I don't know how you think Rouge One fits what your implying in any way Rouge One does set up for the future it leads right into a New Hope and it does connect to it clearly it explains why the weakness in Death Star even exists which has been a huge controversy in the Star Wars Community for a long time. And how the rebels got the plans to blow it up in the first place. Saying that it exists as its own thing and is completely unconnected to the Star Wars Story and lore is completely untrue. Maybe you should wait until the Chi series is completed before you decide or assume whether or not it does add a good thing to the series but even if you aren't happy with Chi's contribution to KH's Story you better get used to it because it's been stated and shown for a long time that Chi's and KH3 stories are connected. With the whole "lost masters" ordeal. I don't understand how anyone could not be interested in X story. What with it being the origin story of the KH universe and why the separate worlds exist today and why they became divided in the first place. Also there's the fact the series could finally give us answers to Ventus's origins that where hinted at vaguely in BBS. Not to mention possibly giving us some insight on Xehanort's obsession with the Keyblade War. The reason the fake worlds exist in Chi is 1 to show off the Book of prophecies Powers which is going to play a role in 3's story also to give us our Disney in the game cause A KH game without any Disney is hardly a Kingdom Hearts game.
No here is the thing....
First when I say future I very obviously mean Force Awakened. They could have easily used the chance here to instead of focus on the story of Rogue One, they could have made this a necessary piece of story to understand the full plot they are building in the future. That's the key difference between Chi and Rogue One, Chi isn't sitting here telling its own story it's obsessed with setting things up for KH3 instead of just letting Chi be Chi and KH3 be KH3. Rogue One isn't NEEDED to understand the plot, you're never going to feel like you're missing something if you don't see it. Star Wars felt complete without it just like all the other supplementary material in Star Wars, the core story always feels completed and easy to understand. The supplementary material is just stuff to expand upon things that people might find interesting. Someone looked at fact the obtaining of the Death Star information was an untold story and felt it would be able to be an interesting story in its own right. It doesn't need a million connections to things, it doesn't need hamfisted ties to force awakens and then some, it was a strong interesting story that can stand completely on its own. The end result is wonderful we get a great tale that feels meaningful but if you never see it no biggy you're not any worse for wear.
I will judge because I don't need to wait, waiting isn't going to change a thing when the problem is already here. We don't NEED the book of prophecies, We don't NEED the foretellers, We don't NEED any of this stuff they introduced. When KH2 ended there wasn't much for KH3's plot and so they did need to spend time building that up. But that's what Days, BBS, Coded, DDD, and to a lesser extent retroactively CoM, KH1, and KH2 all did. We already have Xehanort bringing back his past selves to create a second organization to use as X-blade ingredients. You already have Xehanort saying he's going to be going after the princesses just in case we don't come to him with our guardians. There that's our first conflict to deal with, the next is Maleficent and Pete are still around. Maleficent and Pete don't need anything, their tenacity, unique set of skills, and ability to mobilize/unify Disney villains makes them a threat we can't ignore. Even if we are more powerful they are more intelligent...ok Maleficent is more intelligent. So handling Maleficent to prevent her from getting too strong and gaining world conquest is something we always have to be vigilant towards.
There you go that's two big overarching conflicts right there for KH3. But if that's not enough then add in we have an up the ante ending where the guardians the seekers face off to forge the X-blade. Which we already know will end in Xehanort's victory, we didn't need a book of prophecy tell us that we were told as much in DDD because if we fight we lose and if we don't fight we lose. So once the X-blade is forged and Xehanort gets his way there is obviously some sort of final conflict that will happen there since no way would our heroes willingly let him use the X-blade. Meanwhile despite the fact we have essentially 3 conflicts already set up we have ANOTHER story to drive us from world to world when the bad guys aren't, finding the key to return hearts. Because that's the thing on top of these multiple villain plots there is another plot where we are trying to save/heal everyone Xehanort/cursed into a crappy fate both to give them happy endings and mobilizing our forces.
That is FOUR big plots, 15 MAIN villains + Disney sub villains, and whatever personal trials we have to face to get back the lost people. Meanwhile we've got the story of SDG, Riku and Mickey, Kairi, and Lea + the apprentices to focus on....as well as whatever story/screen time gets devoted to RXN/TAV and the tacked on Disney hero subplots. KH3 is already so jam packed they've been taking pieces of KH3 out and making them into their own games. KH2 had the same issue of it had a story way too big for one game and we've spent several games fixing/sorting KH2's plot as a result. You know how we don't repeat this issue? We stop cramming more new things in and focus on the stories we already have set up. I love Nomura, I love KH, but this man has literally no self control when it comes to writing. I wanna just smack his hand of a keyboard or a script or whatever he's writing for KH Chi right now and say "no bad Nomura".
Also you act like as if we never got a motive for Xehanort. We've gotten tons of motives for Xehanort the problem is they keep changing his motive and backstory with every. freaking. game. First he's a wise old sage who in an effort to protect his people dove deep into the darkness, became obsessed with gaining knowledge at any cost, and ultimately became a monster we had to destroy. Next game he's actually the amnesiac apprentice of the wise old sage who felt his master wasn't digging deep enough, so he disposed of him, stole his name, and he is the one who became obsessed with gaining knowledge at any cost...to go further than his master ever would have dared.
The following game now he's actually two people. The first a boy from destiny islands who much like Riku had an insatiable curiosity that drove him to leave the island and seek out knowledge. The boy joined a keyblade order sworn to protect the world, but came to feel that the current balance of dark and light left the world vulnerable and unstable. He sought to correct it and turned to the war that first created this world for the answers, but the history of the war was so murky he lost sight of his goal and became obsessed with recreating the war so he could see the creation of a brand new world with his own eyes. By the time he had found his purpose he was an old man and fearing he wouldn't live long enough to see the completion of his goals he plotted to steal a young body. Enter in the second half of Xehanort, Terra, a boy of the same order who wanted to be a keyblade master but was plagued by darkness in his heart he could not control. This boy had issues with always failing to live up to his master and in his final attempt to prove himself he killed his master, lost his friends, and became possessed by Xehanot but still lives on and his goals are to one day rescue his friends and free himself whatever the cost.
Any sane writer at this point would know enough is enough but apparently not Nomura because we're cramming in some BS Master of Master, 6th apprentice from the ancient past, ancient foretellers, book of prophecies, etc... into all this and you know it's going to just result in ANOTHER rewriting of Xehanort's motives and character. >_>
And you know telling us the story of the original keyblade war before the saga is over makes perfect sense. It's the driving force behind Xehanort right now, it's the thing that shaped this whole saga and world, it's a huge blank that doesn't need to be filled as existing as a part of history is good enough....but there is also no harm in letting us see it and have the answers Xehanort wants so bad. Much like Rogue One this is a story that is already inherently interesting in it's own right to tell. But instead of getting the story of the past look at what we actually are getting....
-A story of how the first keyblade war happened because they were fighting to find a way to prevent a second keyblade war which Xehanort will start because of the first keyblade war. Which mind you is totally unnecessary, a simple plot of people living in a utopia of light become obsessed and greedy and turning on one another was already interesting enough of a story on its own.
-Instead of seeing the world of the past we are seeing the same disney worlds that exist in the future, instead of expanding upon the past we are just retreading the same ground. Instead of letting the past have any identity it's all wrapped up in these BS fake worlds except for Daybreak Town, which mind you is why Daybreak town is the most interesting world in the game.
-To make that nonsense make sense they had to come up with this whole plot about a book that can create world holograms, and go on to say this book has the future in it and then to explain that they had to suddenly create a character with future sight...it was one contrivance after another.
-Apparently the people of the past can't even have their own power they all have to "borrow" the power of the future to fight, and instead of fighting one another they all have to fight enemies from the future. Even when they do fight one another they are all fighting one another using powers they borrowed from the future.
-Instead of people growing greedy over light and fighting one another over it...it's turned into a turf war between only small faction of keyblade wielding teens like some sort of battle prom. We aren't even getting to see how regular people are being affected by the war, it's all keyblading teens and fake holograms. >_>
-The characters that the key factors to everything like the foretellers, 6th apprentice, and the Master of Masters don't even seem to have their own identity. Like even if they are somehow all new characters, which is extremely doubtful, the story is still busy throwing lots of intentional parallel to the future character's plots...instead of feeling like we're seeing new stories it just feels like we're retreading the same ground.
-Hell not even the freaking keyblade graveyard in the past could have its own identity. Like its appearance as a battle scarred wasteland was a look that made sense for a place where a massive war happened and hasn't had any real civilization on it in years. But it makes you wonder...what was the place like? Was it once lush and filled with cities and water? Was it once just one big capital of some kind? Was it merely untamed wilderness? Well Chi answered that and the answer is it ALWAYS was a desolate battle scarred wasteland even before the battle actually happened. I'm still holding out that since there is a several month skip that where we stood was actually the ruins of daybreak town after all the fighting had happened, at least then we'll end with getting to see a little of the past's actual identity.
tldr;
Chi has made it so the past has basically 0 identity of its own and doesn't exist or work without the future, it also spit on pretty much the whole image of the keyblade war they had been building up. Meanwhile adding unnecessary contrivance after unnecessary contrivance. It's such a cluster I have to basically sit here and just laugh at how poorly this is being handled.
It's pretty useless in the grand scheme of things, sure, but if you made it consequential, took away the retreading, and kept the fun, lighthearted nature of the game itself, we'd have a pretty damn good Kingdom Hearts spinoff on our hands that we could play.
