Cognition Dissemination: Tetsuya Nomura Might Still Want to Make a Form of Versus XIII. Let Him

Warning: This post will contain spoilers for Kingdom Hearts III and its Re:Mind DLC. Now you can’t complain if you go further.

Kingdom Hearts III is a game full of interesting moments, which come in two variants. Some are genuinely entertaining, mainly those involving the usage of certain Disney franchises. The others are “interesting” in a “What the hell was that?” sense, because the Kingdom Hearts franchise’s overall story has been a confusing mess since Kingdom Hearts II. But one particular nonsensical scene was more memorable than the others, thanks to what it could portend.

There’s a commercial for a minigame called Verum Rex within the game’s Toy Story section. What initially seems like a neat ad for a bonus game that takes place in Shibuya (the same location, it so happens, The World Ends with You occurs in) starts looking very familiar.

Main character Yozora somewhat resembles Riku, which gave birth to all sorts of creative and fittingly-bonkers theories; but he also bears a hell of a resemblance to Final Fantasy XV protagonist Noctis Lucis Caelum. He’s even wearing an outfit reminiscent of the one Noctis wore in the old Final Fantasy Versus XIII promotions, before fashion brand Roen designed the final ones. Another one of the party members fighting somewhat resembles FFXV’s Ignis, but with a curly hairstyle instead of a slicked back one. There’s also another woman who resembles Stella, a character whose role was later altered to the point that the development team changed the character to a different one known as Luna when it became FFXV.

These appeared to be cool references, further hammered home through what the names translate to. “Verum Rex” is Latin for “True King,” yet another reference to Noctis. I prefer to interpret this as a knock against Noctis and FFXV from KHIII director Tetsuya Nomura, since he was removed from the former game and replaced with Hajime Tabata. Even better: “Yozora” means “Night Sky” in English, which translates in Latin to “Noctis Caelum.” This is not subtle. KH3’s Secret Ending also features Sora and Riku showing up in Shibuya, while Yozora is observing them. The music playing takes cues from “Somnus” from FFXV, to no surprise considering both games feature the same main composer (Yoko Shimomura). Does this make sense? Of course not; it’s Kingdom Hearts. But the commercial and ending may not have simply been cute references.

Now, it couldn’t be clearer that they’re not. The recently-released Kingdom Hearts III Re:Mind expansion features a secret boss fight with Yozora, a tough fight that can end one of two ways, and one seems like it’s teasing much more. Regardless of the ending, there’s a scene where Yozora is riding in the back of a limo, the line from which changes depending on how the battle concludes. It’s a bit too reminiscent of a similar scene from a well-remembered Versus XIII trailer.

With all these references, maybe Nomura is still a little bitter about being removed from the director’s chair of Versus XIII/FFXV, and about how the new director changed the vision for the project. He still might want to realize his Versus XIII stories after all this, a bonkers idea given what happened during the prolonged development hell-laden production of the original version. That’s despite how its disastrous production wasn’t entirely his fault, since word has it development team members kept being poached for other projects that Square Enix felt were slightly larger priorities over the years, especially Final Fantasy XIII. Would essentially saying “let’s do that again” be an insane idea? It sure would. Should he do it? He sure should.

Using several discarded ideas from the cancelled versions of Versus XIII and FFXV would work in a new KH game. These appearances from Yozora in the KH universe as of KHIII show how Nomura at least a bit obsessed with it despite being removed as FFXV’s director over five years ago. The concept of doing this would be nutty, but fitting for a franchise in which the overarching plot went off the rails several games ago. This could be a pet project, though nothing quite as risky as Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. The gameplay style, franchise, and franchise trappings would all be familiar.

I’d rather see this as a new property disconnected from KH, but it’s unlikely that Square Enix would let Nomura and a team try this again as the start of a new franchise or even a Final Fantasy game due to the history associated with Versus XIII’s development. The caveat with making this a KH game will be how Nomura won’t be able to do everything he wants with the characters. KH characters belong to Disney, including original faces like Sora, Kairi, and the members of Organization XIII. But this would be worth it if the team can get the money and resources for the project.

There are always multiple KH games in development, the next of which will be mobile game Project Xehanort, details for which haven’t been fully announced yet. But Nomura also said that another game is in development, which could very well be a game starring Yozora. It wouldn’t have to be Kingdom Hearts IV either, since the franchise has too many side games that also count as mainline installments.

We’ll see if this has all simply been one long-running joke or not in the near future.