Hero of Light XIV

I'd seriously love that to happen, Sonic Boom's humor is on point and everything, but it'd be really refreshing to have something not just decently animated again, but SPECTACULARLY animated as a regular series, for Classic Sonic no less. I mean, understandably it would have to be a bit toned down compared to this, because budget and timing and all that, but it would still be pretty cool to see Classic Sonic have a series again...only this time as the "Classic Sonic" we know of today, rather than a sassy Jaleel White portraying an interpretation of what Sonic might be before a centralized mold was ever figured out. Don't get me wrong, I love White's Sonic as much as the next fan, it practically led to how we identify Sonic's personality today, but the way it was executed at the time was still kind of odd in a few spaces, again mostly due to the fact that the show's writers were working with a mostly clean sleight back then. But now that Classic has an already established identity, it'd be really nice to see something akin to the spirit of Mania, Megadrive, or even Genesis being applied to a new traditionally/digitally animated 2D Classic Sonic series. And while Boom's relevance may have died down by now (due to the failure of Rise of Lyric and the fading attention to Shattered Crystal and Fire & Ice), a series based off Classic would still have relevance even after Mania's hype has died down, since the Classic series still holds a strong place in many fans' hearts already. Though maybe I'm just speaking from hype fumes right now, but I'd still love to see something like this someday, be it for Classic or Modern Sonic (I still want a second attempt at a better Sonic anime series as well).

Welp, I'm officially shipping her with my character now. It's not technically self-insert so it's completely fine! >3<"

Roxas because of how blatant the whole "Light and Darkness" theme is with Oathkeeper and Oblivion. But I still gotta give props to Sora, the Kingdom Key is THE Keyblade of all Keyblades. Like if you ever wanted to show somebody an example of what a Keyblade looks like, this is the one you show them. You just can't beat the classics.

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!!! SpacespacespacespaceGottaGoToSpace, SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCE!!!!!!! Ahem, I mean, whether it's Treasure Planet or some Star Wars themed world, either way I just want to get my daily dosage of space wonder in KH. I think everybody is thinking of the same thing when they select Wintry, lol. I don't blame them. X)" But you're missing another favorite on here, DIGITAL. I mean, I know that can only apply to one thing at this point, TRON, and with the rebooting of the series it seems unlikely that they will feature anything of that sort in there (what with both TRON and Legacy having already been represented and featuring a reboot would be kind of a mess for the KH universe, especially if the original material already exists within it). But then again, Wreck-It-Ralph could actually fit the Digital bill just as effectively (lol, you could even put in a Tron video game cabinet), and it's just as relevant now since it has a sequel coming out in another year or so. You could even just make an original in-between story like they're doing with Toy Story and it'd work just as fine, if not better than recreating the original story. Of course I'd be up for seeing something from any of the other themes. I'd still like to see a tropical world like Jungle Book or Lilo and Stitch, an Aquatic world like Atlantis would be AWESOME to play around in with the new engine, a Zootopia world would be a good use of both a city and jungle theme (and uh, desert theme, and wintry theme, and aquatic theme...you know what, it'd just be fun to have it altogether). I feel like San Fransokyo already fills a futuristic/modern city/Marvel niche on it's own, so there's little need to further those (Nomura did say they tend to look to diversify their themes for each featured world). Anything else would be interesting to see, but we should keep in mind that there's only a finite amount of Disney worlds to work with this time around. Not as little as Dream Drop Distance, but not as much as KH2 either. Probably more along the lines of BBS or KH1, give or take one or two Disney worlds. They're going to be fairly selective, so we won't get as wide of a variety as we got in KH2, but hopefully enough of one that we don't mind the difference in number.

Lol, thanx. Been watching a lot of MasakoX vids, it must be getting me in the theorizing mood or something, lol. X)""

Yeah, sure, the "Plan B" thing was dropped right at the get-go before they fought again, but don't forget, Aqua still factored into Xehanort's plan of pushing Terra closer to Darkness and Ven into fighting Vanitas with his Light. If Aqua was ended right then and there, it would have complicated Xehanort's plan. I mean, he'd probably still have some backups in order to fudge the desired results, but there's no denying that things went much more favorably for him when Aqua was also present with Terra and Ven at the Keyblade Graveyard. Vanitas does have a tendency to break rank when the Master isn't looking, but in the end he still knows it's better to stick to the plan, especially for his own sake and agendas. Still, for the sake of humoring curiosities, let's just assume that at some point after the fight, Vanitas did wake up before Aqua. Either one of two different scenarios could have happened, at least as far as my headcanon goes. Either he would have decided it would be wise to just split for now, understanding that the time for things to finally be put in motion for the final battle was close at hand, and retreated through a Corridor of Darkness; OR, he would have considered or was straight up about to finish off Aqua while she was vulnerable, but Xehanort could have contacted him through his mind (he did the same thing to Terra twice in the game) to command him to stop and follow the plan. Vanitas would reluctantly oblige since he knows that defying Xehanort would be a very unwise idea given how skilled he is (even at his old age) and following his plan would still give Vanitas the completion he so long desired (as detailed further in the BBS novel). And even if he wasn't paying Xehanort's warning much mind, Peter could have been arriving on the scene, and Vanitas would still probably be pretty winded anyway, so he'd be in no condition or mood to deal with Aqua AND Peter Pan at the same time. So with really no other options on the table, Vanitas would retreat of his own volition, just having to wait patiently just a little bit longer for the real action to finally begin. Keep in mind, this is all conjecture/fan-theory/headcanon, whatever you want to call it, but it's still a sound idea of what may have happened. In the grand scheme of the plot, it doesn't make much difference whether we know if Vanitas left on his own or not, it's just a small detail, which would only have potential in furthering the viewer's understanding of Vanitas's relationship with his Master, depending on how the hypothetical scene would play out. That said, more exploration of Vanitas's character would have been welcomed seeing as we don't get a lot of insight into his character in the story as it is now, so it certainly wouldn't have hurt to have thrown that in there. The only thing it would have done would have been to take away from the player's experience of seeing things through Aqua's perspective. But then again, there already was those two scenes of Xehanort conspiring with Braig in Terra's scenario, so that argument is pretty much broken. Since Aqua's struggle doesn't consist of much more than hopelessly chasing after her two friends, there certainly would have been enough room to have allowed some more character building of Vanitas, since she's the only other character he directly interacts with apart from Ventus. In any case, the series and the way it carries out it's plot isn't perfect, but it's manageable enough for the experience you get. It would have been nice if for the Final Mix/Remix versions they added more scenes that explored Vanitas's character a bit better, because if the novel shows anything, it's that there is plenty of material to work with there.

Why not? BATMAN. Just BATMAN. Let's just confuse all the copyright holders and have Marvel, Star Wars, AND DC all in the same property. It'd all be worth it just to see Sora reacting to "I'M BATMAN". X'D

Maybe, maybe not. They've pulled decent announcements at Gamescon before, so anything is within the realm of possibility at this stage. Even nothing. Because Square Enix, lol. X)"

Yes because "WHERE'S MAI SUPAH-SUIT", that's all the reason I need. >X)

Calling - KINGDOM Mix, duh. I mean, it was just born to be a ringtone. X)"

It's literally just how much percentage of the quests available have you completed so far, by the time more quests are added that margin will change. The story is nowhere near done yet, at least not as far as we know. Pretty sure it's built to keep us going until KH3 is closer to release.

I mean, kind of goes without saying, but yeah.

Gee, it's almost as if Xehanort was considering his own apprentice to become a future vessel for himself-OH WAIT.

No, no it does't. There's no scene anywhere that describes it that way, Yen Sid literally said that he is training in a place that's more "temporally flexible", which suggests a different dimension where time flows differently. There is nothing stated that even comes close to suggesting Radiant Garden. I seriously just went through all scenes where Lea's training is mentioned, Radiant Garden is never brought up once. Look, I think I know what the confusion is. You're both thinking of when Goofy mentioned that Lea rushed back to Radiant Garden after all of the conflict in DDD was resolved, right? Lea only left just to go check up on the place again, you know considering how his colleges are still hanging out there. I can understand how you could make the mistake of interpreting it as part of training, but the fact is Goofy never said that he was sent there by Yen Sid, just that Lea left for there on his own. It wouldn't be a sufficient place to do more training as opposed to a pocket dimension, and it makes more sense to do that kind of thing closer to Yen Sid so he can keep an eye on them should anything go wrong. Lea going to Radiant Garden for his own reasons is not sufficient evidence to support an assumption that Kairi might be training there. All we know is that she's supposed to train with Lea and Merlin, that's it. And since Lea already did some training in a pocket dimension just to materialize his own Keyblade, they're still going to rely on it again to get more proper training in.

Except the problem with that is that Nomura made 0.2 end the way it did so that Sora would just start out at Olympus Coliseum in KH3. The only way Twilight Town would work as a tutorial BEFORE Olympus without rewinding the clock at all is if the player was in control of a different character at the beginning for tutorial purposes. Kairi would make a much more logical choice, she's in the middle of training so it would feel more natural for her to be given the basics of what it means to jump, attack, use items, magic, etc, as opposed to Sora who has been given the same run-down on how to do things like 5 times already. Plus the Mysterious Tower can be connected to Twilight Town anyway, so there's already a sound justification for Kairi being there anyway, for actual training/testing of skills in the outside world (since she would have been training with Lea in the time-displacement-dimension thingy that Merlin and the Fairies made this whole time anyway). It would be very jarring for Nomura to write things so that Sora would already be ahead of the game, only to rewind him back to being behind the game anyway, not to mention redundant. He wouldn't have bothered with the Olympus tease if he wasn't going to start Sora off there.

Uh, I'm sorry, but WHERE does it ever say that Kairi is supposed to be training in Radiant Garden? All that is said is that she is training with Merlin and the Three Good Fairies in a space that is more "temporaly flexible". This does not suggest a location at all. Where would you get the idea that it's in Radiant Garden? Merlin? I don't exactly recall Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather visiting that world at any point, if anything it makes more sense for Merlin to pop up at the tower where the fairies hang out already, get the explanation from Yen Sid, summon a portal to a pocket dimension ala Dragon Ball Z/Super, and in goes Kairi and Lea. But anyway, I could still see room for the possibility that Kairi acts as the game's tutorial mode where some time AFTER her time-training with Lea or maybe even as a break from that, she goes over the things she's learned in there, which would be a lot of the basic movement, magic, and attack stuff that the average KH veteran would be used to by now and any clueless XBONE newcomer would definitely need to get a grasp on. That would allow the more complex mechanics like Athletic Flow, Transformations, Situation Commands, etc to be taught through Sora at Olympus Coliseum as we've been seeing so much already. Come on Nomura, I'm literally writing it out for you already, PLEEEEEASE give us playable Kairi! Also, too bad about not doing multiple world visits. Well, at least the Disney worlds anyway, I have a real hard time believing that they're not going to have you visit locations like Twilight Town, Radiant Garden, Destiny Islands, and other new KH-original worlds more than once, it's just not what happens in the series. The worlds that are directly important to the main plot of the game always get at least 2 visits, but I guess we'll get a better grasp of what he means later. Aw, the Kingdom Key doesn't transform like the others? That's a bummer. Still, that Second Form is pretty cool.

Pretty sure we've established by now that none of the Final Fantasy characters in KH (save Auron, possibly) are the same characters as from their Final Fantasy counterparts. This Cloud and this Sephiroth are completely different from the ones we see in FF7. Sephiroth is described as a literal manifestation of the Darkness in Cloud's heart, that's not what he was in FF7. Comparable to that, sure, but not literally the same thing. Most of the FF characters come from Radiant Garden, except for Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, Auron, possibly the Gullwings, the Moogles come from everywhere, Zack is hard to say (he could just be wearing Olympus Coliseum styled clothes and still come from Radiant Garden for all we know), Seifer, Fuu, Rai, Vivi, and Setzer. The only thing that complicates this is that one throw-away line from Goofy about them "making it back to their own world", it contradicts things Nomura has said in interviews in the past (if anyone can confirm this for me, that'd be great) about Cloud having been from Radiant Garden and they've gotten so many other lore inconsistencies whenever it comes to things that Donald or Goofy say that at this point I'm not taking his word for it. Regardless, this battle is not a continuation of FF7, it's a story exclusive to KH, has it's origins within KH's lore, and should be concluded once and for all within KH, KH3 especially.

Agreed, that's going a little too far. What works in Final Fantasy doesn't always work in Kingdom Hearts. I WOULD like to see a conclusion to (and possibly explanation for) the whole Cloud vs Sephiroth sub plot though, closure would be nice. But yeah, love how dark the series can get, even when they still cut corners around graphic things like stabbing and strangling someone (I mean they literally had to do something weird with Terra-Xehanort's hand just so they could have him strangle Aqua without actually showing his grip around her, it still bothers me). I'm personally hoping that they don't cut those corners this time around, but we'll see.

I'm being optimistic for 13, because while they said there will be fewer DISNEY worlds than KH2, that doesn't mean that the KH-original worlds won't make up the difference. Radiant Garden, Twilight Town, Land of Departure (or whatever that "new" world Eraqus and Xehanort are in is), Keyblade Graveyard, that "Cable Town" place (yeah remember that?), Castle Oblivion, there's gotta be enough there to make up for the smaller amount. Yeah the grand total probably still won't be as much as KH2, but it will still be pretty close I feel, like maybe just 2 or 3 worlds difference. But we'll see soon enough.

Not this year, it's way to soon to be expecting a full date. At best they'll announce it at one of the first events in 2018. I doubt we're going to see anything more concrete while we're in 2017.

Yeah I was noticing that too, he seems to exclusively have these forms with those particular Keyblades. I mean you don't see him pulling off that yellow Guard Form with the Kingdom Key or "Shooting Star" Keyblades, so that's already a big indicator. And yeah, now that you mention it, there doesn't seem to be any flashy indicator of Sora's form changing, it almost seems seamless compared to the flashy lightshow that KH2's transformations or BBS's command modes and D-Links had. It almost makes me think back to how when the concept of Super Saiyan was first introduced in DBZ it was this big epic flashy prolonged thing that was treated as a big deal, but as time went on and more transformations and higher levels got introduced, less strain and time was spent in the initial Super Saiyan transformation. It basically became a effortless second nature at that point compared to the higher levels, yet it was still pretty impressive and cool. That's the vibe I'm getting here, Sora at this point is much more used to the concept of transformation, even when coupling that with Keybalde transformations, which is another beast altogether. I guess you could say that you're not dealing with the average Keyblade wielder anymore. X)"

Either they were just showing it off, or maybe they are changing it up for KH3. I will say, it would be an idea that makes sense since you'd be able to use more world-specific moves while in said world on your first visit, such as getting to use the Shield and Chariot modes in Olympus or the Hammer and Drill modes in the Toy Story world. On the other hand though, they can literally do whatever they want with these demonstrations, they could have just fiddled with things so that Sora has access to these Keyblades so that they can show off what they can do while also showing off included story with the gameplay, purely for demonstration purposes. In any case, it IS a question worth bringing up. Because on one hand it still makes more sense to get these Keyblades as rewards for clearing the world the first time through, but on the other hand if they wanted you to jump right in and play with the world in a more immersive way like they've been teasing, giving you early access to the new Keyblade of each world might be a good way to do it. Guess we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime though, I do appreciate how each Keyblade seems to get it's own materialization effect in cutscenes now, as opposed to just using the standard flash of light that the Kingdom Key uses. I know that they did that in KH2 gameplay, but in cutscenes it was still the Kingdom Key summoning effect, so it's really great to see that level of detail being considered here. I just love all this obsessive detail, it's really giving me an artist-boner right now.

No, you really are overthinking it. They just didn't focus on it this time around, that's all. I mean did you see how much stuff was packed into both of those trailers alone? There's only so much you can fit in before it gets crowded and you have to leave important stuff out. The Attraction Flows will still be in the game unless they say otherwise, but that doesn't mean they're going to be shown off in every trailer, especially not when they might need the time to actually develop more to show off later. Trust me, they'll probably be up in one of the next few trailers, whenever those are.

Treasure Planet is definitely on my wish list, but so are Moana, Frozen...Wreck-It-Ralph...(huh, I better come up with something else before it looks like I'm plagiarizing from his Highness up there......)...oh yeah, Pocahontas would be a good one, I really want to see how all that color would look in the engine. Zootopia might be cool too, I'm really interested in how fun they can make the world, now that they've shown that even a suburban setting from Toy Story is interesting enough when you're the size of a toy. And after today I almost feel like a Marvel or Star Wars world might almost be possible. Really I just want a new reveal of SOMETHING before too long, hopefully they decide to reveal something for us before TGS and Jump Festa.

Sorry if I ever hurt anyone's feelings on the same or any topic, though my memory is failing me about whether I did get into an argument over the release date at the moment. I gloated about the release and Toy Story's inclusion for a brief second, but I wasn't really calling anyone out in particular and I felt it was kind of justified given the energy of the moment. Still, sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings anyway, that's never my intention.