Kingdom Hearts 4, analysis, details and theories on the trailer

Little surprise, and without fanfare or horn blows, Square Enix It released the first Kingdom Hearts 4 teaser trailer to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series created by Tetsuya Nomura. It was an unexpected announcement, also because “only” three years have passed since the release Kingdom Hearts 3And, for those familiar with the series’ written development timeline, these three years seem like the blink of an eye. Don’t start holding your breath, because we don’t have dates yet, let alone confirmed platforms: we’re still in the early steps in game development, but despite that we’ve glimpsed the future of the series in these three minutes of footage, which is enough to be able to Make some guesswork.

Moreover, while they were in Tokyo on stage to celebrate not only Nomura himself, but also the historical author of the series, Yuko Shimomura, the Japanese company also announced a new mobile title, Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link. This is all we know about our country Video Reviews for Kingdom Hearts 4 And at the beginning of a new narrative arc.

A fresh start but no

As promised, one chapter is closed and another opens. authorized lost masterthe new story arc, which follows the story of the Dark Seeker (also known informally as the Xehanort Saga), marks a new beginning but is also a direct follow-up to Kingdom Hearts 3’s deduction and, in this case, the story’s downloadable content Kingdom Hearts III: Re Mind and musical sub Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory. The rhythm game that focused on Kairi’s memories was initially rated as a secondary title, and proved to be a key piece to understanding the mosaic that was beginning to take shape: at the end of the game, in fact, our team found out where Sora ended up, disappearing at the end of the third act.

We know that the protagonist has arrived at the (imaginary?) ferrum rex, the in-game game we encountered in the Toy Story setting during the Kingdom Hearts 3 campaign. Clearly inspired by other works by Tetsuya Nomura, such as Final Fantasy vs. XIII, Verum Rex worked on introducing a new character, Yozora. In a way, this short instructable seems to have become the cornerstone of the new narrative arc: The links between Yozora, Sora, and Noctis have been written in the past, but now the new humor puts even more meat on the fire.

We see Sora wake up in a city square, in a modern and realistic living room. It seems that the game will start a week after the conclusion of Kingdom Hearts 3 and Sora’s arrival in this world, welcomed by only Strelitzia.

For starters – and let’s face it, getting yourself out of the intricate mythology of Kingdom Hearts gets harder and harder – Strelitzia He is the Keyblade Keeper who appeared in Kingdom Hearts Union χ: At first Strelitzia, a simple dandelion, trained by Ava herself, would have become a fortune-teller leading guilds, had she not been killed by the darkness. Therefore, his words in humor are not at all random when he compares Quadratum to the afterlife. And it is another very strange life, full of cars, bikes, streets, pedestrians, traffic lights, signs and skyscrapers: a plausible, realistic world similar to ours. But anyone who’s even completed the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy should know that Nomura is fascinated by the idea that the real and the great intersect in his games.

The humor we saw has no chronological location; This means that we don’t know if this is the beginning of the game or a more advanced sequence. It is certain that the clash between Sora and the Giant Heartless The attack on the Quadratum has opened up more than just a memory, they say: from the astonishing clash between Cloud and Sephiroth in the finale of Advent Children and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, to one of the first tracks from Final Fantasy XV, passing by as a sign that Nomura has a real passion for choreography. His characters run over buildings as if they were ninjas in the anime.

The brief confrontation – during which we get a hint of the interface, but is too dry to be considered final – also tells us something about the gameplay, which should be more dynamic and lively than it has been in the past. Apparently, Sora will be able to use a chain Keyblade As a kind of grappling hook that will allow him to cling to edges, enemies and grabs to reach faraway locations in the blink of an eye. All that needs to be explained, then, is the special attack he sees that turns the Keyblade into a giant training that does a lot for Gurren Lagann.

Where do we go from here?

The end of the joke is baffling: pass the Masters and Loxo watching the Battle of Sora from afar like any self-respecting cliché, but see Donald and Goofy – The struggle with the good old Hades, and based on the blue flames that turned red in the dark – means that we may not have left our favorite thirty behind, and that at some point it will inevitably return to the usual game dynamics. The problem is understanding which direction this story will move in tandem with the highly realistic but stylized new look that the teaser alludes to.

If we go back to traveling from one world to another, the focus will likely shift to more modern franchises, such as the CGI feature-length films. Disney and Pixar Which seems more stylistically appropriate for the new artistic direction. The sporty look in the teaser — which Square Enix has clarified is based on Unreal Engine 4, although the development team has already moved to Unreal Engine 5 — will work perfectly in worlds like those of Raya and the last, Dragon, and newer ones. Encanto, Red or Luca by Pixar, not to mention Coco, which fits perfectly with these themes: Can you imagine a world set in the colorful afterlife of the movie?

However, many fans give feedback that we can’t overstate: Kingdom Hearts has always been deeply inspired by star Wars – Just think of the dichotomy of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Jedi and Sith, and Keyblades practically serving as a weapon of light – and now that the famous space opera belongs to Disney, it might be a good time to teleport the galaxy far, far away in the fantasy world of Kingdom Hearts.

In the teaser, at one point you peek into the forest – which is actually a bit out of place – and that was enough for the web’s imagination to soar: Someone saw the trees of the Redwood Forest, where the scenes were shot on Indoor Star Wars VI – Return of the Jedi, and within one we notice something that seemed to us just a stone out of focus, but some are convinced that it provided the AT-ST, an imperial means of transportation and combat. Not only that: According to some, the uproar that accompanies the Kingdom Hearts IV logo on screen at the end of the teaser will recall John Williams’ main theme.

In these hypotheses and fantasies, you can joke or not, the fact is that the world of Star Wars in Kingdom Hearts 4, today, does not seem a remote possibility. And we’ll tell you more: In our opinion, not only will it not conflict at all, but it will be a reasonable introduction that reflects the status quo to which we are still struggling to get used to. Twenty years ago, we never would have imagined that Disney would get their hands on Star Wars, let alone that marvel. And now there are all the conditions for Kingdom Hearts, a game of a genre that we once considered a niche and is now mainstream, to cross into the fantasy of George Lucas, and why not, into the fantasy of Marvel superheroes.

After all, we’ve already visited the world of Big Hero 6 – which, for starters, is really inspired by the Marvel series – and have seen Sora interact with live-action characters from Pirates of the Caribbean, hence the idea of ​​finding ourselves on a flight over New York with Iron Man and others Avengers It doesn’t seem strange to us at all.

mobile addresses

The anniversary of Kingdom Hearts was not only an opportunity to present the fourth episode of the series, but also the final chapter of Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road, which was delayed for a few months, and the unreleased mobile game called Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link. For Dark Road, the title – announced at the time of Kingdom Hearts III as Project Xehanort – will finish telling us about Xehanort’s years as an apprentice and his final path to… The Dark Side of the Force, so to speak, in a latest update packed with cinematics and narrative .

On the other hand, Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link will also be a completely new game from an aesthetic point of view, which abandons the cartoonish and stylized art direction to adopt a more realistic and similar style to Kingdom Hearts IV. . beta test iOS and Android It will take place later in the year, and we now know that the game will be centered around a city Scala ad Caelum, that we’ll face hordes of heartless and the like in real-time combat, and that there’s likely to be a new combat system focused on collectibles that can be figurines instead of cards. In fact, we see it appear every time our character casts a spell, but every game dynamic is still shrouded in mystery and we’ll have to wait a few months to find out more.