Kingdom Hearts III Re:Mind – Think Twice

A question has been on my mind lately. How far ahead does Tetsuya Nomura plan? How much of the Kingdom Hearts story does he have already written, so that he can drop hints and foreshadow future events? I go back and forth between two extremes: he’s either got the entire story written out (in his head or down on paper, it doesn’t matter), or he’s making it up as he goes along.

Sometimes it feels like he just makes it up as he goes along, especially with his style of storytelling. It’s rather light on subtle foreshadowing and heavy on spectacle. I’m always left with the impression that when I find out something new about what’s going on, he just came up with it on the spot.

Contrast Tetsuya Nomura with Naoki Yoshida, known to the Final Fantasy XIV community as Yoshi-P. Yoshi-P has demonstrated that he plans so far ahead that he’ll foreshadow even the tiniest details many years in advance. Case in point, at the end of the Crystal Tower story during A Realm Reborn, a device used to cross dimensions starts pinging on its own after it was discarded once it had served its initial purpose. This turned out to foreshadow how the main character was going to travel to the parallel world in Shadowbringers. It wasn’t just the Crystal Tower raids, but also the Alexander and Omega raids were written in such a way to further set up the means of crossing over between worlds. Players knew that Yoshi-P liked to work ahead, but were blown away by how much preparation had been done to set the story of the current expansion in motion.

I get the feeling that Nomura’s method of storytelling is to remember that he never bothered to explain where that cloaked guy from the first game came from and then come up with new lore to explain him away. Making it up as he goes along would certainly go a long way toward explaining why he first thought Birth By Sleep was the prologue of the entire series, referred to as “episode 0” and now it’s called “episode 0.1” because he’s gone back even further to come up with an even earlier prologue. If he is working ahead, it’s a game or two at the most.

I am choosing to believe the Foretellers weren’t a part of the series lore when Nomura was in the process of making Dream Drop Distance and came up with them during the development of Kingdom Hearts III in order to both help set up the future of the series and come up with a story for the mobile games. He likely already had the Black Box planned out, but for those who’ve never played the mobile games, the Foretellers came out of nowhere at the very end of the latest game in the series. Other than the mobile titles, there was no foreshadowing prior to their appearance.

So with all that in mind, the question on my mind this past week was, did Nomura plan to release Kingdom Hearts III DLC all along or was this necessary because of the way the ending was written? Admittedly, I didn’t realize this when I was finishing up the main game, but much of the ending was a bit too ambiguous. Given Nomura’s style of storytelling, it’s hard to tell if this was on purpose so that he could sell some DLC or if he thought that it was perfect just the way it was until he started getting feedback from fans. It wouldn’t be the first time in recent years a Square-Enix game had to clarify aspects of its ending through DLC. And given the struggle Nomura likely had to come up with some kind of coherent story for Arendelle within the constraints of what Disney wanted and what he’d already built, I can imagine a scenario where he might’ve run out of time when developing the ending for his game.

That said, I can also imagine a scenario where he did have enough time to finish his game’s ending and chose to cut part of it out and sell it as DLC. This could either have been a conscious decision by him or one made by executives higher up in the company. It would certainly mimic other companies who now sell things via DLC that used to be in their games proper.

But would this DLC have been in the game in the first place or was it developed after? There are already things to do in the end-game in Kingdom Hearts III, I found some of that content when playing Re:Mind, so I’m assuming this DLC was developed after. But if it was developed after, you’d think there’d be a bit more to it, especially for the price tag.

The Re:Mind DLC consists of a five hour retelling of the Keyblade Graveyard level of Kingdom Hearts III, up to and including Scala ad Caelum. What the DLC adds is a second, fully explorable part of Scala ad Caelum, turning it into its own world complete with a story to frame it around, enemies to fight and treasure to find. The reason I suspect that this DLC might’ve been cut from Kingdom Hearts III and released as DLC instead is because the original end sequence had Sora declare his intention to find Kairi once more, then the very last scene of the ending sequence showed that he succeeded, and the DLC’s plot is basically that Sora finds Kairi by jumping between his friends’ hearts and fighting a bunch of bosses. Some of these bosses are just the exact same battles that Sora fought before, with three of them literally being the same bosses fought in the exact same manner with Sora.

This is why I feel like Nomura might suck at planning ahead. If this DLC was truly being planned while the ending of the game was being developed, then the sequence where Luxord sucks Mickey into a playing card during his fight in the Keyblade Graveyard was a mistake, for it prevented Nomura from being able to grant players the ability to play as Mickey for the fight. During the retelling of the Keyblade Graveyard sequence, the DLC makes players fight their way through the Organization XIII boss rush again, but with the exception of Mickey, players can choose to play as Sora or play as one of the characters he fought alongside during each separate encounter. For example, Sora fought alongside Riku when facing the Riku Replica and Xigbar. During the DLC, players can choose to use Riku to fight with instead of Sora. I recommended this because in my experience, Riku is very overpowered here.

Riku might be overpowered, but not every character is. I admit to getting a game over more than once when choosing to play as the companion character and not as Sora. Partly, I blame needing to get reacclimated to their style of fighting from other games in the series, and the removal of some of my options when playing as them. Summoning Simba was one of my favourite things to do because it seemed to increase Sora’s defense – he wasn’t losing very much health with Simba active – while giving him access to powerful area of effect abilities. It basically turns a battle with a lot of enemies into easy mode, and a couple of the Organization XIII fights were a bit more difficult than they should’ve been when I didn’t have that option at my disposal.

Once through the Keyblade Graveyard, the truly original content finally begins, as Sora wanders Scala ad Caelum looking to piece Kairi’s heart back together. There are puzzles which test both Sora and the player’s mastery over the game’s mechanics and our ability to use visual clues to solve problems, and there are bosses to fight. It’s what a final dungeon should be, which is another reason I feel like this DLC might’ve originally been intended to be a part of the main game.

In the end, Sora brings Kairi back and the end credits from the main game play, but in a modified state, for it turns out Sora and Kairi were present for everything, just off camera. Then at the end, he’s seen fading away like before. Just like before, the scene with the Foretellers in the Keyblade Graveyard plays again, but if players didn’t unlock the secret ending yet, it now plays for everyone.

So with Sora faded away completely, that’s it, the series is over, right? Or at least Sora’s role to play in the series is over, right?

Nope. As with literally every character to die in the series outside of the Disney villains from the first game (and even then, some of them got better and needed killing more than once) and I guess Master Eraqus, Sora can be brought back to life. I mean, if Kairi can be brought back, so can Sora. Presumably. This is why I didn’t cry when Kairi was seemingly killed in the Keyblade Graveyard, nor did I cry when Sora faded away in the end credits. Death in Kingdom Hearts is just a slap on the wrist, although without the penalty to your gold pieces. Death is treated here as cavalier as it is in Final Fantasy IV. It makes one wonder just what is required to make death permanent.

Maybe death only becomes permanent by making the means of reversing it exceedingly difficult. As of right now, the next part of the DLC, the “LIMIT CUT EPISODE” has proven a bit more challenging than I would like. I need more than the week I gave myself in order to get good and defeat the data versions of Organization XIII, for they’re preventing me from getting any further in the story. They’re super boss versions of the characters that are tough to fight, even at level 99 and although they’re not hard once you’ve figured out the patterns and are patient, I sadly do not have the time to learn thirteen fights within a couple days, farm the raw materials required to craft all the strength and defense boosts I would need to make the fights a bit more forgiving and then learn the thirteen fights anyway, or replay the entire game on Beginner difficulty and then learn the thirteen fights anyway but in an easier mode.

Perhaps at the end of the upcoming retrospective series, I’ll be able to definitively talk about the LIMIT CUT EPISODE and talk about the DLC’s true ending. As it stands, I don’t feel like I got my money’s worth. What I got for $39.99 CAD was a bunch of super bosses which could’ve been part of the main game, plus an ending that looks like it was cut out of the main game based simply around how it was framed and that it’s presented as if it’s a clip show, using footage already been seen. To put it in perspective, $39.99 was the price of a full Nintendo DS game in Canada, although some Square-Enix games went for $49.99 here. I don’t think enough work went into making Re:Mind to warrant a $39.99 price tag, nor should the time investment required to defeat thirteen super bosses count towards the price. Wasting a player’s time with bosses that require a lot of practice and preparation to beat should not count towards the run time of a game. A five hour story campaign just isn’t the same kind of content. You could potentially spend as much time working on beating the entire Re:Mind DLC including the LIMIT CUT EPISODE as you could playing through the entirety of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep on the PSP, but that doesn’t mean they should both cost the same. Comparatively, a lot more work went into developing Birth By Sleep and not a lot of assets were reused, considering how much original content was put into the game.

Before I finish, there’s something I found interesting about the DLC. All of Rutger Hauer’s lines were re-recorded by Christopher Lloyd. Doc Brown himself has come in to replace Hauer, and although he does sound better as Xehanort and brings his own kind of presence to the role, even he can’t compare to Leonard Nimoy. Still, it’s like my criticism last week made the trip back in time a year and caused the role to be recast again.

Come to think of it, I wonder what happened to Hauer. Let me check.

Oh. Oh no. This role is cursed. Oh no! Christopher Lloyd, no! Run! Get out of this role as fast as you can! Xehanort kills his voice actors!

So Re:Mind was alright but could’ve been cheaper and better. I also kind of think that maybe I didn’t like it because I was trying to get through it as fast as I could and the game basically reframes what came before with slightly different dressing. It’s the same ambivalence I used to feel toward Coded, but I don’t any more since now I know what to expect. Back when I first played Coded, it felt like the game was just repeating itself multiple times, especially when I got to the point where Data Sora has to go to Data Castle Oblivion and it’s basically Data Agrabah, Data Destiny Islands and so on, just in a Data Castle instead with characters playing make-believe. I mean, that part of the game still sucks but I’m expecting it now. Plus, the game doesn’t take forever to get through and the sections of the game where you’re fighting bugs is actually mostly fun. It doesn’t retell the story by making you play it again with minor differences, like Re:Mind does. Maybe when I return to this DLC a few years down the road, however long this retrospective series takes, I’ll see it in a better light. I mean, at least Scala ad Caelum is a playable world now, right? I kind of thought I would have to wait until Kingdom Hearts IV to be able to say that.

I hope it’s not too long a wait for Kingdom Hearts IV…

 

Next week: We go back, way back to the very beginning, to a place called Alefgard…