Mickey's absence -- coded
As was already said, coded wasn't about Mickey's absence. Nomura further specified that when he said "Mickey's absence" he meant Mickey's time in the dark realm.
Since KH3D is about Sora and Riku, it's possible that the other game Nomura was talking about (the one we're supposed to hear about at TGS 2010, right? Or, at the latest, E3 2011) revolves around that.
Little known fact, but when the idea of KH was being pitched, Mickey was the main character. While Disney gave Nomura little leeway for using Mickey in KH1, I'd say his prevalence has increased over time. A Mickey-centric game is a very real possibility.
You have to wonder what would be depicted though. For Mickey in the dark realm, I'm really not too sure how that would play out, but I do know something which they would have the opportunity to portray, something that Nomura said we
could possibly see:
-- So then, why is Xemnas of Organisation XIII searching for Ven?
Nomura: Well, there's still some time between the ending of 'Birth by Sleep' and 'KHI', so...
-- So you're saying you can't tell us yet (laughs).
-- You can't tell us you're not going to make the story between 'Birth by Sleep' and 'KHI' in some form!
Nomura: I think you can more or less predict what happens in between 'Birth by Sleep' and 'KHI' now. However, this time you could probably imagine what would happen to Terra in the end, but I think when you personally experience it in the game, it can still make you feel something. Even when you know about something, I think there's significance in depicting it, so that may also be made clear at some point.
He's really saying the same thing here as he did with Days- we already know how it ends, but depicting it is something else entirely.
In other words, I think there's a chance we'll be playing as Mickey when he starts going to other worlds (prior to when he visited AtW), all the way until he meets Sora in KH1 behind the door. Meanwhile, we'll get scenes of what's occurring in the realm of light- seeing the experiments of the apprentices, the creation of Xemnas and Xehanort's Heartless, etc.
Hard to say. Unlike "Mickey's absence," he doesn't really specify about Riku's absence. Riku is absent a lot. I mean, technically speaking, the scenes of Riku in Days could qualify as depicting his absence. So he may even consider that accomplished.
But, yeah, even if KH3D did revolve around Riku's absence in KH1, skyfoxx, it would still be considered a new game. So what if it's in the same time period? It would still be depicting new events or, at the very least, a new perspective on old events.
As for the timeline, I believe its going to show everything Riku went through, from the time he was taken by darkness in Destiny Islands to where he is now with Sora and Kairi.
I don't think that would work though, primarily because of CoM. We already know what happens then since we play as Riku.
And seeing him play through his memories of KH1, there's nothing really memorable that happens. We get the gist of what he was doing, in any case, from his scenes with Maleficent. There's nothing else really worth showing from what I can see.
And from what I can gather about what he was doing during Days, it was mostly him sitting around with his thumb up his ass. And he wasn't really "absent" at that point any way.
The only period of absence that actually interests me for Riku is during KH2. After he left DiZ, and aside from, say, his appearance in the Land of Dragons, we really don't know what he was up to. But all of a sudden he shows up with a keyblade (actually, two keyblades), so something significant must have happened.
But even if that's interesting, I don't think it warrants its own game. I don't even think there'd be enough material there for a new game anyway (eg who would the final boss be?).
