaps best part of DriveClub's online features are the challenges. Challenges are things you can create after any race, time trial or drift challenge with the result of that event and then send them to your friends or even total strangers to see who is the best driver. These challenges are timed and once time runs out, the biggest Fame-pot goes to the best driver. You can also send challenges as a club to other clubs, which easily expands the competition in challenges beyond just a few friends.  The third way to enjoy challenges are the Community Challenges. These are completely public challenges that anyone can participate in. Community challenges are something you'll want to do because if you are an even half-decent driver, you can pretty easily earn tens of thousands of Fame points if you manage to get anywhere near the Top 100.

Another fun little distraction are the face-off challenges during any & all events. These are a type of mini-challenges where the tracks have assigned points where you might have to try to get as high a drift score as possible or try to get as fast an average speed as possible. They spice up the racing a bit but focusing on them is completely optional.

Update bonanza

As mentioned before, DriveClub didn't launch in the perfect condition. It lacked some basic features, the online was a mess for the first couple of weeks before it started getting better little by little and some of the more impressive features were still a WIP. But now, 4 months after release, DriveClub is almost like a different game. Don't get me wrong, DriveClub got the basics right from the start. It's an absolute joy to drive and the track designs are marvelous, truly some of the best in the business. But overall it felt like maybe the game should still have been delayed a bit more. I'm not sure if they could've avoided the online problems, but at least some features would've made DriveClub feel like a fuller experience.

So what, exactly, have the updates done to the game? Well, most importantly they've fixed the online problems almost completely. I have had almost zero problems this year with DriveClub's online features, which is a vast improvement over the launch period, when I could never even connect to the servers let alone play multiplayer or have working face-offs during races, and the challenges were simply turned off on the server side even long after they had made big improvements on other online features. Nowadays multiplayer rarely times out, face-offs & updating your times to leaderboards work flawlessly and while sometimes the Challenges are a bit slow to load, they actually work now instead of being greyed out for two or so months after launch.

Dynamic weather with rain & snowing is the second big addition and it's truly a game changer. It's just insane how well made the weather system and its effect on gameplay are. During storms, the game is close to being the best looking game in existence. And it's not just a visual gimmick, it's like the hardcore mode of DriveClub, where you have to be completely focused on what you are doing if you want to make it to the finish line without having spun out of control even once or slided outside the track a few times. The rain drops' effect makes driving feel even more exciting, when your view is somewhat obstructed by them. In the worst conditions, you really need to know the courses by heart if you want to stay on track.

Other additions include a robust photo mode with all kinds of settings to dabble with if you are even a little bit knowledgeable about photography, and of course all the new tracks & cars, which add to the already decently respectable number of tracks in the game and helps fill out the somewhat small-ish selection of cars.

Eye-meltingly beautiful

There is no doubt that DriveClub, at its best, is one of the best looking games released so far. It can have its uglier moments where the sometimes more noticeable aliasing affects the image quality, but the jaw-dropping spectacle vastly exceeds the less impressive moments. The car models are modelled in huge detail inside and out, the environments are insanely detailed, effects like motion blur aren't too overbearing, the lighting in this game is phenomenal and the added weather effects lift the visuals to a whole new level. There's some problem with visible aliasing that affect some tracks more than others, but otherwise Evolution Studios has gone to ridiculous lengths in their attention to detail with DriveClub. I don't see DriveClub necessarily being topped any time soon, as far as graphics go.

The details in this game are on a whole other level.

The sound effects aren't too far behind the visuals. The engine growls are as aggressive as need be and Evolution has gone into as much detail in their sound design as they have with their crazy-detailed graphics. They've recorded engine and other sounds of the cars in meticulous detail inside & outside the cars to give as accurate sound effects no matter what view you are driving from. It's a particularly weird experience to drive one of the (free) DLC cars, Renault DeZir, which is a completely silent electric car. It's such a funny experience after driving the typically loud cars, especially when you're not expecting it. You feel like the game has glitched when DeZir gets off to such a silent start. The DLC campaign race with nothing but DeZirs is a particularly funny event. Never has racing been so silent.

Somewhat curiously, Evolution Studios has actually turned off the BGM as a default setting to satisfy those people who prefer their racing to be all about the engine noises and tire screeches. And speaking of the music of DriveClub, perhaps the weakest aspect of DriveClub is its soundtrack, though not because of lack of quality. The tunes the Welsh band Hybrid has created for DriveClub are great for racing.The problem is more with quantity. Evolution should've either had Hybrid compose a few more songs for the game or had more bands/artists provide their material for the game. As it is, it doesn't take long for you to hear the same song again & again even during shorter sessions.



Verdict: AWESOME. It may have taken an extra year to come out and had a troubled launch and the PS+ version is still nowhere to be seen, but after all the great updates with added features, content & fixes to the online side of things, DriveClub is easily one of my all time favorite racing games, right there amongst Wipeout 3 & HD, Gran Turismo 3, Burnout 3, Need For Speed Underground, Mario Kart DS & 8 and such. While there are still a few features gamers are waiting for, it has come a really long way from its launch. It's a no BS racing game where insanely satisfying driving takes presedence over more superfluous aspects of some more recent (open world) racing games.

Pros
+ Excellent driving model
+ Truly superb sense of speed
+ Challenges are a great feature that extends the life of the game considerably (with or without friends, but even more with)
+ Free content updates (tracks & cars)
+ God tier track designs
+ Execution of dynamic weather is mindblowing in terms of both graphical prowess and the effect it has on gameplay

Cons
-barebones multiplayer features currently (private lobbies are apparently coming later on)
-soundtrack could have used more songs
-vanilla campaign mode can be a bit short, especially for experienced drivers
-still no kind of replay mode
-car selection is a bit small in comparison to the Car Pokemon Collectathon games like Gran Turismo & Forza

INFO BOX

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Evolution Studios

Platform(s): PlayStation 4

Release Date (Europe): October 8, 2014

Number of players: 1 (offline), 1-12 (online)