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KH2 (and in general KH Series) is like a well drawn comic without backgrounds



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Azuleaf

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Hello guys! It's been a while since I was a kid and played the first two KH chapters on PS2, and now I'm really enjoying the 1.5+2.5 HD Collection that came out a year ago. So far I've played most of its contents, I'm missing only the Re:Coded movie and some stuff to get KH2 platinum. These four included in the collection (plus 358/2 Days) are the only KH games I've played this far, hence I don't know if what I'm going to say could also apply or not to the new 2.8 HD Collection games.

However, as the title states I had this feeling during my playthroughs that something was missing, and then I figured out that what were missing were the details. I mean, KH is an action-RPG game so what it REALLY needs are a good combat system and good fights (action), a good characters growt (role-playing) and a good plot or whatever that keeps us playing. Having variable face-models was not a priority, so I won't complain about Terra always looking at the ground even when talking to other people or Sora having a childish face expression even when facing the most fearsome foes. There are even some cutscenes in which this happens and clearly the voice actor can't match the lips movement, resulting in a poorly made act.
Talking about cutscenes details, I noticed how many of them don't have any soundtrack playing in the background, there is just plain silence interrupted by the dialogs, and I still wonder why since KH is well known for its OST.

Anyway here comes the real issue. Kingdom hearts revolves around people' hearts, around friends who love each other, is about empty people becoming nobodies, about warriors who protect the realm of light (and so the people living in it)... Wait, did I say people? WHERE is everybody? Apart a few exceptions, most of the places are totally empty and some situations are almost hilarious:
- Port Royal has literally 2 people to talk to (and it is supposed to be Port where people land and set sail)
- When winning a tournament in Olympus Coliseum you can actually hear people screaming from entusiasm and applauding you, even though there is not a single person in the entire stadium!
- When Hercules was defeated by the Hydra went depressed because he "left them unprotected". I Guess the Hydra must have eaten all of Tebes people?
- This is fantastic, I had to take the screenshot lol. When paying the first visit in Agrabah there's Jasmine who literally says "Aladdin doesn't like to live here (in the palace). He wants to be in the town, among people." And as she speaks, the camera moves to the main area with all the bazars just to let us see a town with NOT A SINGLE SOUL living in it.

These are just some of the strange situations that came up to my mind, but I'm sure there are a lot more. I believe that BbS was totally empty, was it? Lol.

The metaphor I used in the title came up to my mind from a web fan-comic I'm reading these days. It is totally free and made out just from the author passion, therefore as you can imagine there's not enough time nor resources to keep after details such as the backgrounds, so most of the panels are just the characthers interacting between them with low detailed or absent backgrounds. I can understand it since it is just an amateur work. KH isn't but made me feel like it was made in a hurry. KH 3 better add some people if they want me to believe that there are so many hearts out there.

And you, did you feel that same emptiness all around the KH world? Do you believe adding more (and more and more and more...) NPCs should be a priority to this series?

P.S.: I submitted this thread in the KH2 section since I majorly talked about it, but I guess this is a more general discussion that could go in the general 1.5+2.5 section, is it? If that's the case I kindly ask the moderators to move the thread to the appropriate section. Thanks and have a nice weekend:redface:
 

Meow Wow

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WHERE is everybody? Apart a few exceptions, most of the places are totally empty and some situations are almost hilarious:
- Port Royal has literally 2 people to talk to (and it is supposed to be Port where people land and set sail)
- When winning a tournament in Olympus Coliseum you can actually hear people screaming from entusiasm and applauding you, even though there is not a single person in the entire stadium!
- When Hercules was defeated by the Hydra went depressed because he "left them unprotected". I Guess the Hydra must have eaten all of Tebes people?
- This is fantastic, I had to take the screenshot lol. When paying the first visit in Agrabah there's Jasmine who literally says "Aladdin doesn't like to live here (in the palace). He wants to be in the town, among people." And as she speaks, the camera moves to the main area with all the bazars just to let us see a town with NOT A SINGLE SOUL living in it.

These are just some of the strange situations that came up to my mind, but I'm sure there are a lot more. I believe that BbS was totally empty, was it? Lol.
You can't forget the ball, "the guests were just starting to enjoy themselves" meanwhile it's the Prince, Cinderella, Lady Tremaine, and her daughters.

No but I'm pretty sure the game couldn't handle a full town of NPCs. I've had the game lag when more than 8 enemies got on the map(mainly 358/2 days. But that's on the NDS.
Or maybe they just didn't have the time or budget to put in full towns. There is probably someone more qualified than me to talk about this subject so I will leave it to them.


With KH3, at that fan event in February, there were pictures from the Tangled world showing that the towns do have NPCs in them, so there's a look in the right direction.
 

Neo_

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Nice thread; yes, everyone agrees with you, and we've talked about this multiple times.

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Chaser

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You’re going to get into Dream Drop Distance and you’re going to see that it will get worse before it gets better (as proven by the KH3 screenshot above).

The worlds in Dream Drop Distance are completely empty, and when the world is over you can’t even find NPCs from the story to talk to. Quasimodo is being celebrated as the King of Fools and he is waving to the crowd while confetti falls, but there’s no one there celebrating. There’s no one watching Sora and Riku when they participate in the games during their time in The Grid either.

DDD can be argued that it is empty because it’s a dream world, but on the other hand a dream should be able to conjure up all of the people who were in the world before instead of a select handful. And then those people disappear when the world’s story is done.

I’m so glad they’re finally fixing this problem with the NPC’s in Corona (their designs have been taken from the movie as well). Some worlds might feel empty (Monstropolis) but even they have a few unexpected NPCs (the CDA) to make the world feel a bit alive.
 

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And recently seeing how Twilight Town is looking, NPC's will fill the streets and I couldn't be more happy about it.
 

Meow Wow

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Oh! I almost forgot with the lack of people

Riku mentions Soras dad watches them on the island, pans to Sora talking to an empty boat.
 

Dreaded_Desire62

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Oh! I almost forgot with the lack of people

Riku mentions Sora's dad watches them on the island, pans to Sora talking to an empty boat.
It's kind of annoying that there are some characters you would think should be there but because of the game mechanics, the characters are absent. A similar thing happened in the same game when Cinderella was dancing with Prince Charming. In the movie, they were surrounded by different characters during the ball room scene.
 
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