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Is anyone else concerned about how Phase 2 is going to be handled?



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GreyouTT

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I feel like Quadratum is one step in the saga rather than something that will go on for the entire length of it, with the MoM and Foreteller stuff being the main overarching plot. Like how the Androids were only one part of the Cell saga.
 

Danrye001

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For the future I would like:

- The 2nd phase to be the last one and not take many years to end like the first one (less "spin-off" games). For example there's no need to have a game of Axel/Isa looking for Subject X, one with Terra/Aqua/ventus trio, another one with Axel/Roxas/Xion trio etc... If these character are doing something relevant on the sidelines it can be told in the main game, through hopefully not too long cutscenes.

- Disney to be less restrictive. After almost 20 years they should have more trust in Square

- Find better writers and co-directors to help Nomura than the ones we've been having lately.
What I'm also worried about is Disney being taken out in the next Kingdom Hearts Game. Many people wanted that because of Disney is "childish".

I'm also wondering how Nomura is going to be able to tie Verum Rex to KH. Given the poor reception KH3 received from long-time fans who were less than happy about Nomura's treatment of non-Sora characters, I don't think Nomura has a lot of room to err if he wants to keep KH going. Not everyone is going to put up with Sora forever, especially if it comes at the expense of fleshing out other characters who could use it.

This is part of Nomura's problem when it comes to the KH series: everything has to be tied to Sora in some way, or it's just not Kingdom Hearts (TM).

Could Nomura have made the Versus plot ideas into its own spin-off series? Sure.

Will he? Unlikely, because a "spinoff series" won't be part of the "main series" and the main series is all about Sora.


See, it's "games" like BBS and x[chi] where Nomura's desire to tie everything together and make them all about Sora becomes a problem: he has to sacrifice characterization to ensure minimal Kudzu Plot. IMHO, BBS and x[chi] would have been fine as their own stand-alone series had Nomura just left Sora and the rest out of it: Nomura would have had the freedom to focus on these characters and plots without the added worry of "How do I tie this into Sora's story?" Like Final Fantasy, which has multiple different "series" based within their own continuity, KH could have kept BBS and [x]chi their own series and fans would have been fine with that. Instead Nomura, as he always does, felt the need to tie everything back to Sora. So he just had to contrive a couple of scenes to tie these two completely different 'series' together with the main KH series because Sora.

Look at how convoluted these games (BBS and [x]chi) became after Nomura tied them to the main series: each adding their own cast of characters to the bloated main cast. This is especially bad in [x]chi AKA UX. I don't think very many people were 'clamoring' for the Somebodies of the Nobodies to appear and be given any significance within the story, but Nomura had to tie the Nobodies from the main plot to UX after Xemnas (Nomura) revealed their "ancient keyblade secret", meaning even more time travel and "plot twists." Suddenly there was less time to focus on developing these characters and more focus had to be put on tying these plots together.

I'm honestly becoming less interested in Sora and Riku the longer the series goes on. Sora already feels like he's been developed enough to not need anymore attention--same with Riku. At this point, all they're doing is taking away screentime from characters that could deserve it--like Kairi or Aqua.

IMHO, Nomura has made more of a trade-off between the plot and the characters: the plot is getting more focus while the characters are getting less developed the more the series goes on. I'm still wary of how the "next" KH game is going to play out in terms of character development--KH3 and MoM haven't left very positive results in terms of showing Nomura has learned his lesson: instead of fleshing out the characters in MoM or Re:Mind, he focused on filling in some plotholes and throwing in some bits of character development here and there.
That's one heck of a paragraph.
 

TrueTroper

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Well, he did say years ago that Kingdom Hearts is ultimately Sora's story and that he will always be the hero.
To be fair, Nomura also said in an interview before the game released that Namine wasn't Kairi's Nobody so he wouldn't spoil the surprise reveal in the game.
 

Vulpes XIII

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What I'm also worried about is Disney being taken out in the next Kingdom Hearts Game. Many people wanted that because of Disney is "childish".
Even if people think “ Disney is childish” it doesn’t matter as Disney would never be taken out of Kingdom Hearts after all Kingdom Hearts is a Disney/ Square Enix crossover so if you remove one of those things it isn’t Kingdom Hearts anymore it’s something different entirely.

So I don’t think you have anything to worry about when it comes to Disney not being in Kingdom Hearts as they will always have some kind of presence in it.
 

Alpha Baymax

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I feel like Quadratum is one step in the saga rather than something that will go on for the entire length of it, with the MoM and Foreteller stuff being the main overarching plot. Like how the Androids were only one part of the Cell saga.
I see Quadratum as a side-franchise to Kingdom Hearts that will form its own identity like how Persona formed its own identity from Shin Megami Tensei... though I could just be too optimistic with my observation about the potential of Verum Rex.
 

DraceEmpressa

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What I'm also worried about is Disney being taken out in the next Kingdom Hearts Game. Many people wanted that because of Disney is "childish".
Childish isn't a strong argument because Pirates of Caribbean is also a Disney property. Even if it's still highly censored in KH it is still far from childish and mature content isn't just about explicit gore/porn either.
 

Sephiroth0812

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Well, he did say years ago that Kingdom Hearts is ultimately Sora's story and that he will always be the hero.
That being the case would not rule out giving the other major characters their time to "shine" and also follow their own arcs, stories and characterizationif Nomura actually wanted it or was capable of doing it efficiently.
Cloud is the protagonist of FF VII, Squall of VIII or Zidane of IX, yet their party members all have their own subplots and characters arcs given actual attention over the course of one game while KH doesn't really manage it over several games.
Imho it is actually a case of a very "weak" protagonist (in terms of development, not abilities) if every single success going on for the good guys has to be achieved by said protagonist themselves and they end up getting every ability and "gimmick" eventually which formerly were special abilities of one or more of their allies.
Vanilla KH3 is especially ripe with letting the other characters look and act like bystanders/cheerleaders at best or idiots/failures at worst just so Sora can sweep in and do all the work and earn all the "laurels".
Re:Mind barely manages to rectify that at least a little but also only after the massive discrepancy was pointed out multiple times.

What I'm also worried about is Disney being taken out in the next Kingdom Hearts Game. Many people wanted that because of Disney is "childish".
I dunno really about the "childish" part since as Sign said this "argument" has been given ever since the series started.

More "reasonable" complaints I've seen more often though as the series progressed is the claim that the Disney stuff, especially the boring rehashing of 1-to-1 movie plots, wastes precious screentime and attention that would be better invested in fleshing out the original plot and cast better with the Disney-parts regularly "interrupting" the flow of the main story to do their own stuff.
But even with this it has been pointed out more than once that the solution to it would not be the outright removal of the Disney elements but to better integrate them with the overarching original plot and characters.
Tron's world from KH2 and Toybox from KH3 are more or less good examples on how such a thing can be done.
 

TrueTroper

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Childish isn't a strong argument because Pirates of Caribbean is also a Disney property. Even if it's still highly censored in KH it is still far from childish and mature content isn't just about explicit gore/porn either.
This. I think BBS .02 Fragmentary Passage is an excellent example of how "childish" things like Disney's Cinderella, Snow White, and Kingdom Hearts can get "dark" while maintaining a relatively kid-friendly rating from the ESRB. I mean, just look at the worlds in Fragmentary Passage! Would anyone think THOSE worlds were childish for being based on the Disney IP mentioned above? Most likely not. That single episode shows what Kingdom Hearts can be if done right.
That being the case would not rule out giving the other major characters their time to "shine" and also follow their own arcs, stories and characterizationif Nomura actually wanted it or was capable of doing it efficiently.
I agree. Just because Sora is the de facto protagonist doesn't mean that Nomura can't give attention to the other characters.
Cloud is the protagonist of FF VII, Squall of VIII or Zidane of IX, yet their party members all have their own subplots and characters arcs given actual attention over the course of one game while KH doesn't really manage it over several games.
Imho it is actually a case of a very "weak" protagonist (in terms of development, not abilities) if every single success going on for the good guys has to be achieved by said protagonist themselves and they end up getting every ability and "gimmick" eventually which formerly were special abilities of one or more of their allies.
Vanilla KH3 is especially ripe with letting the other characters look and act like bystanders/cheerleaders at best or idiots/failures at worst just so Sora can sweep in and do all the work and earn all the "laurels".
Re:Mind barely manages to rectify that at least a little but also only after the massive discrepancy was pointed out multiple times.
The fact that Kingdom Hearts is, basically, part Final Fantasy just makes this comparison all the more important. Final Fantasy characters get to flesh out their 'less important' party members, but in Kingdom Hearts it's just Sora getting all the focus. Why is that?
 
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This. I think BBS .02 Fragmentary Passage is an excellent example of how "childish" things like Disney's Cinderella, Snow White, and Kingdom Hearts can get "dark" while maintaining a relatively kid-friendly rating from the ESRB. I mean, just look at the worlds in Fragmentary Passage! Would anyone think THOSE worlds were childish for being based on the Disney IP mentioned above? Most likely not. That single episode shows what Kingdom Hearts can be if done right.

I agree. Just because Sora is the de facto protagonist doesn't mean that Nomura can't give attention to the other characters.

The fact that Kingdom Hearts is, basically, part Final Fantasy just makes this comparison all the more important. Final Fantasy characters get to flesh out their 'less important' party members, but in Kingdom Hearts it's just Sora getting all the focus. Why is that?
Probably cuz 90% of Sora's party members aren't the original characters.

Outside of Riku in KH2, the original characters were always temporary one battle party members compared to the Disney party members.

They're even still stuck in the two party member limit.

And we can't have a full game with an SRK party because it's "supposed" to be SDG.
 

DraceEmpressa

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This. I think BBS .02 Fragmentary Passage is an excellent example of how "childish" things like Disney's Cinderella, Snow White, and Kingdom Hearts can get "dark" while maintaining a relatively kid-friendly rating from the ESRB. I mean, just look at the worlds in Fragmentary Passage! Would anyone think THOSE worlds were childish for being based on the Disney IP mentioned above? Most likely not. That single episode shows what Kingdom Hearts can be if done right.
And it's not just started at Days, even KH1 already shows the idea of suicide in other to save another. So yes, while Disney wouldn't show explicit gore or sex, psychological horror/ not-so-to-the-face mature content is still a fair game for Disney, As you say, 0.2 is a perfect example of how it's not particularly gory but is clearly psychological horror, like, okay, darksides are not as scary as Resident Evil mutants. But the idea of alone in the place where there is veeeerrry minimum light, where time doesn't pass, and then your greatest fear takes form of a clone of you and gaslights you using said fears in hopes you give in/to replace you? that's quality psychological horror there, it's basically pandora hearts meets persona. so no it's not childish at all, but thing is, some edgelords precisely think if there is no explicit gore or sex it's not mature, when mature is more than that, but yeah, emphasis on edgelords-and thus, they can't accept the fact disney isn't childish, for they don't want to admit disney work can be mature without catering to their edgy wants.
 

Danrye001

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And it's not just started at Days, even KH1 already shows the idea of suicide in other to save another. So yes, while Disney wouldn't show explicit gore or sex, psychological horror/ not-so-to-the-face mature content is still a fair game for Disney, As you say, 0.2 is a perfect example of how it's not particularly gory but is clearly psychological horror, like, okay, darksides are not as scary as Resident Evil mutants. But the idea of alone in the place where there is veeeerrry minimum light, where time doesn't pass, and then your greatest fear takes form of a clone of you and gaslights you using said fears in hopes you give in/to replace you? that's quality psychological horror there, it's basically pandora hearts meets persona. so no it's not childish at all, but thing is, some edgelords precisely think if there is no explicit gore or sex it's not mature, when mature is more than that, but yeah, emphasis on edgelords-and thus, they can't accept the fact disney isn't childish, for they don't want to admit disney work can be mature without catering to their edgy wants.
Don't forget when Mother Gothel stabbed Eugene with a knife in KH3.
 

TrueTroper

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Probably cuz 90% of Sora's party members aren't the original characters.

Outside of Riku in KH2, the original characters were always temporary one battle party members compared to the Disney party members.

They're even still stuck in the two party member limit.

And we can't have a full game with an SRK party because it's "supposed" to be SDG.
IMHO, Fragmentary Passage did start getting a bit ridiculous once Mickey Mouse appeared. It's kinda hard to take any scenes seriously with Disney's cartoons running around. Donald is cute, but that only goes so far.
There was cursing in Pinocchio
Donald Duck called someone a bastard once
While we're on the subject of cursing in Disney... Even in Kingdom Hearts series, didn't Maleficent say "hell" in BBS during Aqua's story? Of course, UX chickened out and changed it to "darkness."

IMHO, I think BBS may have been another of the early "mature" KH games. It introduced Vanitas, an original villain who is terrifying even in KH3, and Xehanort, who regardless of being the reason the Dark Seeker saga dragged on so long by being its primary villain, is also an extremely skilled Keyblade wielder who outright murders an original character (Eraqus). Not to mention what Xehanort did to Ventus and Vanitas, and his gaslighting of Terra...
 

Form Oblivion

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While we're on the subject of cursing in Disney... Even in Kingdom Hearts series, didn't Maleficent say "hell" in BBS during Aqua's story? Of course, UX chickened out and changed it to "darkness."
She definitely did say something like that. That's not the only time there's been bad words in KH. I think the English localization is strict with language, because in some other KH games I've heard that there have been curse words including 'hell' in the Japanese version (if I remember correctly, there was also a super duper rude form of 'shut up' in the latest UX JP update).
 

Raz

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Pirates of the Caribbean may not be 'childish,' but it is certainly less mature and less sophisticated than some animated Disney properties. That is to say, I find critiques of Disney as (only ever) puerile kind of tiresome.
 
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playmaker0320

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I personally don't focus on the language. I focus more on content, like the cutscenes and gameplay. Also, I have a confession: I own two graphic novels/manga, but have only ever played Kingdom Hearts: Union X (because I can't afford a console or a game. But if antone's interested in my fanfiction, here's the link:
 
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