At the Kingdom Hearts Fan Event at the D23 Expo Japan 2018, series director Tetsuya Nomura and series executive producer Shinji Hashimoto came on stage - along with a very eager King Mickey - to present exclusive Kingdom Hearts III content to the attendees. During their presentation, they disclosed some interesting information regarding the development of Kingdom Hearts III.

• Everyone in the Osaka studio is working on Kingdom Hearts III, with 100 additional employees from Tokyo.
• Kingdom Hearts III has a dedicated Lighting Team and Facial Animation Team
• The Background (BG) team alone has 80 members and even outsources to a foreign studio, making it the biggest BG team in Square Enix.
• Nomura explained the development process of Kingdom Hearts III by categorizing it into three parts: early, middle, and late development.
• There are around 3 worlds per section - but this does not mean there will be nine worlds in Kingdom Hearts III in total.
• The early stage worlds are 90% complete, and the middle stage worlds are 60-70% complete. The audience was not given a percentage completion for the last stage, but he said it was something incredible, "something he's always wanted to do and put into Kingdom Hearts, ever since the days of working on Final Fantasy. It is bound to surprise everyone." While he didn't disclose the contents of this last stage of development, he appeared to be very satisfied with it via using phrases such as "everything can be done" or "culmination of the past".
• According to the developers, "It seems like this Kingdom Hearts is in a whole new league."
• Great effort was put into each world and they incorporate their own mechanics and gameplay elements to the point that
• A wide variety of gameplay is to be expected.
• Minigames were showing during the "Making of Kingdom Hearts III" video inspired by Giantland, a Mickey Mouse short from 1933 inspired by "Jack and the Beanstalk". They showed Rumplewatt the Giant at the table trying to catch a little 2D Sora, who is then seen hiding from him behind a fruit bow. A little 2D Mickey can be seen as well, jumping from the lamps. Hollie Bennett from PlayStation commented that this minigame looked like the Game & Watch games from the 1980's.

[unfortunately, due to copyright concerns we had to remove the photos. We apologize for the inconvenience.]

• When developing the game, the team write the story board, then develop the script and finally do the animation, unlike most game developers.
• There will be a special capture method for subduing rare Heartless. (For the regular Heartless, defeating them will be distinguished by striking them depending on what's on their head.) It was said that exclusive missions are being prepared.
• The "Making of Kingdom Hearts III" video also included a behind-the-scenes on how the Keyblade for the Monsters Inc. world was developed. The developers discussed the difficulty in designing a Keyblade that was true to the world, and showed a storyboard of images that helped influence it. They said they made several designs, shortlisted one or two, and selected the final design based on Nomura's preference.

*In the

, Hollie Bennett reports that Kingdom Hearts III has the biggest Background Music Team in Square Enix; IGN Japan reports that it is the biggest Background Team (in charge of city and field design). It is unclear which statement is true, or if both are true.

 

Translations are courtesy of KH13 News Team Member @n_scribe13.

 

Watch the new Kingdom Hearts III trailers from D23 Expo Japan 2018 here, and don't forget to catch up with our coverage of the event here!

 

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Wait, what? Am I understanding this correctly? One world will be the size of a whole game? o.O Because a world being the size of one of the worlds in the previous games wouldn't make sense, considering they decided to include fewer Disney worlds than in KH2 because they are massive now.

 

That would mean that KH3 could easily breach the 100 hour mark. Well, if that's the case, my friends and family can bid me farewell at least for a month.

Wait, what? Am I understanding this correctly? One world will be the size of a whole game? o.O Because a world being the size of one of the worlds in the previous games wouldn't make sense, considering they decided to include fewer Disney worlds than in KH2 because they are massive now.

 

That would mean that KH3 could easily breach the 100 hour mark. Well, if that's the case, my friends and family can bid me farewell at least for a month.

Yep! They actually say in the Playstation Access video "one whole new world is like one of the old games, that's how big these new worlds are going to be". Quite mindblowing

Yep! They actually say in the Playstation Access video "one whole new world is like one of the old games, that's how big these new worlds are going to be". Quite mindblowing

 

Yeah, and not to mention, KH3 is coming out at some point this year, this is going to be fun.

The size of one of the previous games huh? In that case, it must be one of the relatively "smaller" titles, like Days, Re:coded, or even Re:CoM to some extent. My first guess would have been Castle Oblivion, since technically speaking you spend a whole game exploring that place, but they described it as a "new world" so that might not be the case then. But the idea that it might actually breach the 100 hour barrier, as well as all of these other things being jam packed into it? Oh man, this is going to be heaven.

That's not Willie that's the Giant from the Brave Little Tailor.

really curious about what this "incredible" something is. I wonder if, by him saying it's a "culmination of the past" that it actually has to do with Final Fantasy - maybe a Final Fantasy-esque world? I don't think we've actually gotten a world that is from any of the Final Fantasy games yet. But I feel like it's probably something "more incredible" than a world - or maybe I'm just overhyping it for myself lol

 

And random tangent, I was just thinking of secret bosses and was the link on Julius ever revealed? The image of the Giant reminded me of him lol

Edited February 11, 20187 yr by blue490246

I am ready and not ready for this game at the same time.

well we'll find out eventually, the wait is killing me though

The completions of the worlds has me puzzled 90% early worlds are done 60% to 70% middle are done but they wouldn't give us the last World percentages.... hmmmm DLC? Idk lol.

 

I think it's safe to say we won't see this game till September or more if anything's holding this game from a early 2018 release it's definitely the worlds. It all comes down too how fast the developers can get it done but again masterpieces can't be rushed but I guess very talented developers can still move fast.