Nomura talks Kingdom Hearts III & HD 1.5 ReMIX with FFWorld & FFRing

Nomura: It is of course more than ten years since the game came out, but I still do not think it has aged. Instead, it always has a certain freshness. At the time, the game team, including myself, had worked passionately on it, and that's probably why it gives me that impression, even ten years later.

Have you been tempted to add more things to the HD remastering of Kingdom Hearts than just graphics and controls?

Nomura: Everything that was in the original game worked very well for its balance, and for the system we had imagined at the time. Although I designed many other gaming systems in the ten years that followed, I think that this balance would be upset if I was to integrate the first Kingdom Hearts. My only regret is Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, for which we could only release the cinematics in HD. I wished to include this episode as a playable in HD 1.5 ReMIX, but unfortunately we could not do it because we had to prioritize the development of Kingdom Hearts III, which fans have been waiting for. This is why we have not added other things to the HD version.

Will you do other HD remasters in the future?

Nomura: There is of course other episodes of Kingdom Hearts that we have not yet been published in HD, so if we had the chance, we would like to do so in the future.

With the announcement of Kingdom Hearts III, we can say that you have entrusted the future of the series in the Osaka team. Are they up to the challenge?

Nomura: The Osaka studio developed HD 1.5 ReMIX, so we can not say that they have never worked on the current console generation. But you're right, in the case of Kingdom Hearts III, it is actually the first time they have developed a completely new numbered episode, on next generation consoles at that. This is why we have made ​​many preparations and extensive tests to date. As I feel that the preparations are complete, we were able to get in the development phase.

However, as your main team at Square Enix is situated in Tokyo, do you not have difficulty communicating with the Osaka team?

Nomura: In fact, the co-director and producer Tai Yasue and Rie Nishi are there. They are key members of the Kingdom Hearts project, so when they need to discuss a lot of different topics with me, they come to Tokyo. This is our usual method of working. But as technology is ever advancing, our new offices in Shinjuku are now equipped with a video conference system. Now, Yasue and Nishi can send me their materials or proposals in advance, which allows me to add my comments or my drawings and show them on camera in our video conferencing. In addition, there is no time difference, so even if we are far apart, it is easy to work.

So we can say that you supervise the team more than you do the head?

Nomura: Yes, especially this time with Kingdom Hearts III. Yasue and Nishi's teams offer me lots of ideas and we discuss together to know what we will keep or not.

Is it surprising?

Nomura: They offer me many interesting ideas, of course. After all, the more the merrier, the more the merrier. So it is always better to have a whole team to think, rather than myself. This is beneficial. The past ten years of existence, the Kingdom Hearts series has found its own identity even though many were initially surprised by the alliance between Square and Disney.

Do you think it is always helpful to include characters from Final Fantasy in KHIII?

Nomura: It is not because the Kingdom Hearts series is now well established that we do not need to add characters from Final Fantasy, it is actually that we have published a number of derivative episodes on portable consoles in recent years, and because of the technical limitations of these platforms, the volume of the story was rather limited. For KHIII, disk space is much larger, so we can actually deepen the story and are adding more characters. It really depends on the size of the game. It is quite possible that we will integrate many Final Fantasy characters.