"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.
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