With Master Xehanort's Ambitions revealed, the plot is thickening in the Kingdom Hearts Series. We spoke to Director Nomura, not just about the mysteries surrounding his work, but also the future of the series.

‘When did you start planning for KH3D?'
Nomura: That was during the production of KHBbS. We didn't originally plan to start thinking about the next game so soon already, but as soon as I saw the Nintendo 3DS, inspiration hit me.

‘KH already has a reputation of being spread across many different consoles, but what was that special inspiration that hit you when you saw the 3DS?'
Nomura: The Free-Flow-Action System was already something I definitely wanted to try with the next KH game I make, so the one idea I really only got after I had seen the 3DS was the "Dive Mode". In KH1 and KH2, you generally use a Gumi Jet as means of traveling, but this time, I wanted to think of something that makes you feel like you were jumping and falling right into the world. What I can say with certainity is that I feel like the Dive-System was the very first thing that came to me, and starting with this, I began to decide on the rest of the game's system.

‘Why did you decide that you were going to implement the Free-Flow-Action?'
Nomura: Aside from the KH Series, more and more different Action RPGs, like Final Fantasy Versus XIII have been made and I wanted to have something that makes Kingdom Hearts clearly different from those other games. I wanted to clearly show the direction in which we want to take the series, so when I began to think what might be the best representation of what Kingdom Hearts "is", I came to the conclusion, that unrealistic stunts and jumps, as well as maneuvers that'd be risky or even impossible in real life are something very defining for the action of the games. So I came up with the concept of Free-Flow-Action

‘Wasn't it hard to ensure that this system wouldn't end up as unpleasant to play with or a downright failure, but work smoothly?"
Nomura: Well, the staff certainly didn't think the idea was good. (laughs) If you allow the characters to preform huge jumps like this freely, it'd be hard to determine where they would end up if you don't support every action of the player, so when I first mentioned the idea, the staff thought that this would be hard to get under control. However, after I explained to them that this was just the direction I had decided I want to take the KH games, they finally went along with it.

‘In previous KH games you generally had to collect abilities from treasure boxes if you wanted to be able to preform stunts like the "Hi-Jump", but this time around, things like this things are all included in the Free-Flow-Action, right?"
Nomura: "Well, actually, this is a pretty interesting topic. When using Free Fall Action, your controll over the character's movement is somewhat limited, so you can't use it for precise jumps, which is why we left acquirable abilities, like "Hi Jump" in the game. I think that this is one of the great strengthes of the system, it gives the game a unique flavor compared to other KH titles, while not dragging down the ammount of control you have during gameplay.