One thing that bothered me in Kingdom Hearts II was how Mulan and The Lion King were handled. You have two well written, well thought out movies with solid stories and characters, which had to be chopped to pieces in terms of character and plot development in order to force it into the level constrictions for space and time reasons, and ultimately, both plots felt rushed and without the same kind of poignancy as their movie counterparts. It just felt like a great disservice for two good stories. On the flip side of this, Beast's Castle, Olympus Coliseum, and Halloween/Christmas Town took certain elements from their movies, but made a more or less original story out of them, and it turned out very well. Without relying too much on the original plot, these levels were able to seamlessly tie in interaction with the Organization and Malificient without it seeming awkward, managed to display the character development in a plot that didn't require the player to have necessarily seen the movie in order to understand, and used the two act structure of the game to present a more interesting and fleshed out story as a result. They didn't have to try and smush a one and a half hour movie into about half an hour of gameplay, and the end product feels better and more natural as a result.
So, should the worlds in Kingdom Hearts emulate the plots of the movies, or should they just go the route of being more or less original short stories?
One thing that bothered me in Kingdom Hearts II was how Mulan and The Lion King were handled. You have two well written, well thought out movies with solid stories and characters, which had to be chopped to pieces in terms of character and plot development in order to force it into the level constrictions for space and time reasons, and ultimately, both plots felt rushed and without the same kind of poignancy as their movie counterparts. It just felt like a great disservice for two good stories. On the flip side of this, Beast's Castle, Olympus Coliseum, and Halloween/Christmas Town took certain elements from their movies, but made a more or less original story out of them, and it turned out very well. Without relying too much on the original plot, these levels were able to seamlessly tie in interaction with the Organization and Malificient without it seeming awkward, managed to display the character development in a plot that didn't require the player to have necessarily seen the movie in order to understand, and used the two act structure of the game to present a more interesting and fleshed out story as a result. They didn't have to try and smush a one and a half hour movie into about half an hour of gameplay, and the end product feels better and more natural as a result.
So, should the worlds in Kingdom Hearts emulate the plots of the movies, or should they just go the route of being more or less original short stories?