Yen Sid: " Instead of the Heartless, the darkness that plague the majority of worlds, there exists a different darkness in the worlds trapped in slumber."

Raio Mitsuno (Product Manager for Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]): Each of the words: Dream Drop Distance have a meaning in terms of the overall story for this one. One in particular is that Sora and Riku are entering the sleeping worlds. They're taking their Mark of Mastery exam. Dream is a representation of that. The worlds they're entering are worlds that are still trapped in a state of sleep, so that's one word. Drop is the mechanism that the game has incorporated to be able to switch off between Sora and Riku. As you're playing with each character, they have a drop gauge under their HP bar. When that completely depletes, that character falls asleep, which is called a 'Drop', and you actually continue where the other character left off, so that's the Drop. Distance is the word that represents the distance between Sora and Riku. During their adventure, they're actually not together. They do travel to the same worlds, but it's kind of like Birth by Sleep where the three characters went to the same worlds but they were doing different actions; they had a different storyline. That's kind of the representation is that what Sora does in one world does affect what happens to Riku in the other world. They're always connected in some way, and that's what the distance part is.

Sora: Huh, my clothes changed! More importantly, where's Riku? Heeey! Rikuuu!
???: Quiet down.
Sora: Huh?
???: Such a terrible Noise.

Mitsuno: Similar to the Heartless, the Unversed and even the Nobodies, in the Sleeping Worlds, they're worlds that Heartless can't reach, and Nobodies can't reach. But there are these unique monsters called "Dream Eaters"; specifically they're split into two categories. The Spirits are the good ones; those are the ones you can actually breed and treat as your pets, help them get stronger; those are called "Spirits". The Nightmares are the evil ones which you're actually fighting. The way they stand is that Nightmares consume people's dreams and the Spirits consume the nightmares. They're the new creatures in the game; they range from the really cute looking ones to, really, almost dinosaur-looking, fierce-looking ones. The Spirits that you have on your party, the stronger they get, you actually are taught abilities from them, so it's a reciprocal relationship where most games that have this monster element, it's just making them stronger but this actually helps Sora and Riku gain abilities too.

Yen Sid: By unlocking the keyhole of sleep, not only will you obtain new powers...

Mitsuno: Kingdom Hearts is known for its fast-paced action, really really action-packed gameplay, but this actually takes it to a whole new level. First and foremost is a new feature called "Flow Motion". Sora and Riku can interact with basically anything in their environment. They can kick off of a wall and go into a really quick dive. They can spin on poles, they can grind on rails; there's a lot of things in their environment that they can interact with. It's good for, one: going from Point A to Point B really fast, because you can fling yourself to a really high rooftop in one move. You can actually chain each of those moves into unique attacks. They're kind of like the finishing abilities from Birth by Sleep where they're really powerful attacks, so if you're surrounded by a bunch of enemies and backed into a corner, just one jump off the ledge will trigger a very, very strong, powerful attack into the crowd of enemies; that's one new feature.

The Dream Eaters actually help too. They have a gauge under their HP bar called the "Link Gauge". When that's filled, Sora and Riku can both team up with each of those Dream Eaters and perform really powerful attacks, but they do it differently. Sora teams up with the Dream Eater, so he'll hop on their back and stomp on the enemies or a big bear-type Spirit will fling Sora around and just hit all the enemies and just throw him at the enemies. Riku does it differently; he actually absorbs their powers for a short duration of time. He actually represents something similar to the Command Styles from Birth by Sleep where he could get a really long Keyblade energy-blade for a little while, or he can grow these power claws on his feet and arms and just do like a more feral-animal type of attack. They have different ways of fighting and it really changes up the dynamic switching between Sora and Riku.

Neku: All the participants have this engraved on them. I can't afford to lose this game!
Sora: I don't really understand 'the Game'...

Mitsuno: This game actually features Disney worlds that have never been used in Kingdom Hearts. You'll be visiting The Grid from the recent movie Tron Legacy; you'll be visiting the Hunchback of Notre Dame's world; you'll be visiting Mickey, Donald and Goofy: The Three Musketeers' movie; you'll be visiting Fantasia; all of the Disney worlds that are in this game are brand new to the series.

Mitsuno: This is the shortest duration, or a gap, between the Japanese release and the North American release for a Kingdom Hearts game. For example, Birth by Sleep had almost 8 months separation. With such a short term, they didn't really add too many new features in. They made some under-the-hood changes; some minor changes that are not really so overt to the person just playing it. But there are some differences to the preorder incentives we've released: AR cards that actually unlock some of the rare Dream Eaters. For North America, even if you don't have the AR cards, you can actually get those Dream Eaters in the game. They do take more effort; they are difficult to obtain, whereas in Japan, the Dream Eaters are exclusive to those cards, so if you didn't have them, you couldn't get them in the game.

Mitsuno: Like Kingdom Hearts I and II had cameos from the Final Fantasy series, this one just wanted to change it up a bit. Traverse Town ―one of the first worlds you go into― right off the bat, Sora will meet Neku, Riku will meet Joshua; it's cool because their stories kind of intertwine. Neku's looking for his partner in the Game, he asks Sora if he's a Player, he's not a Player, so it's cool that for fans who've played The World Ends With You, it just really brings a smile to their faces when they first see those characters. This is a brand that kind of has a way of bringing in other properties and making it feel seamless, and that's one of the examples that we've done for this title.

Mitsuno: There's a very, very fast-paced battle; it's kind of a minigame, it's called "Flick Rush". You basically put your three Dream Eaters against your friend's three Dream Eaters. It's a really quick decision-based battle. Your objective is to just defeat all of theirs before your friend defeats you.

Mitsuno: Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] will be out July 31st exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS.