FUNGoodbye

Depending on when they plan to release KH4 actual proper multiplayer might be possible. If they intend to have it come out within the next two years I think at best we can expect the game to contain some points where we play as someone other than Sora, like we had with Riku and Aqua in base KH3. Should be better planned out and more chances for more than just a single instance per other character given they've already shown us they've started plotting out a playable segment for Mickey. I really hope we get playable Riku and that if we do, it's for more than just five minutes.

In future, don't do it yourself, just play a clip of Vince McMahon doing it to them.

Also doesn't feature Riku (but you don't see me crying over it). The lack of Kairi doesn't mean much given the game is probably not even half finished and they only gave us the screenshots they did to ease the pain of anyone who was genuinely looking forward to the now canceled Missing Link. Just be patient. As others on this forum would say it, "Let them cook." 👩‍🍳👨‍🍳

*just sitting back with some chamomile tea reading all of the above posts for about ten pages now* Tell us how ya really feel folks.

I do hope they do something with whatever story they were planning to include in this. The story had been the best part of the games taking place in eras past. Would be a shame if it never sees the light of day.

@King Arthur13 - 2027 to capitalize on the 25th anniversary hopefully, but either way still to far off for comfort.

Honestly Mickey on top that thing just makes me think of Leon in RE4. But it also looks like it could be the library in Beast's Castle.

I want to see what they've got cooking in regards to Riku.

Sora looking like Nakai Masahiro...stuff of nightmares. The kawaii bishounen from a J-pop or K-pop boyband look is far too real. I can't with how uncanny valley he looks.

@LazyDurian - I can't agree with you that Sakura's development was a flop, especially as someone who watched all episodes of Naruto and Naruto Shippuden and even every Boruto episode until that went on hiatus. But I will say anime is a helpful medium for allowing characters arcs to breathe in ways that something like manga, light novels, and video games rarely compete well with when compared side by side. That said depending on how a KH anime was handled if ever it came to pass, Kairi might just end up going the same way she has in the games. I will concede to you the fact that Kairi fans should worry about her for one very important reason: The recurring pattern of KH's female characters getting benched once their roles are deemed either permanently or temporarily fulfilled. I.E: Kairi choosing to wait for Sora to bring Riku home at the end of KH1 instead of insisting on going with him even though it makes little sense for a person to stand by when their friend has become trapped in a dangerous place as is the case here with Riku. Namine merging back into Kairi at the end of KH2. Xion having Roxas off her so that Sora can be one step closer to being whole again in 358/2 Days. Aqua inadvertently and then intentionally trapping herself in the Realm of Darkness in Birth By Sleep/A Fragmentary Passage, Data Namine deciding self deletion is the only appropriate conclusion for her in Coded ("Just make sure to tell him what you saw and how you felt. If you do that we'll be ok. Her and me too." - *Disappears into Nothingness*), in KH3 with Xehanort shattering Kairi, and in MOM by having Kairi not tell Riku something like "Let's go together. You're a master now, so you can train me while we look for Sora." at the end.

Forgive me for not thinking that an always BAMF needs no-one else Kairi is what the pay off should be for her character arc.

@LazyDurian - The only thing I want for Kairi is for her to get to finish her character arc. Not jump from being in training to being a BAMF Boss Lady and then have nowhere to go narratively. And if you look through my post history here you'll see that while I'm not a Kairi hater I do have a love/hate relationship with the character. Mainly because she barely feels like a character. She's nice to all the right people and mean to all the right people. Beyond that there's not much to her. She's gutsy and brave and tries her best. All personality traits I can respect, but yes indeed, the fact she spends so much time doing things off screen or because of poorly defined "special" powers does bog her down as a character. She's certainly not gonna be on any of my personal top 10 lists for KH unless it's for the crown spot on a most frustrating characters list. But that's okay. I'd rather see her character arc completed than butchered because some people are too impatient to let it play out.

@ocean's rage - That at least is a fairer assessment. Though one would certainly hope that the story doesn't have to be carried purely by its protagonist. Also for as much as the KH series is using the Disney versions of the stories those aren't the only versions that exist and there are plenty of versions of those stories that have been told from storybooks as bedtime stories that people also have attachments to. That attachment bleeds over and effects how invested we feel. Again I'll say it's that one fact that separates Kairi from the other princesses.

@ocean's rage - If Snow White getting the dwarves into shape with her wisdom and kindness and Cinderella enduring all those years of abuse from her stepmother and stepsisters and not ending either their lives or hers are considered being weak sure. But regardless of how they happen to have been written the fact their stories are ones that have been told for centuries of human history in countless languages (is what separates them and the other princesses of heart from Kairi). In KH1 they don't give us enough to feel invested in Kairi the way most of humanity up to the time of that game's release had grown up invested in the other princesses. And the fact is they likely knew this, but they didn't even bother trying. Like I pointed out in the initial post they could've used the flashbacks to make us feel for Kairi what many of us already felt for the other princesses but they instead used them for lore dumps.

Sakura is known for overcoming the damsel in distress trope, so yes, by default comparing Kairi to her is an insult and I didn't expand on her because her progression is well documented. Also pulling the trigger on OP Kairi in Re:Mind then backpedaling in order to continue her character arc is not nerfing her. It's correcting a break from the correct course to take with her. They never should've made her so OP because yes, it does then open the door to the question of where Kairi goes from there. And if the answer is handling every threat herself then she's done, there's nowhere left to take her and nothing more to do with her. They would literally have no option but to kill her off permanently if they didn't backpedal from there. If you want to see it as a necessary evil that's fine. But the bottom line is that she can't just go from point A to point Z and have anyone be satisfied. She only made the express decision to train in DDD. In KH3 even though she was somewhere that time doesn't matter, that doesn't mean the world outside wasn't moving. Realistically she only had a few days inside the forest and if she spent that time slacking as we saw in the scene where she's writing a letter to Sora and Axel brings out ice cream for them to enjoy she definitely didn't train enough to justify how she was in Re:Mind but it does serve to on some level explain why she does so poorly in the base game during the happenings in the Keyblade Graveyard. MOM was a reminder that no actually Kairi isn't some all powerful boss lady. You can whine about that all you like, but that reality isn't going to change.

Namine and Xion have the same core issue to their writing as Kairi in that they're females written in service of making male characters shine even brighter by facilitating a conflict for them to overcome or trigger/re-trigger a journey for them to go on or finish, but because their stories are mostly self contained within one or two games that fact doesn't have as big of an effect on them. The creators also seem to have taken facets of what Kairi could've been and created Namine and Xion from them. Even Aqua carries shades of being born from what they could've made Kairi had they wanted to. KH has an issue of always benching female characters when they're no longer needed though. I.E Kairi not insisting on going with Sora to find Riku at the end of KH1, Namine rejoining with Kairi in KH2, Aqua getting trapped in the Realm of Darkness at the end of BBS & A Fragmentary Passage, Kairi deciding to stay put and train with Aqua instead of telling Riku something like "Let's go together. You're a master now, so you can train me while we look for Sora." at the end of MOM. Like I don't personally have an issue with Kairi choosing to train with Aqua. In ordinary circumstances someone doing uninterrupted training would definitely work out better than them training on the go, but not only is it easy to pick up on a series wide pattern with that decision from Kairi, they also passed up the opportunity to give Riku and Kairi some time to tighten their friendship which for a while had been feeling very much like one between two people who are friends only because they have Sora as a mutual friend. And the voice actors for Riku in both the English and Japanese versions don't exactly do much with their line deliveries to change that perception. Both David and Mamoru sound so done in that final scene before Riku leaves.

Dude, comparing Sakura Haruno to Kairi is an insult to Sakura. Their development is significantly different in terms of handling even if Sakura still comes out at the other end nowhere near the same level of OP as Naruto and Sasuke. Also "This is a warning." - What are you five? Plenty of franchises have survived characters like Kairi. Especially when said characters aren't the protagonist (which she isn't, despite being the leading heroine, yes there is a difference). Your ramble about Mary Sues is hilarious. You're saying Kairi fans want Kairi to be a cliche OP Mary Sue going forward because you're tired of waiting for the culmination of her development. But they precisely backpedaled on how OP she was in Re:Mind to continue developing her character rather than stagnate it at the finish line of an OP Doesn't Need Anyone Else Girl Boss (which contrary to your diatribe has been proven again and again within media to be a hated thing not a loved thing).

@ocean's rage - How?

Oh god, I'm getting Life is Strange 2 flashbacks. This concept was not handled well there, I can only imagine how KH would fare tackling such an idea.

Meh. Even in KH1 Kairi wasn't much to write home about. She's the only kid on Destiny Islands who doesn't engage in any form of sparring. Some of her dialogue during the prologue makes her the opposite of endearing. After the Night of Fate she spends the bulk of the game on the bench, displaced heart from body unable to say or do much of anything. The plot wants us to consider her to be on the same level as fairy tale icons like Snow White and Cinderella, but gives us nothing to work with as to why we should view her that way. During the game's climax she has a would be shining moment when she returns Sora to his original form after he turns into a heartless. It would land a lot more effectively (especially when looked back on after knowledge from future entries in the series), if the powers of the princesses of heart weren't so poorly defined. Before the climax we get flashbacks involving Kairi that could've helped make the friendship between her, Sora, and Riku more believable but they're instead used for lore dumps. And to cap it all off, at the end of the game, instead of having Kairi insist on joining Sora in looking for Riku, they choose to bench her on Destiny Islands indicating her part's over now.

I don't really understand this comment. Most JRPGs especially older ones can take over 80 hours to do everything in/obtain everything in. KH has fit well within that list since its inception. Not having a bunch of fillerish collectathoning to do would be a blessing. And there are only so many mini games and superbosses you can cram into a game before it stops being any semblance of fun or challenge and just becomes tedium. They should also avoid falling into the trap of overdoing it on how many mechanics the game includes if the story's length isn't going to merit playing with said mechanics long enough. KH2 is an excellent example of that. It has so much for you to use, but only a single location in the game gives you a reason to use everything the game offers you and the location in question is optional (Plus wasn't in the Vanilla Release and thus only became available to people outside of Japan outside of importing with the HD Remasters going on a decade after the Vanilla Release). Don't give players things to use and do that will ultimately just be a waste of their time and put the resources you would have put into said stuff into something that's actually important for the game.

The movies tanking doesn't have to mean the worlds based off them end up being bad. To start some of the worlds from movies that didn't land with audiences and/or critics could work thematically with where KH4 takes Sora and the rest of the core cast that ends up appearing in it. Heck a repeated thing you'll see about some of Disney's recent films that didn't land with audiences and/or critics is that the world around the cast of characters in the film is pretty interesting. Since Sora and Strelitzia are both essentially in a world that could be a metaphor for Purgatory I would imagine films that deal with death and the feelings that frequently surround death would fit in well into KH4. Coco, Encanto, and Elemental all fall into this category and they're all recent. Another visit to The Caribbean/Port Royal can also fit. And if they don't wanna go back to that they can indeed make a world based off of Moana to fill the island adventure quota while still having the chance for more ties to an overarching theme of death. We additionally already got a glimpse of Donald and Goofy looking for traces of Sora in The Underworld which also fits with the theme of death. I imagine rebirth will also be a big theme in KH4 since I can't picture this series concluding with Sora getting permanently killed off and the time is ticking to finish it if Nomura doesn't want to have to hand it off to someone else. Films I can See Getting Worlds In KH4: Soul Coco Moana Encanto Elemental That's already plenty for a single game in the series and the number of worlds has been shrinking with each entry. Combine those five with Quadratum, The Underworld, The Caribbean, Yen Sid's Mysterious Tower, Radiant Garden, The Land of Departure, and Destiny Islands and you've got more than enough worlds in the mix. Those last four would probably only appear in cutscenes to save on budget. Edit: That list of worlds unintentionally totals to 12, KH's fixations are 7 and 13. I guess the 13th world could be something Star Wars related. Or whatever world Yozora really comes from.

Why do you think it would be FF9 that gets a remake? Is that just the one you'd want them to be remaking? Cause I asked if they've said anything about remaking that game because I've never heard anything about them wanting to remake that one. Like FF8 is unlikely, FF9 is in the realm of it'd be a miracle if they did it. Finally making FFX-3 regardless of the lack of demand for it or a remake of FFX are at least ideas that whispers have leaked out about.

Have they officially announced that they intend to remake FF9? I thought after all the FF7 remake business their intent was to do FFX-3 (even though fans were strongly against the idea) or an FFX remake due to how well every re-release of it had fared.

Those aren't KH specific, but they are about Mickey and with all the Mickey talk in the last ten or so posts here I thought I'd share those.