Character development is probably the most important structure when it comes to any narrative. You can't tell a story with unlikable characters. You have to leave room for each character to develop. Over the course of the 10 years that lead up to the original release of Dream Drop Distance, many of us may have thought we had a generally well developed cast of characters. Upon the release of DDD, we thought we took a step back with at least Sora. His gameplay was a lot worse than ever before. He became way too childish and naive instead of having that perfect balance from KH2. Riku was still brooding and constantly talked about the Darkness, but his gameplay was fantastic and everything we wanted out of Sora's. Some argue that the only big take from DDD was it's ending for the story. However that was never true. In fact, we have 0.2 to back this up now, as Sora is now back to the way he was in KH2. The idea portrayed to us in DDD, the reason Sora ended up where he was by the end of its narrative, was that the chosen one got a bit too cocky. He saved the worlds on a grand scale multiple times, why did he have to take any of it seriously? He let his ego get the best of him and that's what lead to the situation that provided us with Riku coming out of it as the only Keyblade Master. Riku has been on the same road since CoM. It was only a matter of time before Riku finalized his stages of Grief by accepting the Darkness and using it as his Light. Our final take from Dream Drop Distance shouldn't be about the ending alone. We need to understand why Sora acted the way he did and why that caused him to fall at the forces of Darkness. We need to understand why Riku became a Keyblade Master. Overall, I believe DDD gave us a good outlook on the development of Sora and Riku as characters.
Character development is probably the most important structure when it comes to any narrative. You can't tell a story with unlikable characters. You have to leave room for each character to develop. Over the course of the 10 years that lead up to the original release of Dream Drop Distance, many of us may have thought we had a generally well developed cast of characters. Upon the release of DDD, we thought we took a step back with at least Sora. His gameplay was a lot worse than ever before. He became way too childish and naive instead of having that perfect balance from KH2. Riku was still brooding and constantly talked about the Darkness, but his gameplay was fantastic and everything we wanted out of Sora's. Some argue that the only big take from DDD was it's ending for the story. However that was never true. In fact, we have 0.2 to back this up now, as Sora is now back to the way he was in KH2. The idea portrayed to us in DDD, the reason Sora ended up where he was by the end of its narrative, was that the chosen one got a bit too cocky. He saved the worlds on a grand scale multiple times, why did he have to take any of it seriously? He let his ego get the best of him and that's what lead to the situation that provided us with Riku coming out of it as the only Keyblade Master. Riku has been on the same road since CoM. It was only a matter of time before Riku finalized his stages of Grief by accepting the Darkness and using it as his Light. Our final take from Dream Drop Distance shouldn't be about the ending alone. We need to understand why Sora acted the way he did and why that caused him to fall at the forces of Darkness. We need to understand why Riku became a Keyblade Master. Overall, I believe DDD gave us a good outlook on the development of Sora and Riku as characters.