What began as a literal elevator pitch into one of the most popular gaming franchises in the world, Kingdom Hearts has resonated with gamers across the globe since it was released 21 years ago.
One of the biggest TV and movie tropes in the last decade has been the multiverse, the idea of exploring multiple dimensions to uncover alternate versions of existing ideas. From both a business and creative perspective, it makes sense why established franchises are shaking things up in this way.
However, there aren't many video games latching on to this trend, as rendering multiple worlds in real-time is a difficult feat and the medium is relatively young in comparison to its contemporaries, making crossover opportunities more difficult. Still, there are a few great titles that manage enough to overcome these challenges, and here are some of the best examples.
While I love someone mentioning Planescape, not really multiverse. Planes and dimensions, yes. But, they are typically their own locations and are very rarely tied to another 'verse' let alone another plane. The only things that are directly tied are the ethereal and material planes. Otherwise, they are dimensions created of their own design and goals by the creator/owner and not comprised of 'their own version of another dimension'.
NP: “When I played through Final Fantasy XVI, I occasionally found what I believed to be evident Kingdom Hearts gameplay inspirations that I’d rather not detail here due to spoilers. Still, with it having been previously confirmed that Kingdom Hearts staff was working on this title, the notion wasn’t all that surprising.
However, I didn’t realize how truly instrumental Kingdom Hearts team members were in developing Final Fantasy XVI. After digging through the title’s credits, I found crucial Kingdom Hearts development staff who played significant roles in ensuring the combat design excelled.”
Kingdom Hearts has become notorious for its strange and often confusing narrative. However, it makes perfect sense when players know what to look for.
Oh so it’s our fault?
No…it’s a convoluted mess because Nomura doesn’t know what he’s doing for the story
That, and over the years it's various entries were scattered over multiple systems and were ALL important to the story instead of being side games. It's only in recent years that we've been able to play all the games on our system of choice, still, it's a lot of content to comb over.
Not to mention he could have started fresh with KH4 but apparently it’s basing its events off that online game released in Japan
Spoilers
Even in KH3 when you in the grave yard and that young boy saves you…he’s apparently from that game but who the f*** out of a handful of people are going to know that. They made out like it was a big reveal when it just made most confused.
No it doesn't, and I've been paying attention. The story is plagued with continuity errors, and inconsistencies. All the spin-offs add more to the story rather than simply being self contained explanations of events that when you really think about it never needed to be told. I can make sense of the story but only by cutting more than half of it out. That's just plain old bad writing.
Even if that is true…which I highly doubt… it’s still horrific story telling. A good story teller doesn’t burden the audience with understanding a needlessly complex plot. This is a series that literally defines itself by throwing a ton of characters together that have no business ever existing in the same universe with one another and then justifying it with a mess of convoluted dialogue.
The only game in the series that succeeded at story telling was the first one because it kept the overarching story fairly simple and focused on developing its central character.
By the time you get to the second one, you have a variety of hooded anime figures dumping exposition to justify their edition to the plot. It only gets worse from there.
And its 27 remast-ports. KH1.375. KH2.9991. The trailer for 4 looked great. Can't wait for the PS7 release but i'll play 3.14159 "repeating" in the meantime.
Playing it in 2002 was jarring as I came off the back of turn-based RPGs. I came back to the games in 2007 and enjoyed it and the sequel even though I was still not an action battle system fan. Remember grinding one level almost for a full day in a bid to get rare weapon drop for Donald.
I remember getting the first game for Christmas on the PS2 as a kid, good times, got really lost in the first game, same for the second.