More in-depth on the Drive system

[Zedro]

Being in a current news slump, waiting for KH2 is just a little harder.

For me, i decided to watch some of the trailers again. Anyway, i was watching the TGS 2004 trailer on full screen and since the battles were so fast, you miss alot of details.

Well, this time, i focused on the drive bar and how it reacted when you transformed and when it was counting down.

First, you see 3 orbs circling a number:

http://img98.exs.cx/img98/143/bscap0076ix.jpg

A detail you would probably miss, right?

Now, what sparked my theory about the drive bar was when i saw this:

http://img229.exs.cx/img229/5458/bscap0012gr.jpg

There seems to be a limit on the number of orbs you can have.

"But Zedro, what does this mean, and why should i care?"

For the latter, you're all ravage KH2-starved fans, and for the former, well, just wait and you'll see.

What if there was a limit on how many times Sora could use Drive? Its only reasonable, seeing as how Drive makes Sora uber strong and constantly using it over and over again just makes battles too easy.

Now, when Sora uses Drive, he uses up one of his drive orbs, to fill up an orb, it looks like you just collect drive bubbles that explode out of enemies and simply fill up the drive bar.

We don't really know if there is a final limit on how many times Sora can use drive, 3 times is the max in the TGS 2004, who knows, maybe at higher levels, you can go as far as being able to have a max of 10.

---

Now, you're in a heated battle and you want to end it quick, quickly going through the menus, you select the last option, which brings you to a drop-down menu:

http://img182.exs.cx/img182/6204/bscap0084em.jpg

I'm going to take a big ol' guess and say that it probably says "Brave Form".

(No, that is not a poupu fruit so don't get any ideas, but ya never know)

http://img220.exs.cx/img220/7859/bscap0034jt.jpg

*BOOM* Sacrificing 1 drive orb (possibly more then 1 when using a more powerful form) and a party member, Sora is equipped with a crimson-clad costume and new deadly moves.

http://img79.exs.cx/img79/6600/bscap0050xo.jpg

Sadly, you can't stay in Form forever, so you're limited to how long you have left based on how much is left in your Form bar. As you can see, it has switched from Drive to Form. The Form bar is now a gray color, slowly draining.

Your drive abilites also supposedly drain the Form bar, if you keep spamming Uber-Slashy-Woosh-Wosh-Combo, you're going to drain your Form bar and you're going to turn back into regular ol' Sora.

But never fear, as long as you can contine to collect those drive bubbles while in Form, you could quite possibly stay in Form forever.

Let's also not forget that there will be more then one Form (Sora's blue form is confirmed), SQ-E might even go as far as making it so you can unlock special forms when you meet certain conditions, it would certainly add replay value.

Let's hope that drive is actually going to become useful and not just a novelty, or worse, a totally broken system.

- - -

About the whole 'party member sacrificing' part, who knows, in the TGS trailer, Sora was in Brave Form with Donald, with Donald and Goofy, with Donald and Aladdin, and just on his own. Maybe SQ-E didn't fully finish the drive system when they were making the TGS 2004 trailer.


- - -

Discuss~ >____>

 

[Vice]

Well thanks for all that info Zedro, your the best. Any way i kinda knew all that, i had alot of free time on my hands so yeah i noticed alot of that as well.

 

[SoulEater]

Very Very Very impressive dude. i like how you think. And the whole "put the bars up with little dropped balls" makes sense, but maybe you could also gain some bar by killing enemies such as the Mosou bar in Dynasty Warriors. i am deffinetely digging this theory i love it.

 

[ian242]

Maybe Max just means that you have filled up your drive meter, andare now allowed to go into brave mode. This would only work if you can only go into brave when the meter is filled...

 

[Zedro]

Maybe Max just means that you have filled up your drive meter, andare now allowed to go into brave mode. This would only work if you can only go into brave when the meter is filled...

No, because it wasn't max when Sora used Drive in Agrabah, he only had 2 orbs filled and he used it.

 

[Tre'Coolfreak13]

I think you mostlikely get more Drive Bars by leveling up. You could either get and ability, a attack boost, a deffense boost, and AP boost, or a new Drive bar, or Drive attack at random. That seems like the best idea for me.

 

[~NGD OMEGA~]

Actually I found out about a few of his moves while looking at the movies. Apparently, I saw that Sora stood still for a moment, and sparks started to travel towards him until he suddenly rushed forward in an ultra powerful Sonic Rave like attack, giving me that thought of a kind of Charge attack. I also noticed a similar thing when Sora was in regular form, but that wasn't nearly as cool or as a powerful attack. Still that could be an interesting addition to the fighting system.

 

[GuardianSora]

Wow I already knew some of that but had no idea that you could stay on Drive almost forever if you know what to do. THanks man!

 

[Cyborg009]

interesting discovery. great job.

 

[Darkest Riku]

I like mayonaise

 

[dark_palladin]

I think that the different drive modes are based on the different keyblades. It makes sense that if you get a new keyblade then you should be able to get a new drvie form. In the time Sora went into Brave mode and goofy wasn't even in the party and a time when nobody was in his party.

 

[Emral]

Max?!

No, the drive ability will not be limited. Look at all of Squares games, they dont max out abilities. You just dont max out things like that, what I would guess is that every time you use it, the metre to fill to use the drive ability would keep going up. Until a certain point, I might add, and at that point it would stop going up and you can use it until then.

However, my thought would most likely not be true, and I am willing to bet that they will not make the ability limited.

 

[laath]

I like how you thought a lot about this, but it doesn't seem right to me. Some things do, but one things just creams my twinky a little too much. I HIGHLY doubt that you have a limited amount of drives you can use. That would be REALLY stupid. Sure, you would have to use strategies, but it doesn't seem right. Maybe you can use drive whenever you want, but the that bar is how long you stay in it. Well, maybe not whenever you want, because that would be WAY too easy. Maybe you need a certain amount of orbs to go into the mode. And 3 orbs might be shorter than a full bar, but more than 2 orbs. But you need like 2 or 3 orbs to get into drive mode.

OR

Maybe the orbs are there to show how much you have leveled that bar up. No orbs would mean you have a weak drive and when you level up, you get more and more orbs. And maybe there is a limit to that. Maybe you can get up to 5 orbs and that would be the most powerful drive. You can stay in longer with more orbs and have more powerful attacks. And when you have max, that means you have max orbs to use. And the longer you stay in drive, the more of the orbs you waste. When your orbs go down to 0, that means that your drive is done. Or you can just stop your drive early and save your orbs. I don't know. Thats just what I htink.

 

[~NGD OMEGA~]

Heres how I think it works. Instead of increasing the amount of drive that you have by leveling up, you increase it with power ups. The more powerups you get, the more the bar fills until you get it too the top, increasing the number.

As far as I see it, the highest you can get the number to go is 99, or even 100, because beyond that is crazy, and could crash the game. However, when you use it the number decreases, until you have to get the number back up again. Other than that, there shouldn't be much more to the bar thing.

As far as the circle thing, what I think is that the circles only appear as you are filling up the drive bar, like the number is charging up or something. You know, like how when Sora was hit in KH, his little icon grimaced, just as a gimmic to make the bar more interesting. That's all that there should be too it.

 

[Oathkeeper1313]

Nice, Zedro, I like your theory. Very detailed and very Plausible. Good job