USgamer interviews Tetsuya Nomura on Kingdom Hearts III development, Pirates of the Caribbean, Gummi Ship system and much more

[Yoshirai 145]

Tetsuya Nomura, director and creator of the Kingdom Hearts saga, recently got interviewed by USgamer.neton Kingdom Hearts III development, the choosing of Pirates of the Caribbeans as a Kingdom Hearts III world, and the comeback of the Gummi Ship system. Nomura also offered some insights and personal hints on how the relationship between Square Enix and Disney went on in the previous years, just like his recent statements in the last Multiplayer.it interview. The interview is completely available, and you can read it down below:

Kingdom Hearts 3 finally brings the Dark Seeker Saga to a close after more than 15 years. Tell me what it means to you to finally finish this story. Are you happy? Are you a little sad that it's finally coming to an end?

 

 

Nomura: Yes. It does come to an end, but I'm not fully swayed to one emotion. I'm not really happy, I'm not really sad. Although I do feel a little sad when I think some characters will probably never appear ever again. Once I think about that, it makes me a little sad. But other than that I'm just more relieved that I was able to tell the full story.

 

 

Pixar films feature prominently in Kingdom Hearts 3. I'm curious to know why they get more emphasis here, but not as much emphasis in, for example, Kingdom Hearts 2. Was it because the PS2 wasn't powerful enough to give you the results you wanted?

 

 

Nomura: I've always wanted to have a Pixar world within Kingdom Hearts, it's just that Disney has always returned to me and said that it will be difficult to make it happen. I assume that there were some reasons within Disney that did not allow us to do this, but I don't know what they were. But I do think that that situation probably changed this time and that we are allowed to do it. It just so happened that we were able to negotiate with Disney and Pixar to have it in on our title this time.

 

 

Seeing Goofy in the Monsters Inc. world, he has a very interesting design. I'm curious what were your intentions were in that regard? Can you tell me a little about that?

 

 

Nomura: For Pixar world, the desires that [the Monsters Inc. and Toy Story teams] had for their titles were really strong. We had a lot of guidelines to abide by in terms of how they appear. Comparing the two worlds, Monster's Inc. had more guidelines that we had to follow, and were a little more clear cut in the details. The coloration, for example, or whether a character only had one eye. When we took a look at those guidelines and figured out what we had to do, we felt that Donald should look this way and then Goofy should look this way. We also had a lot of input from the Pixar team that worked on Monsters Inc. We did pretty much follow their guidelines as well as their feedback for those characters.

 

 

The Gummi Ship is returning in Kingdom Hearts 3, which I think is interesting. I'm curious why you decided to bring it back? What you think it can add to Kingdom Hearts 3. Is it to tie it more into the previous games?

 

 

Nomura: In Kingdom Hearts numbered titles, the Gummi Ship has always been there to travel between the worlds. Gummi Ships are part of the basics of Kingdom Hearts, and as a numbered title in the series, I thought it was necessary to have it in there to complete the package. This is something that [Hironobu Sakaguchi] told me once, which is that Final Fantasy is a title that just has everything in it.

I wanted to bring that to Kingdom Hearts. In Kingdom Hearts there's the shooting game, there's the RPG, there's the adventure game. It has action, command battles, and everything. There's customization with Gummi Ships, and they bring with them the shooter aspect and the travel aspect. It's just a part of Kingdom Hearts. That's why I thought it was necessary to have it in the title.

 

At the end of one of the Kingdom Hearts trailer, Aqua definitely has Xehanort's eyes. We think that signifies that she was corrupted by the realm of darkness since the events of Birth by Sleep. Could you elaborate on that and can you speak a little bit on what we can expect from Aqua in Kingdom Hearts 3.

 

 

Nomura: I do know that she is a popular character among her fans. I'm sure many are shocked to see [her eyes]. People were more shocked than I expected that they would be. I can't really go into much detail about her because I will just spoil everything, but something does happen in Kingdom Hearts 3 that make her seem like how she is right now in the trailer. I think all I can say is that the player is the only one that can save her from him.

 

 

I think it's interesting that you brought back Pirates of the Caribbean, especially since it contrasts sharply with the animated characters. Like, you have Johnny Depp, then you have all the other characters. Why did you bring back Pirates, and why did you choose Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 in particular? Is it because that game is end of the trilogy much like this one?

 

 

Nomura: For Kingdom Hearts, it's been a while since we released on a console. Now a lot of developers are creating photorealistic games, and I think that's more mainstream nowadays. I wanted to prove Kingdom Hearts is able to do a more realistic game as well. I also was very interested to see how realistic we could get it. That's why I wanted to have some live action film-based world.

I also thought that the matchup between a very photorealistic character and Sora, Donald, and Goofy would be very interesting to see, which is why we decided to have that world. As for why we selected The World's End, it was because of its story line.

 

 

The second and the third movie are connected and the second movie doesn't really have an ending because it takes you to the third movie. It didn't really make sense to go with that one because it doesn't really have a clear ending with that film. We decided to go with the third film which had a clear ending. You mentioned skipping the previous generation of consoles. Was it always your intention to finish Kingdom Hearts 2, explore some side stories, look at different things, and then finally return to the final story much further down the line?

 

 

Nomura: It's not like I had a specific order in mind. It was more like we released it in order of conception or idea. Also because it took us a long time to prepare for Kingdom Hearts 3. If you can take a look at what we have already revealed, you can tell that it is a pretty crazy title that we have created. We did have to have a lot of prep time for it. That just a bit longer than our other spin-off titles.

Disney has changed tremendously since 2006. Obviously Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, totally different style of animation. How your relationship with Disney and its properties evolved over the past 10 years or so in the context of Kingdom Hearts?

 

 

Nomura: I can say that it has actually been increasingly difficult to get approvals from Disney. That's mainly because in the past Kingdom Hearts titles, the creator wasn't around anymore or the team that used to create those titles wasn't there anymore. There was just this one person that we would just have to go to and they would approve it and we'd be fine and good to go. But because we've been featuring recent titles, they still have existing teams for existing creators that are still working in Disney and still working on a certain title.

That feedback process just has been a little bit more difficult than before. And each team would have a different set of rules and guidelines and they would say different things, or they would look at different things. It's just been a little different that how it used to be because Kingdom Hearts is a bigger title than it was before. I think that whenever we would bring our previous titles, a lot of people at Disney, and this is my assumption, but I do assume that they probably didn't know what Kingdom Hearts was. They'd go, "What's Kingdom Hearts? I have no idea." But now that it's become a bigger title, a lot more people have been involved in than before. In that sense the relationship with Disney has changed quite a bit. Emotional changes I don't really know if there has been any changes emotionally for me. But at least physically I can say those were the changes that we had with Disney.

 

 

You mentioned that Monsters Inc. had many more guidelines than Toy Story. Was that the one that had perhaps the most guidelines or was there one that had even more?

 

 

Nomura: Frozen had the most.

 

 

I imagine if you want part of a level to be behind the Monsters Inc. factory, you could ask them what they think that would look like. You could ask them to try and provide some suggestions or fill in some of their vision. Whereas for Aladdin, for instance, that's not possible anymore. Being able to quiz those people. So is that also helpful in some respects?

 

 

Nomura: Since you mention Aladdin, I'll just use Aladdin as an example. Since there isn't anyone that we could ask about adding more areas to Aladdin, it was actually easier because we could just create them on our own. But speaking of advantages, because all these films were made in CG, we weren't able to use the character models as is. But we were able to receive a lot of different assets that we could actually base references on them to create, and I think we were able do it a bit easier than we were able to do with our past titles, as well as create something with higher quality because the original title was in CG.

 

 

Final Fantasy characters have always been a big part of Kingdom Hearts, but it was always fun to watch them interact with Disney characters in interesting ways and of course it brought together Disney fans and Square fans. But it appears Kingdom Hearts 3 won't be using Final Fantasy. I'm curious to know why you went in that direction? Is it because you wanted to focus on the core cast, because it's their final game?

Nomura: I can't disclose too much about the Final Fantasy characters or whether or not they'll be in Kingdom Hearts 3, because I can only speak to what's been shown. But the reason you haven't been shown any Final Fantasy characters is that there are so many original characters that need to resolve their own problems and issues. And because their issues and problems are very difficult, there just hasn't been that much space to fit Final Fantasy characters so far." When you look back on the first Kingdom Hearts, Sora was still a new character, so we kind of had the Final Fantasy characters as supporting characters. But now that it's been 15 years, the original characters are more polished than they were before, so I don't think think they need the Final Fantasy characters help as much as they did before. [...] Also, when we first released Kingdom Hearts, there weren't that many other titles that brought together the Final Fantasy characters. I actually think that Kingdom Hearts may have been the first to do that. But nowadays, there are an abundance of titles that do that, so I don't see the value of having that kind of feature in the game anymore. But that doesn't mean that I'm saying that there won't be any Final Fantasy characters. Please look forward to future information.

Kingdom Hearts III releases on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 25, 2019 in Japan, and January 29, 2019 to the rest of the world. You can now watch the latest Frozen trailer, Square Enix E3 Showcase trailer, and Pirates of the Caribbean trailer!

 

What do you think about Nomura's statements on Final Fantasy characters into Kingdom Hearts III? Do you think they will be likely to appear or not? Let us know in the comments!

 

Click here to view the article

[Fullmetal Keyblade 88]

At the end of one of the Kingdom Hearts trailer, Aqua definitely has Xehanort's eyes. We think that signifies that she was corrupted by the realm of darkness since the events of Birth by Sleep. Could you elaborate on that and can you speak a little bit on what we can expect from Aqua in Kingdom Hearts 3.

 

 

Nomura: I do know that she is a popular character among her fans. I'm sure many are shocked to see [her eyes]. People were more shocked than I expected that they would be. I can't really go into much detail about her because I will just spoil everything, but something does happen in Kingdom Hearts 3 that make her seem like how she is right now in the trailer. I think all I can say is that the player is the only one that can save her from him.

 

 

This ties in pretty neatly to the Opening movie in 0.2 where in the end we see Aqua reaching up to Sora out of the water(darkness).However, I wonder if Nourma's implying that there's some aspect of player choice involved in saving her?

[Crossχ 32]

At the end of one of the Kingdom Hearts trailer, Aqua definitely has Xehanort's eyes. We think that signifies that she was corrupted by the realm of darkness since the events of Birth by Sleep. Could you elaborate on that and can you speak a little bit on what we can expect from Aqua in Kingdom Hearts 3.

 

 

Nomura: I do know that she is a popular character among her fans. I'm sure many are shocked to see [her eyes]. People were more shocked than I expected that they would be. I can't really go into much detail about her because I will just spoil everything, but something does happen in Kingdom Hearts 3 that make her seem like how she is right now in the trailer. I think all I can say is that the player is the only one that can save her from him.

an interview quote has never confused me so much.

• "...something does happen in Kingdom Hearts 3 that make her seem like..."
• seem like? aqua was never norted in the first place?
• "...how she is right now in the trailer."
• right now? oh so this is temporary and she'll be saved
• "...the player is the only one that can save her from him"
• he doesn't mention sora, riku, or mickey here, he explicity says "the player can save her." now the player simply has the potential to save aqua. does this mean that he's just keeping it ambiguous who saves her? is it multiple people that you play as to do it? are there multiple points where you can save aqua?
• so nomura went from "oh shit dude aqua was never norted lol," to "oh shit dude aqua's getting saved lol," to "oh shit dude maybe she'll get saved lol???"

i'm probably reading too deep into this, but this man is trying to avoid spoiling anything as best he can. thus, he's probably really paying attention to how he words things to prevent info from getting leaked, especially anything concerning story spoilers like this.

[Tyranto Rex 277]

an interview quote has never confused me so much.

• "...something does happen in Kingdom Hearts 3 that make her seem like..."
• seem like? aqua was never norted in the first place?
• "...how she is right now in the trailer."
• right now? oh so this is temporary and she'll be saved
• "...the player is the only one that can save her from him"
• he doesn't mention sora, riku, or mickey here, he explicity says "the player can save her." now the player simply has the potential to save aqua. does this mean that he's just keeping it ambiguous who saves her? is it multiple people that you play as to do it? are there multiple points where you can save aqua?
• so nomura went from "oh shit dude aqua was never norted lol," to "oh shit dude aqua's getting saved lol," to "oh shit dude maybe she'll get saved lol???"

i'm probably reading too deep into this, but this man is trying to avoid spoiling anything as best he can. thus, he's probably really paying attention to how he words things to prevent info from getting leaked, especially anything concerning story spoilers like this.

 

So it looks like the cycle of "is Aqua norted or not" continues. And people will argue about it for 7 months.

[Merilly 438]

I'm not too sire what to think about Disney's increased involvement in the series now that they seem to have recognized that is a fairly big franchise...

Saying that it has become increasingly difficult to get Disney's approval due to many of the creators being alive makes it sound like they had to work arond a lot of rules and regulations and couldn't move nearly as freely as before.

Whether it's a good or bad thing is hard to know but restricting certain things might make the plot shift and lose focus of the original characters because developers want to push their own works and ideas and keep them ideal.

 

I'm not accusing anyone of using KH for marketing or being overprotective of their creations, but it just sounds a lot more taxing to implement ideas. Like how Alex Hirsch once did not speak too fondly of KH and later claims he wouldn't mind Gavity Falls being used.

 

On a positive note, it may make the characters and worlds as a whole closer to the source and not get disconnected too much from the original plot. Neither extreme would be good.

 

But the more people push theirnown views and inputs, the harder it could become, just like leaving one person to do everything on their own without reviewing or critcism may cause something to be confusing and incoherent.

[Tyranto Rex 277]

I'm not too sire what to think about Disney's increased involvement in the series now that they seem to have recognized that is a fairly big franchise...

Saying that it has become increasingly difficult to get Disney's approval due to many of the creators being alive makes it sound like they had to work arond a lot of rules and regulations and couldn't move nearly as freely as before.

Whether it's a good or bad thing is hard to know but restricting certain things might make the plot shift and lose focus of the original characters because developers want to push their own works and ideas and keep them ideal.

 

I'm not accusing anyone of using KH for marketing or being overprotective of their creations, but it just sounds a lot more taxing to implement ideas. Like how Alex Hirsch once did not speak too fondly of KH and later claims he wouldn't mind Gavity Falls being used.

 

On a positive note, it may make the characters and worlds as a whole closer to the source and not get disconnected too much from the original plot. Neither extreme would be good.

 

But the more people push theirnown views and inputs, the harder it could become, just like leaving one person to do everything on their own without reviewing or critcism may cause something to be confusing and incoherent.

 

I get what you mean. I do like that the Disney stuff seems much more connected to the main plot then they have in the past few games. But kinda afraid Disney might try to gain too much control over the franchise. Probably one of the main reasons the cg movies seem to be the main focus.

 

I'm curious what Frozen's guidelines were since it apparently had the most.

[The Transcendent Key 12,109]

Thanks for sharing this with us, Yoshirai!

 

Omg, the whole thing about the interview that got me the most was...

 

" Although I do feel a little sad when I think some characters will probably never appear ever again. Once I think about that, it makes me a little sad."

 

Dang, that is some serious character death foreshadowing right there! Gahhh, just near six more months of waiting to see what happens! X_X

 

Also, I find that it sucks how Disney is making it harder for Nomura and his team to get stuff approved for the KH games! There really shouldn't have to be so many problems considering that the game is also a Disney game and not just from Square Enix! It's not like Nomura is stealing the property rights to the licenses of the films he uses in the games, ya know?

Edited June 29, 2018 by The Transcendent Key

[King_Graham 135]

I'm not too sire what to think about Disney's increased involvement in the series now that they seem to have recognized that is a fairly big franchise...

Saying that it has become increasingly difficult to get Disney's approval due to many of the creators being alive makes it sound like they had to work arond a lot of rules and regulations and couldn't move nearly as freely as before.

Whether it's a good or bad thing is hard to know but restricting certain things might make the plot shift and lose focus of the original characters because developers want to push their own works and ideas and keep them ideal.

 

I'm not accusing anyone of using KH for marketing or being overprotective of their creations, but it just sounds a lot more taxing to implement ideas. Like how Alex Hirsch once did not speak too fondly of KH and later claims he wouldn't mind Gavity Falls being used.

 

On a positive note, it may make the characters and worlds as a whole closer to the source and not get disconnected too much from the original plot. Neither extreme would be good.

 

But the more people push theirnown views and inputs, the harder it could become, just like leaving one person to do everything on their own without reviewing or critcism may cause something to be confusing and incoherent.

The creators aren't just alive. They are still with the company...which actually confuses me a little, because the directors of Disney's versions of Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and Hercules were with the company until this year when one of them left and, from the sound of it, they've had no input in how those properties were implemented in Kingdom Hearts. I guess he means visual design artists, or something. I don't know.