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Kingdom Hearts Lore



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What's your opinion?

  • Sticking to the games was right even if the lore is harder to follow

    Votes: 3 18.8%
  • Sticking to the games was right and it made the lore easier to follow

    Votes: 7 43.8%
  • Expanding to different media is better and could have made the lore easier to follow

    Votes: 3 18.8%
  • Expanding to different media is better but it would have made the lore harder to follow

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • Other

    Votes: 2 12.5%

  • Total voters
    16
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kirabook

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So, a friend and I were discussing Coded and its importance. We acknowledge that some of it is kind of important (If the idea of data and worlds inside of books is gonna be a thing, Jiminy's Journal establishes that further - Maleficent's knowledge of said books - Mickey getting clues about TAV - I read a meta about Mickey not too long ago that could also be legitimately important HERE )

But the real question is... do games like Re:Coded and other games that just run us through the same worlds again (CoM, Days)... do they NEED an actual game?

In some other series you'll find that instead of making game after game, they explain the lore in different forms of media like books and comics. While Kingdom Hearts has these things, they add on very little and are almost exact copy and paste of the existing games. All Kingdom Hearts lore is introduced through a game first and foremost.

Do you think Kingdom Hearts would have benefited from putting some of its lore into a medium other than an entire game? Maybe some novels? A short manga series? A movie? Some OVA's? Would more people be invested in the story, or do you think even less people would be caught up on the lore of Kingdom Hearts?
 

Muke

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I mean, I think it's be nice and all, but everyone would just get another reason to complain and they'll go "omg now i need to buy novels".
 

kirabook

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True, but isn't that technically a better option since a novel/manga/movie would be cheaper and faster to consume than a $40-$60 game.
 

Muke

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True, but isn't that technically a better option since a novel/manga/movie would be cheaper and faster to consume than a $40-$60 game.
Sure, but I was talking though the perspective of those people (those who don't even watch the cutscenes and complain about the lore)
 

Sephiroth0812

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Sure, but I was talking though the perspective of those people (those who don't even watch the cutscenes and complain about the lore)

Honestly, those who "complain" about the lore while that the same time not even making an effort to at least understand the basics by watching the cutscenes and reading the in-game reports and journal entries (I'm not even talking about Ultimanias and developer interviews here) should be flat out ignored as those are the ones who don't want to or cannot even put 1 and 1 together on their own and want every little bit of lore delivered on a silver platter.

Being confused about the lore because of not having access to all the sources (the FMs before the ReMixes, all the Ultimanias and interviews being Japan-only, no money to participate in the console hopping) while still at least trying to make sense of the material that is available to oneself personally is an entirely different pair of shoes and for those an approach with a different medium could work rather well.


@Kirabook:
Some things would be certainly better off being put into official, confirmed canon novels or something similar, also when considering that a medium other than a video game can truly fully concentrate on both the lore and characterisation/character interaction without having to give a rat's ass about any gameplay and other superficial stuff.

On the flip-side though, if quite a part of those who are complaining about the lore cannot even be bothered to pay enough attention during cutscenes and/or read in-game reports/journal entries, I wonder if having an OVA/movie (which would be similar to cutscenes and how many are out there complaining that Days and Coded in the ReMixes are "only" cutscenes?) or a novel (which is even more text than in-game reports/journal entries) would really help the overall issue.

Still, I can only repeat what has been proposed several times during the last two or three years by different fans that the "Xehanort saga" would really benefit from something like Zelda has with the "Hyrule Historia", practically a "KH sourcebook" for the first saga that specifically includes all information from all relevant sources, the games, journals, Ultimanias and Nomura interviews in one place.
Adorn that thing with a ton of new artworks from both Amano and Nomura and I bet it would sell rather well.

Of course it would have to be a world-wide release, not yet another Japan-only issue that defeats the purpose of it.
 

DarkosOverlord

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I have no problem with what's explained in a game, nor with the games themselves.
As already mentioned in other topics, what I would change about the KH lore is the "we will explain this important piece of information only through interviews, screw you if you bought everything we made but missed it regardless".

Introduce those topics in an interview if asked, yes, but then make them easily accessible for everyone: the guidebook that Sephiroth also mentioned.

Will this draw more people to the franchise? Mh, no, not in the grand scale. Sure, we could get a not indifferent bunch of DarkSouls-ish fans, but the vast majority of the fandom is drawn by couples, characters, Disney movies, the "surface" stuff (I'm not using "surface" in a demeaning way).
 

kirabook

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When I say OVA movie, I mean like a literal animation done by Square, not just ingame cutscenes (though ingame cutscenes would be cheaper probably, so maybe it would be like Backcover rather than Coded/Days)

I see the benefits of having an interactive game. They can shove in little secrets and hints, but if you do that in a movie it usually goes completely unnoticed or is too much of a give away. Take Days for example, you can't really include some of the other organization members journal entries like you could in the game, not in a way that doesn't include Roxas breaking into their rooms and reading their diaries.

But a movie/OVA also streamlines the plot and the story. Where a game might have all these tangents and random bits and pieces smashed into it, a movie can't really do that at the risk of being stupid or not making sense. A book or a manga kind gets to do both. It can stuff in extra hints and stuff without risking too much confusion, but it can also be very very focused on the plot and characters with no risk of time limits.

Another benefit of doing a book/movie/OVA is that we get the content much faster. If CoM, Coded, and Days had been just novels or manga, the other games in the series probably would have been on a faster timeline. Although there would be less experimentation with gameplay, there'd be a lot less "This a repeat of KH1!" type of games. You can even include more Disney worlds that are too complicated to include in the game alone (Like Pocahontas, a story still relevant to current events). Fans who are there for the Disney stuff or couple stuff wouldn't be turned off from participating in other types of media, especially not manga or movies/ova. The only difference from a game is less interaction and/or movement.

----

As for the problem with developer interviews and stuff... Nomura just needs to get better with putting his stuff IN the games or whatever media he chooses. You shouldn't have plot relevant into only in an interview, no matter what you do (whether it's a guide that includes them all or something or other), most people are never going to know that.
 

appleboy82791

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I understand where you're coming from when making this kind of suggestion. But I would be pretty strongly opposed to some official kind of novel or otherwise that is exclusive and doesn't appear in any of the games. It just makes things more complicated than they need to be if you ask me. And KH is already complicated enough. However, like some others have mentioned, I think detailed writings about the same events of the games could be very beneficial.
 

Muke

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^I'm saying this again, KH isn't as complicated as people make it seem
 

appleboy82791

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^I'm saying this again, KH isn't as complicated as people make it seem

I didn't mean complicated as far as the story goes. I'm not talking about how complicated the story is. I'm talking about how far reaching all the games in terms of the different consoles and versions. Just look at KH2 for example. There was the original Japanese release, then there was a worldwide release which had more content, then there was the Japanese final mix which had even more content, then they remade the final mix version for both Japan and internationally, and now they're going to re-releasing it again with even more upgrades in March 2017. And every single one of the releases I mentioned were slightly different from what came before it. That's a lot of versions of the same game... don't you think we've had enough?
 

Muke

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I didn't mean complicated as far as the story goes. I'm not talking about how complicated the story is. I'm talking about how far reaching all the games in terms of the different consoles and versions. Just look at KH2 for example. There was the original Japanese release, then there was a worldwide release which had more content, then there was the Japanese final mix which had even more content, then they remade the final mix version for both Japan and internationally, and now they're going to re-releasing it again with even more upgrades in March 2017. And every single one of the releases I mentioned were slightly different from what came before it. That's a lot of versions of the same game... don't you think we've had enough?
Oohh, okay, then I understand. I thought you meant the story. Sorry!
 

Nazo

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Still, I can only repeat what has been proposed several times during the last two or three years by different fans that the "Xehanort saga" would really benefit from something like Zelda has with the "Hyrule Historia", practically a "KH sourcebook" for the first saga that specifically includes all information from all relevant sources, the games, journals, Ultimanias and Nomura interviews in one place.
Adorn that thing with a ton of new artworks from both Amano and Nomura and I bet it would sell rather well.

My God, I would pay out the ass for something like that. Especially if they designed it to look like Jiminy's Journal, like they included with the special edition of the KH2 strategy guide, but cooler than that.
 

Absent

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I don't mind other mediums so long as they're easily accessible and more cheap than the games. Also non of that canon tier BS. Its either canon or not.
 
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KeybladeOrder

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My God, I would pay out the ass for something like that. Especially if they designed it to look like Jiminy's Journal, like they included with the special edition of the KH2 strategy guide, but cooler than that.

That would be amazing. As for the whole extra material debate, the only games where the whole "rehash of KH1" argument really applies are COM and Re:coded. Coded's info could be presented as a novel, and if it had, the contents of Mickey's letter could be explained at the beginning of DDD for the benefit of those who haven't read the novel. Chain of Memories on the other hand, would still have to be a game, because otherwise anyone who didn't read/watch the novel/movie would be wondering why Sora was in that pod to begin with.

But all that aside, I'm fine with things the way they are right now. The only info that would need to be covered in a book, movie, or OVA would either be A) lore that's interesting to know but has a minimal impact on the overall story, or B) events that are alluded to in passing but not shown on screen (similar to how the novel adaptation of 358/2 Days adds a lot of scenes from Riku and Xion's point of view while she's running from the Organization). I don't know if it's just me, the fact that I compulsively read each and every secret report I unlock, or something entirely different, but I've always had an easy time grasping the lore of the series the way its explained in the games. As others have said above, I pretty much agree that there's a big difference between people saying the story is confusing because they haven't had access to any of the stuff from Ultimanias and interviews that isn't in the actual game, and people who complain they don't understand it because they skip every other cutscene and ignore all the secret reports.
 

palizinhas

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I mean, the issue of KH having stuff that isn't games for me comes from the fact that it would be very, very unlikely it would be available on my country. Not even khux is, much less a book or whatever. At least with games only I don't need to import anything.
 
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