Kingdom Hearts III – Heart on His Sleeve

 

Seventeen years. From Sora’s first steps off Destiny Island to the final battle in Scala ad Caelum, seventeen years have passed. The series, which began early in the PlayStation 2’s life, has now reached the conclusion of the Dark Seeker Trilogy near the end of the PlayStation 4’s. And yet there are unfinished plot threads leading hopefully to a Kingdom Hearts IV sooner rather than later; it has been a long wait for Kingdom Hearts III.

But has the series worn out its welcome? Maybe. Or maybe it’s not that it’s no longer welcome, maybe its formula is just getting stale. Kingdom Hearts III is actually the ninth tenth eleventh… okay, it’s anywhere from the ninth to the twelfth game, depending on how each game is counted. Different fans have come up with different calculations. That is how complicated the continuity of the series is, where not even the fans can agree how many games there are.

If the games had been made much quicker and without so much filler released between main series titles, perhaps it wouldn’t feel like the game was going through the motions of being a Kingdom Hearts game. The formula has been well established at this point. The game starts like every other game, by resetting Sora back to level one and re-teaching him the basics of how to play. He also gets to visit Hercules right away this time, but at this point, I think the only one left who cares about Hercules is Tetsuya Nomura himself. I’m pretty tired of going to Greece in practically every single game..

To be fair, the world of Hercules has never been so massive as it is in Kingdom Hearts III, as if the development team was finally allowed off its leash and given the opportunity to design more than simply a higher definition version of the Olympic Coliseum. Kingdom Hearts II allowed us to explore Hades’ underworld too, but we didn’t get to see much of the surrounding city and landscape leading to Mount Olympus itself, and not only do we have the run of the place this time, but the music is also more than just the familiar tune from the first game. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind listening to the same music over and over if it’s good; I could probably listen to the overworld themes from Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX all day. But if the song is middling at best, it does begin to get annoying if it’s recycled many, many times.

As another example of Kingdom Hearts III jettisoning the old in favour of something fresh and new, the majority of games in the series, and in fact the series in general, adopted “Simple and Clean” as its theme song. It was originally written for the first game and its use in Chain of Memories could somewhat be justified in that it felt like it was originally meant to be “Kingdom Hearts but on handheld” and had evolved from there during development. But it’s transcended those two games as a theme song to the series in general and is also used as the theme song to the majority of the side games. The more I hear it, the less the lyrics make sense to me. Dream Drop Distance freshened it up by remixing it, but that can only get you so far.

However, as has been the case for each main series game, Kingdom Hearts III features a brand new theme song. Well, actually, it features two, as if Utada Hikaru has been saving them up for the series, and due to lengthy development times she has a surplus of them. In the grand scheme of things, “Don’t Think Twice” is the second best Kingdom Hearts theme song, with “Face My Fears” just slightly behind it as the third best. They are still miles ahead of “Simple and Clean” simply because of how overused and tired that song is.

In contrast, when Sora revisits Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, familiar music plays again but this is music that hasn’t yet overstayed its welcome. It’s basically the theme tune for Winnie the Pooh that was originally composed for Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, but there’s a timeless appeal to it and series composer Yoko Shimomura understands this and doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel here.

Sora’s latest visit to the Hundred Acre Wood is very short, though. One might think it’s Tetsuya Nomura’s way of showing that Sora’s beginning to grow up and that everyone’s favourite Pooh Bear is meant for the young, but I think it’s more indicative of a major problem with Kingdom Hearts as a successful franchise: the executives begin to meddle, for they think they know better what should go into the series than the ones actually doing the work. In the past, Sora had plenty of things to do and plenty of places in the Wood to explore. In Kingdom Hearts III, Sora helps Rabbit out with gardening, then helps him out with more gardening, then follows that up with more gardening and then the world’s cleared, here’s a PSN trophy. There is exactly one area in the Hundred Acre Wood this time, and after playing through the story campaign and finding the three Hidden Mickeys, Sora can pretty much leave and head out on his next adventure. Then come back to get a picture of a scarecrow because the moogles demand it, but after that, he’s done forever. It’s a very disappointingly short section of the game, especially compared to past visits to the Wood.

The Wood is also disappointing in another way, although it’s relatively minor compared to the rest of the game. Roo’s mother Kanga is nowhere to be found. Not going to lie, she’s one of my favourite characters, and not seeing her is a little disappointing. I also wouldn’t have minded seeing Lottie the otter debut in a Kingdom Hearts game, but I can understand why she’ll likely not make an appearance in the Disney continuity. Instead, Sora is introduced to a new character, a Heffalump named Lumpy. This Heffalump is a character that was first introduced in Pooh’s Heffalump Movie and is wholly owned by Disney, which makes me wonder if I’ll ever get to see Kessie in Kingdom Hearts. Aside from Kanga, Kessie was always my favourite character, even though she only appears in a couple episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. She also was a regular character in The Book of Pooh and then has vanished from Disney canon. It would be nice to see her again, even if only for an hour at a time, every time a new Kingdom Hearts game is released.

I wonder if the reason Winnie the Pooh never has to worry about fighting Heartless is because of some edict from Disney that the Hundred Acre Wood must not feature any battles. Then again, I don’t think Tetsuya Nomura was planning on going to the Wood this time, and it’s possible that he was required to include it, so all he was able to come up with for the player to do was play Puzzle Bobble. It is also possible that the opposite is true, that Nomura wanted to put a longer Wood section in the game but was vetoed by Disney and so he was restricted to just doing Puzzle Bobble a la Pooh Bear, and considering what happened to Arendelle, the latter is a pretty believable possibility.

The tragedy of the world of Frozen in Kingdom Hearts III is that Sora doesn’t get to experience the story at all, he’s just an observer to a few key scenes. You’d get the same effect playing this section of Kingdom Hearts III as you would if you played any other video game, then ventured into the living room every so often while someone was watching Frozen. Who is this person who might or might not be a villain carrying Elsa away? Who knows? He doesn’t turn into an enemy you can defeat, since the boss of Arendelle just comes out of nowhere. If you’ve never watched Frozen, you’ll have no context for any of the events that happen or any of the jokes that Olaf makes, and especially not the Sven joke.

MatPat of Game Theory made an excellent video recently regarding what he thinks Arendelle’s original design was going to be, and it makes sense. The level of meddling Disney likely did to make sure the Frozen brand wouldn’t be tarnished by Elsa’s potential dabbling with darkness sort of ruined the world completely. Instead of a setting with a rich narrative and a strong tie to Sora’s own journey through the worlds, Arendelle consists of climbing a mountain, then climbing the mountain again, then climbing the mountain again. I don’t really feel like I got a sense of what Arendelle is actually like other than lots and lots of winter. I might as well solo run the Icy Plateau from Skyforge three times, I’d have just as much fun.

The Kingdom of Corona fared better than Arendelle, relatively speaking. Actually, now that it’s come up, here’s a PSA:

The word ‘coronavirus’ existed since the 1960s. The first published use of the word was in the November 16, 1968 issue of Nature, in an article called Virology: Coronaviruses. The root word ‘corona’ is Latin, meaning ‘crown’ or ‘halo’. Tangled did not predict the 2019-2020 pandemic. If Disney was trying to predict the future, they should’ve named the kingdom Covid instead of Corona and threw in a bunch of references to the number 19.

The Kingdom of Corona fared better than Arendelle, relatively speaking. This is one of the worlds that incorporated the story from its film into Kingdom Hearts III, but given the story has to share screen time with Sora running around and battling Heartless, a few details are unfortunately left out. Partway through the level, Rapunzel starts referring to Flynn by his real name and if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll understand the context but if you haven’t, it’s anyone’s guess why he’s suddenly inherited a new name, almost as if the character was renamed partway through development and no one caught it before the game went to print, then didn’t bother fixing it in a patch afterward. At one point, Rapunzel left her satchel behind and Mother Gothel found it, but then later Rapunzel somehow has her satchel back. Also, we have to assume the reasoning behind why Mother Gothel wanted Rapunzel’s hair whereas it’s explained in the movie.

Unfortunately, those weren’t the only plot holes from the Kingdom of Corona; in general, the story of Tangled doesn’t make the transition well from movie to game. Ironically, it’s the Pixar worlds that work much better than the Disney ones. Pixar was much more strict about how to incorporate Toy Story and Monsters Inc. into Kingdom Hearts III and didn’t allow Nomura to adapt the movies themselves. Instead, he was required to come up with original stories for the characters, and what we got in response was fantastic. Almost. The central conflict in the Toy Story world was never resolved unless you watch the end credits, but other than that, I have no complaints. Some of the best worlds from earlier in the series also featured original stories, so requiring that Pixar’s worlds be treated the same was the right decision to make.

…actually, I lied. I do have one other complaint about the Toy Box. It’s more about how the Toy Box was incorporated into the Kingdom Hearts universe, and of the way it was marketed to us during development.

It was announced a few years before the game was finally released that Kingdom Hearts III was going to be canon to Toy Story (in other words, the events in the game really do happen to Buzz and Woody and the rest of the gang) and would take place between the second and third movie. However, this detail can be considered “all there in the manual” because the game doesn’t mention Toy Story 2 or spoil that movie in any way. It doesn’t even mention Toy Story 1. It could’ve taken place anywhere along the timeline between the first three movies and nothing would’ve had to be changed. As for whether it’s canon or not, I think that part is a bit overhyped and overblown. The world of Toy Story was always shown as being like our world, except toys can come to life. And judging by how Sid reacted when Woody came to life in his hands, it’s intended to actually be our world, for we don’t think toys come to life and neither did Sid, up until that point. In Kingdom Hearts III, the world is somehow split into two like Traverse Town in Dream Drop Distance, with some characters stuck in one half of the world and some stuck in the other. The central conflict is that the toys are in one half of the world and Andy and the rest of the humans are stuck in the other half. It’s also apparently possible to enter this world in the same way you enter any of the other worlds, so making Kingdom Hearts III canon to Toy Story seems to fundamentally alter our understanding of this world. Maybe it’s not based on our world after all, in this case. It should now theoretically be possible for the actual Sora, or any of the classic Disney characters, to make an appearance in Toy Story 5. It should also be theoretically possible for anyone from Organization XIII to be an antagonist for Woody and Buzz. Also, if Kingdom Hearts III truly affected the Toy Story world, is Sora also canon to some of Disney’s other properties? Did he truly visit Monstropolis and San Fransokyo?

If the voices in the Toy Box seemed a little off, that’s because neither Tom Hanks nor Tim Allen reprise their roles for Kingdom Hearts III. While they are still the official voice actors for Woody and Buzz in the movies, Tom Hanks has never voiced Woody in any of the video games based on Toy Story; the official voice of Woody for video games happens to be his brother Jim. Tim Allen was available to voice Buzz Lightyear on a number of occasions, but recent games including Kingdom Hearts III also use an official replacement.

Neither of these replacements were as bad as Enn Reitel, who replaces Alan Young as the voice of Scrooge McDuck in Kingdom Hearts and at the Disney parks. Apparently, Alan Young’s shoes were so big to fill that there are currently four official voice actors for Scrooge. Enn Reitel isn’t the worst of the group, but I think I’m not alone in saying that I wish David Tennant had voiced Scrooge here. Out of all of the voice actors tapped to replace Alan Young, David Tennant’s delivery as Scrooge McDuck in the Duck Tales reboot is so well done that it’s like Alan Young never left us. There doesn’t seem to be much life to Enn Reitel’s performance.

I found myself disappointed in Xehanort’s replacement as well. It turns out that Leonard Nimoy is irreplaceable. Rutger Hauer tries his best, but Xehanort just doesn’t sound the same without that rough, gravelly quality that Nimoy brought to the character. The one saving grace for the series is that Xehanort is apparently defeated for good, and with the Dark Seeker Trilogy over, Nomura will hopefully keep Xehanort dead as he focuses on other aspects of the Kingdom Hearts story that he’s still developing, particularly about the Foretellers and the mysterious Black Box that has been mentioned in a few games now.

I wonder if Nomura has a Maleficent fetish. He brought her back in Kingdom Hearts II after killing her off in the first game and decided she’s either got this grand master plan that she’s been enacting ever since, or she’s just a chess master who happens to be thinking several moves ahead. I would dispute both characterizations.

In Kingdom Hearts III she’s looking for the Black Box to further her evil plans, but ever since Coded, she seems like the kind of villain who is mostly there to remind us that she’s there. She’s no better than a villain in one of Anne Bishop’s novels, and Pete is worse in that he’s not very bright and isn’t a very good evil assistant. Maleficent could do a lot better than him but keeps him around for some reason. In her appearance in Dream Drop Distance, she tried to do an evil and got easily sent packing by Axel in a cutscene, who seems to go back and forth between wanting to be named Lea and wanting to be named Axel. Dude, make up your mind.

Maleficent confronts Sora early on in Kingdom Hearts III and then decides he’s just a trifle and leaves him alone. Wh… no! Kill him! He’s beaten you several times already! *He* killed *you* at the end of Kingdom Hearts! If you have the chance to kill him while he’s not much of a nuisance, you should do it! You’re supposedly the mistress of all evil! You gave someone a curse that would kill them at a specific point in their lives and made life miserable for the entire kingdom as a result, just because they didn’t extend to you an invitation to a social gathering, and you can’t off the kid who’s been a thorn in your side several times before? I mean, of course I’m on Sora’s side, but it seems like Maleficent doesn’t make any decisions that are beneficial to herself in the Kingdom Hearts series at all.

If she needs Sora alive for some reason, she’s never told us this, but it doesn’t matter anyway. There was no way for her to know that Sora had to stay alive to bring the Keyblade War to its natural conclusion so that the Black Box could be revealed because she doesn’t figure out the nature of how it’s hidden until near the end of the game, and her confrontation with Sor was at the beginning. There was no possible way for her to understand at that point in the game that she should keep Sora alive and he’d do her bidding for her. Her presence is basically just incidental. At this point, it feels like she stopped being relevant after the first game and possibly a few key scenes in Kingdom Hearts II. At least back then, Nomura was still acting like the Disney villains, or at least a couple specific ones, were important to the narrative direction of the series. Since then, he’s focused entirely on his own characters and the extensive lore he created surrounding the Keyblade War.

I wrote a song just for Maleficent, inspired by my thoughts on her as a character in the series as a whole. I hope you enjoy.

Do you want me to do evil
In this RPG you play?
I’m here for just one scene
Aren’t all that mean
Before I go away

We used to be best en’mies
And now we’re not
I wish you would tell me why!

Do you want me to do evil
…it doesn’t have to be that evil

(Go away, Maleficent!)

Okay, bye

At least Maleficent is still around. Anyone wondering why Squall, Yuffie and Aeris seem to have vanished from Radiant Garden would be justified in their ponderings. In fact, not a single Final Fantasy character makes an appearance this time around. Not even Sephiroth as one of the game’s toughest optional bosses like he was in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II. Instead, the Final Fantasy characters are all replaced with some of Nomura’s original characters. The resurrected members of Organization XIII perform similar functions as Squall and company did in the past. For example, Ienzo can be seen working the computer in Radiant Garden, and Irvine, Selphie and Tidus on the Destiny Islands are replaced by Axel, Roxas and Xion.

After playing Kingdom Hearts III, one must wonder: where does the series go from here? It’s hard to tell. The secret movie at the end appears to hint that Kingdom Hearts IV (or whatever the next major Kingdom Hearts release is going to be) is going to start making use of Square-Enix’s own intellectual properties to create its worlds from. In the past, Square-Enix’s characters made their way to original worlds created for Kingdom Hearts like Traverse Town and Radiant Garden, but Sora appears to find himself in Shibuya from The World Ends With You. Could this be a hint that Nomura is tired of trying to work within Disney’s guidelines and restrictions, forced to wait for approval when looking to add worlds to each game, and forced to wait for more approval when trying to discuss the story he wants to tell within each world?

As of right now, there are no new Kingdom Hearts games announced, so it is unknown where the series is going as of yet. However, there is one DLC episode released for Kingdom Hearts III, titled Re: Mind. A review of it is forthcoming.

The bad news for Kingdom Hearts fans is that there may not be any new games on the horizon for a while, depending on how long Nomura takes to finish the Final Fantasy VII remake project. With how long it took to finally release Kingdom Hearts III, I do not look forward to turning 50 before I get to see what happens next in the series; I was 19 when the first game was released.

I have realized in my attempt to write a Kingdom Hearts retrospective series that I have things I want to say about not just Kingdom Hearts, but Square’s other major properties too. As I wrestled with writer’s block regarding Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, I decided that I need to go back, way back to the 80s. Kingdom Hearts is tied somewhat closely to Final Fantasy, and Final Fantasy itself used to be tied somewhat closely to Dragon Quest, each series developing similarly over time and influencing each other in interesting ways. I intend to show this in the coming weeks and months, for the original Kingdom Hearts retrospective series I began last year is now becoming a retrospective series on all three of Square’s flagship series. This project likely won’t be over for several years, is intended to replace many of the reviews I wrote years ago with articles that dive into deeper detail about each game and will not cover every single title that exists with Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or Kingdom Hearts in their names, but it will hopefully come close. It will also start to experience a schedule slip as each game becomes bigger, considering a couple of the Dragon Quest games take close to a hundred hours to complete.

So watch this blog for my impressions of Re: Mind on the 8th of April, and then a retrospective of Dragon Quest on the 15th, Final Fantasy on the 22nd and Dragon Quest II on the 29th, with more retrospectives to be posted on select Wednesdays in the months ahead.