xVentus and Roxanne from kingdomhearts3.net had a quick interview with DChiuch
Just before the interview in their post they also said "In the future we may very well be tossing info/media back in forth between them so without further ado here are some of his thoughts and feelings on the upcoming KH Titles!"
Roxanne: Daniel thanks for agreeing to meet with us, why don’t you tell us first and foremost what sort of media is available on your site?
Daniel: That’s okay Roxy, I’m glad to be a part of it. (: Well, basically with KH13.com I aim to provide *all* of the Kingdom Hearts media, anything you can think of. However, of course this is a long-term plan, as the amount of media connected with the series is unimaginable. So, only some parts have been completed yet. Our main media that we offer is the video archive, which is split into cutscenes, boss battles and trailers for each version of each game. This is a big task, recording all the past games, so at the moment we’ve only really covered everything since Re:CoM in 2008. Then, the other main type of media is images, in our gallery. Here we have some 8000 or so images related to Kingdom Hearts, including articles, manga, screenshots etc. We also have a news section, which isn’t really “media” per se, but yeah, that’s another main section I guess. So those are the 3 main things. In the future we hope to add more to our “informational” pages, which exist at the moment but aren’t as in depth as our other sections.
Tev: Tt sounds like you have a lot to include on your site in terms of media. Do you plan on including the compilation soundtrack for the Kingdom Hearts series too? I think it releases sometime next month or later.
Daniel: Having a “music” section is something we planned for the future, also. At the moment we have one, but basically it’s just a track listing for each soundtrack and a short paragraph about each. But eventually I’d like to have a page for each song, with maybe an embdeddable version to listen to, and information about the variations of it. So, the “Dearly Beloved” page might describe the song’s significance and include all of the different versions. By the time the compilation soundtrack releases at the start of February, we won’t have done this yet, though. So at that stage we’ll probably just upload it to YouTube and have it
featured in the site.
Roxanne: Remarkable, that’ll definitely be something to look forward to in the future as it’s something that we’ve also considered for KH3.net, the potential is definitely there and it’s always good to have as many forms of media available as possible. Going on, what would you say is the most difficult thing about securing news and info for the site? Besides the most obvious difficulties of course.
Daniel: Umm, well I guess the most difficult thing is being timely. You know, news surfaces at all hours of the day, and the community is quite attentive– they want news straight away, not 12 hours later. So yeah, that would be it, hearing about the news asap and actually being awake and able to get on a computer and post it, especially when it’s around other commitments. That would be the most difficultthing, I think.
Tev: I can understand the timely manner as well. Sometimes it’s a challange to be sure you have the news updated as soon as you see it, while also wondering if it’s posted already somewhere else. Speaking of news, I’m sure you’ve seen the trailer that was leaked for Kingdom Hearts 3D? If so, would you care to share your thoughts and expectations about the game?
Daniel: Yeah, that was actually something that worked well. My friend Aaron, who co-owns KH13 with me, happened to be over at my house when the trailer first surfaced, so we were able to cover that quite effectively. Anyway, my first impression of the game is quite good. I’m glad that this is a “major” game like Birth by Sleep, rather than a “minor” one like Days and Re:coded. It’s exciting that the game will include all new Disney worlds, and the Nintendo 3DS seems to be a very interesting console and I’m looking
forward to see what Nomura can do with it. Hopefully the game is as good as Birth by Sleep, which, due
to it being developed by the same team, I think it will be. So yeah, I expect it to be quite interesting.
Roxanne: I completely agree, all over i’ve read many times how fans are tired of the appetizers and are more than ready for the main course already. Hopefully Square is getting wise to this and will give us loyal fans what we deserve after a seven year saga in the making. I’m also hoping it will be by the same team, the dream team if you will. What are you expecting in terms of battle systems? Something more like BBS?
Daniel: Yeah, it’s a bit disappointing that Square are coming out with so many minor games in the series. I mean, they’re good and all, but the majority of people won’t see it that way. Dedicated KH fans will have it hard trying to find the time and energy to keep up, buying so many consoles; and casual players will find it difficult as they have no idea what is going on. Also, Birth by Sleep which is on the same degree as a main game like KH1 or KH2 wasn’t marketed as so, instead most people believe it to be insignifigant in the
scheme of things. I really think they should have called it KH3 or KH0, to convince people that it’s important. As for the battle system, I’m not really sure… it seems like each game “builds on” the previous game’s battle system, so I guess we’ll continue in this manor Re:coded was based on the battle system of both Birth by Sleep and Days, so 3D will probably improve on this again, taking the basics like deck commands and adding more depth like this “drop” bar I think I saw in the
Tev: I’ve also noticed people mentioning this “drop” bar, although I didn’t notice it myself until watching it a few times after hearing about it. I’ve also heard that this game is supposed to be about the Mark of Mastery exam Yen Sid wants to have to Sora and Riku (as seen in the Re:Coded secret ending). But I’ve also seen fans confused so to why Sora and Riku appear in their KH1 clothes. What do you think could be a possible cause for this?
Daniel: One theory I’ve read that I like is that this game will sort’ve be a “what if” scenario of “what if Sora and Riku got on the raft”. In the trailer, when Sora and Riku are standing on the beach, they repeat one of the lines from the original KH, “how far could a raft take us?”. To me, this sort’ve hints that the game will be about them taking the raft, and as a result, ending up in new worlds that haven’t yet been visited. This would explain why all Disney worlds are new. But yeah, I guess how this “what if” scenario occurs is just some magic trickery by Yen Sid, in order to test both of them for mastery.
Roxanne: That’s a really interesting theory and I had similar thought when I was looking at the trailer today, this is the sort of storyline that I would personally find a bit interesting because it takes me back to the times when many fansites would discuss such possibilities as well as their inevitable repercussions. This could easily breed a far more fascinating story arc in the same vein as BBS. Going on for a bit, which of the two games grabs your interest more, KH:ReCoded or 3D?
Daniel: Definitely 3D, no contest. Re:coded was probably the most disappointing game to me, honestly. First of all, we already had coded, so the only new content we received was a secret ending. But then, even if we count Re:coded as a completely new game, and disregard coded, there’s still not much new content. If you talk about it in episodes, only the last episode, Episode 8 of coded revealed anything, that people need to be saved. So we got basically a couple of pieces of new content from the whole of coded, which wasn’t enough for me, really… 3D looks to be much more interesting, with the majority of the game being new content, and a whole new game engine.
Tev: I completely agree, although I do like that Re:Coded was more accessible to those of us that don’t have that Dokomo Prime model phone that the original Coded was released on. I for one am looking forward to exploring the world of the Hunchback of Notre Dame as well when 3D finally is released. So, if I may ask, this will be the third time we’ll be able to play as Riku, I believe. How are you expecting his gameplay to be in this installment?
Daniel: Hmm, I haven’t really paid that much attention to the gameplay, but from what I know… Riku is shown jumping from building to building, right? In Traverse Town… based on this I’d say his gameplay seems to be a bit faster, and more exciting. Riku’s ability to use darkness gives Nomura a lot more freedom when designing his gameplay style, as there’s many different things to be done with it.
Roxanne: Yeah I was definitely loving how the gameplay looked, it seemed like it would be twice as fun this time to maneuver through and utterly destroy your enemies. I can really only imagine at this point what sort of abilities and moves would be made availability, though it certainly looks like Nomura is ready to deliver this time around. As a final question from me, what do you think fans should look forward to the most with these upcoming games and storylines?
Daniel: *Definitely, for the moment, I think fans should focus themselves on the recently announced Birth by Sleep -Volume Two-.
Although nothing has been officially announced yet, in my opinion this game is probably going to be released *before* KH3D. The reason for this is that the “mystery game” has been in the works since the release of BBS, and now that we know it’s BBS2, it’s pretty obvious that it will use the same game engine, same character models, and a lot of the same maps, etc. For this reason, I dont think it will take them long to develop it, and I expect a very late 2011 release for the game. It looks to be very interesting, as Birth by Sleep was my favourite game of the series, I’m expecting BBS 2 to be just as good.
Tev: One last question for me as well. The focus should definitely shift over to BBS2, and I’m hoping your estimate on its release will manage to come true too. Now, I’ve heard in various places that the team that is supposed to work on KH3 is currently working on Final Fantasy Versus XIII. That and Nomura stating that they won’t begin production on KH3 until after Versus XIII is finished. After a long time waiting, a new trailer for Versus XIII was finally shown just a few days ago. I know you told us yesterday that you don’t cover Final Fantasy, but if you have seen the trailer, are you expecting anything bigger in KH3 (given the same team working on it) than we’ve seen in previous Kingdom Hearts titles? Or even if you haven’t seen the trailer, I’d still like to hear what you’re expecting from the anticipated KH3.
Daniel: I haven’t looked at any Versus XIII content, unfortunately. But based on what I know, yeah, I’d expect really good
things from KH3. You can think of it this way– Versus XIII was the Kingdom Hearts team’s first PS3 game, I think, and because
of this it was like a test for them. The team will now be good at developing for that console, or the current generation of
consoles, and with Versus XIII they would have been able to test many ideas and gameplay mechanics which they could then
implement or even improve on for KH3. So yeah, I’m expecting a lot from that game.
Roxanne: We can only hope that the development team is indeed heading in that direction, it certainly would be a long time coming. Moreover here’s to hoping all that comes next lives up to expectations both story-wise and in terms of gameplay. In Nomura we trust eh? Meanwhile Thank you so much Daniel for taking the time to talk with us and share your thoughts it’s been a really interesting conversation and hopefully we could do something similar in the future as more news becomes readily available. Until then thank you both for being here!
Daniel: Alrighty, thanks for interviewing me, I’m flattered. (: Take care, hope everything goes well with you, and I hope the KH community are enjoying the BBSFM coverage
xVentus and Roxanne from kingdomhearts3.net had a quick interview with DChiuch
Just before the interview in their post they also said "In the future we may very well be tossing info/media back in forth between them so without further ado here are some of his thoughts and feelings on the upcoming KH Titles!"
Roxanne: Daniel thanks for agreeing to meet with us, why don’t you tell us first and foremost what sort of media is available on your site?
Daniel: That’s okay Roxy, I’m glad to be a part of it. (: Well, basically with KH13.com I aim to provide *all* of the Kingdom Hearts media, anything you can think of. However, of course this is a long-term plan, as the amount of media connected with the series is unimaginable. So, only some parts have been completed yet. Our main media that we offer is the video archive, which is split into cutscenes, boss battles and trailers for each version of each game. This is a big task, recording all the past games, so at the moment we’ve only really covered everything since Re:CoM in 2008. Then, the other main type of media is images, in our gallery. Here we have some 8000 or so images related to Kingdom Hearts, including articles, manga, screenshots etc. We also have a news section, which isn’t really “media” per se, but yeah, that’s another main section I guess. So those are the 3 main things. In the future we hope to add more to our “informational” pages, which exist at the moment but aren’t as in depth as our other sections.
Tev: Tt sounds like you have a lot to include on your site in terms of media. Do you plan on including the compilation soundtrack for the Kingdom Hearts series too? I think it releases sometime next month or later.
Daniel: Having a “music” section is something we planned for the future, also. At the moment we have one, but basically it’s just a track listing for each soundtrack and a short paragraph about each. But eventually I’d like to have a page for each song, with maybe an embdeddable version to listen to, and information about the variations of it. So, the “Dearly Beloved” page might describe the song’s significance and include all of the different versions. By the time the compilation soundtrack releases at the start of February, we won’t have done this yet, though. So at that stage we’ll probably just upload it to YouTube and have it
featured in the site.
Roxanne: Remarkable, that’ll definitely be something to look forward to in the future as it’s something that we’ve also considered for KH3.net, the potential is definitely there and it’s always good to have as many forms of media available as possible. Going on, what would you say is the most difficult thing about securing news and info for the site? Besides the most obvious difficulties of course.
Daniel: Umm, well I guess the most difficult thing is being timely. You know, news surfaces at all hours of the day, and the community is quite attentive– they want news straight away, not 12 hours later. So yeah, that would be it, hearing about the news asap and actually being awake and able to get on a computer and post it, especially when it’s around other commitments. That would be the most difficultthing, I think.
Tev: I can understand the timely manner as well. Sometimes it’s a challange to be sure you have the news updated as soon as you see it, while also wondering if it’s posted already somewhere else. Speaking of news, I’m sure you’ve seen the trailer that was leaked for Kingdom Hearts 3D? If so, would you care to share your thoughts and expectations about the game?
Daniel: Yeah, that was actually something that worked well. My friend Aaron, who co-owns KH13 with me, happened to be over at my house when the trailer first surfaced, so we were able to cover that quite effectively. Anyway, my first impression of the game is quite good. I’m glad that this is a “major” game like Birth by Sleep, rather than a “minor” one like Days and Re:coded. It’s exciting that the game will include all new Disney worlds, and the Nintendo 3DS seems to be a very interesting console and I’m looking
forward to see what Nomura can do with it. Hopefully the game is as good as Birth by Sleep, which, due
to it being developed by the same team, I think it will be. So yeah, I expect it to be quite interesting.
Roxanne: I completely agree, all over i’ve read many times how fans are tired of the appetizers and are more than ready for the main course already. Hopefully Square is getting wise to this and will give us loyal fans what we deserve after a seven year saga in the making. I’m also hoping it will be by the same team, the dream team if you will. What are you expecting in terms of battle systems? Something more like BBS?
Daniel: Yeah, it’s a bit disappointing that Square are coming out with so many minor games in the series. I mean, they’re good and all, but the majority of people won’t see it that way. Dedicated KH fans will have it hard trying to find the time and energy to keep up, buying so many consoles; and casual players will find it difficult as they have no idea what is going on. Also, Birth by Sleep which is on the same degree as a main game like KH1 or KH2 wasn’t marketed as so, instead most people believe it to be insignifigant in the
scheme of things. I really think they should have called it KH3 or KH0, to convince people that it’s important. As for the battle system, I’m not really sure… it seems like each game “builds on” the previous game’s battle system, so I guess we’ll continue in this manor Re:coded was based on the battle system of both Birth by Sleep and Days, so 3D will probably improve on this again, taking the basics like deck commands and adding more depth like this “drop” bar I think I saw in the
Tev: I’ve also noticed people mentioning this “drop” bar, although I didn’t notice it myself until watching it a few times after hearing about it. I’ve also heard that this game is supposed to be about the Mark of Mastery exam Yen Sid wants to have to Sora and Riku (as seen in the Re:Coded secret ending). But I’ve also seen fans confused so to why Sora and Riku appear in their KH1 clothes. What do you think could be a possible cause for this?
Daniel: One theory I’ve read that I like is that this game will sort’ve be a “what if” scenario of “what if Sora and Riku got on the raft”. In the trailer, when Sora and Riku are standing on the beach, they repeat one of the lines from the original KH, “how far could a raft take us?”. To me, this sort’ve hints that the game will be about them taking the raft, and as a result, ending up in new worlds that haven’t yet been visited. This would explain why all Disney worlds are new. But yeah, I guess how this “what if” scenario occurs is just some magic trickery by Yen Sid, in order to test both of them for mastery.
Roxanne: That’s a really interesting theory and I had similar thought when I was looking at the trailer today, this is the sort of storyline that I would personally find a bit interesting because it takes me back to the times when many fansites would discuss such possibilities as well as their inevitable repercussions. This could easily breed a far more fascinating story arc in the same vein as BBS. Going on for a bit, which of the two games grabs your interest more, KH:ReCoded or 3D?
Daniel: Definitely 3D, no contest. Re:coded was probably the most disappointing game to me, honestly. First of all, we already had coded, so the only new content we received was a secret ending. But then, even if we count Re:coded as a completely new game, and disregard coded, there’s still not much new content. If you talk about it in episodes, only the last episode, Episode 8 of coded revealed anything, that people need to be saved. So we got basically a couple of pieces of new content from the whole of coded, which wasn’t enough for me, really… 3D looks to be much more interesting, with the majority of the game being new content, and a whole new game engine.
Tev: I completely agree, although I do like that Re:Coded was more accessible to those of us that don’t have that Dokomo Prime model phone that the original Coded was released on. I for one am looking forward to exploring the world of the Hunchback of Notre Dame as well when 3D finally is released. So, if I may ask, this will be the third time we’ll be able to play as Riku, I believe. How are you expecting his gameplay to be in this installment?
Daniel: Hmm, I haven’t really paid that much attention to the gameplay, but from what I know… Riku is shown jumping from building to building, right? In Traverse Town… based on this I’d say his gameplay seems to be a bit faster, and more exciting. Riku’s ability to use darkness gives Nomura a lot more freedom when designing his gameplay style, as there’s many different things to be done with it.
Roxanne: Yeah I was definitely loving how the gameplay looked, it seemed like it would be twice as fun this time to maneuver through and utterly destroy your enemies. I can really only imagine at this point what sort of abilities and moves would be made availability, though it certainly looks like Nomura is ready to deliver this time around. As a final question from me, what do you think fans should look forward to the most with these upcoming games and storylines?
Daniel: *Definitely, for the moment, I think fans should focus themselves on the recently announced Birth by Sleep -Volume Two-.
Although nothing has been officially announced yet, in my opinion this game is probably going to be released *before* KH3D. The reason for this is that the “mystery game” has been in the works since the release of BBS, and now that we know it’s BBS2, it’s pretty obvious that it will use the same game engine, same character models, and a lot of the same maps, etc. For this reason, I dont think it will take them long to develop it, and I expect a very late 2011 release for the game. It looks to be very interesting, as Birth by Sleep was my favourite game of the series, I’m expecting BBS 2 to be just as good.
Tev: One last question for me as well. The focus should definitely shift over to BBS2, and I’m hoping your estimate on its release will manage to come true too. Now, I’ve heard in various places that the team that is supposed to work on KH3 is currently working on Final Fantasy Versus XIII. That and Nomura stating that they won’t begin production on KH3 until after Versus XIII is finished. After a long time waiting, a new trailer for Versus XIII was finally shown just a few days ago. I know you told us yesterday that you don’t cover Final Fantasy, but if you have seen the trailer, are you expecting anything bigger in KH3 (given the same team working on it) than we’ve seen in previous Kingdom Hearts titles? Or even if you haven’t seen the trailer, I’d still like to hear what you’re expecting from the anticipated KH3.
Daniel: I haven’t looked at any Versus XIII content, unfortunately. But based on what I know, yeah, I’d expect really good
things from KH3. You can think of it this way– Versus XIII was the Kingdom Hearts team’s first PS3 game, I think, and because
of this it was like a test for them. The team will now be good at developing for that console, or the current generation of
consoles, and with Versus XIII they would have been able to test many ideas and gameplay mechanics which they could then
implement or even improve on for KH3. So yeah, I’m expecting a lot from that game.
Roxanne: We can only hope that the development team is indeed heading in that direction, it certainly would be a long time coming. Moreover here’s to hoping all that comes next lives up to expectations both story-wise and in terms of gameplay. In Nomura we trust eh? Meanwhile Thank you so much Daniel for taking the time to talk with us and share your thoughts it’s been a really interesting conversation and hopefully we could do something similar in the future as more news becomes readily available. Until then thank you both for being here!
Daniel: Alrighty, thanks for interviewing me, I’m flattered. (: Take care, hope everything goes well with you, and I hope the KH community are enjoying the BBSFM coverage