Kingdom Hearts (pre-III Spoilers ITT)

[Karxrida]

So I've decided to do a casual run of all the BBS stories again in Crit and have been watching all of the cutscenes.

Something that's been really bugging me is how hit-or-miss Jason Dohring (Terra) and Willa Holland (Aqua) have been in their voicework, especially Willa. They both have a ton of Dull Surprise moments or just fail to emote convincingly, and it's really grating. Jessie McCartney carries them so hard as Ven; you can even tell the difference between his work as Ven and Roxas despite them having the same voice due to them not speaking with the same tone.

 

[Catherine Walker]

it was just a button masher to try to get to the better ones in a deck.

 

[Karxrida]

Literally all the games are button mashers because that's how you attack, normally or with Deck Commands.

 

[Karxrida]

A new trailer for 2.8 will be shown at Jump Festa next month.

http://kh13.com/news/kingdom-hearts...-jump-festa-2016-with-new-trailer-in-december

 

[Karxrida]

New trailers for II.8 and III tomorrow.

 

[Karxrida]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?ebc=ANy...exza4voCuTlOYeXzvHUBfZXNcEB5h9w&v=Sfw_r1UCPs0

Nothing much for II.8, but we got a bit more III footage. Shotlocks appear to have returned, we get to see some more Heartless, and the new Nobody is confirmed to exist (and looks pretty kickass).

 

[Blazade]

Looks cool and all. The biggest change from 2 that I like here is that battles seem to take place over wider arenas. Mechanically it might hurt the game as much as it might help it, but I have faith.

I don't like shotlocks though. They got rid of that shit for a reason and in BBS it just amounted to free damage. At least drives and limits in KH2 had drawbacks in that there were many different ways the gauges could be used and it was easy to be unsuccessful and miss a bunch of damage. Shotlocks were point and click and it looks the same here. There's no reason not to use em either because they're a separate gauge.

Seeing more the way the cutscenes and the game look I'm not sure how I feel about that. I get that we're trying to be stylized in an era where we can make stylized really detailed, but to me it looks really saccharine. Maybe I'm just a stick in the mud who thinks the older KH games got disney/final fantasy right visually, but we'll see. I'm open minded, and I'm sure it works better in context when you get to control the camera for yourself.

 

[Karxrida]

I'm not entirely a fan of the look either, and totally would still get the game if they reused II's assets with some polish. II still holds up visually and they didn't need to make such a noticeable shift.

I can live with Shotlocks returning if the game follow II's mold for combat abilities instead of (or more than) BBS's, though its inclusion will probably make Speedruns boring outside of arbitrary categories that restrict its usage.

 

[Shinryu]

/rant

2.8...fuckin really? Stop making all this other shit and make 3 already ffs yeesh...at least 2.8's saving grace is it's main system release apparently but still, why the hell do they keep avoiding a straight up 3, now we're getting oddly numbered shit that still might advance the story a tiny fraction >.>

/end rant

 

[Karxrida]

I read somewhere that the announcement about the game's development was made way too early, and that it's nowhere near completion. They're not showing us anything because they legitimately have nothing left to show.

This game isn't coming out for another 2 years, minimum. Between this and FFVII Remake, Nomura has his hands full.

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Christ, we'll all be in retirement homes by the time it comes out.

As for visuals, I think it looks nice. It's not far from II at all really. And shit, there's a lot of colors.

 

[Karxrida]

New Nomura interview.

The most interesting part is the implication that Marluxia may show up in the Kingdom of Corona (the Tangled world). Nomura said that he wanted to have specifics enemies associated with certain villains show up in worlds that the villain visited.

It was surprising to see the return of Nobodies in the recent Kingdom Hearts 3 footage. What sort of role will they play in the game? Can we expect to see any more enemy types besides Nobodies and Heartless?

Nomura: I want to make it so that you can tell who had come to that world by the enemies that appear there. I am thinking of the enemy types as a part of the total production this time.

The new Kingdom Hearts III trailer featured a new Nobody design with a scythe and flower petals, is this particular Nobody alluding to a certain former Organization member?

Nomura: I think that it’s easy to imagine but I do believe that it will appear in promotional materials sooner or later so please wait for that.

 

[Blazade]

That's cool. We already got quite a bit of that in KH2 (Dragoons in Beast's Castle, Gamblers in Port Royal, snipers in Land of Dragons etc) and that was interesting so it's good to see it again possibly explored more fully. Organization XIII always makes me hype.

 

[MiniArchitect]

I'm personally fine with the look of Kingdom Hearts 3, but I can see why it might be a bit off-putting. Applying advanced, realistic lighting and shading to visually simplified cartoon characters creates a weird mashup of visual styles that don't quite fit together as well as they should. The advanced graphics are cool for the new Final Fantasy games, but they look kind of weird on the more expressive Disney characters. The comparatively simple graphics of the PS2 suit the characters pretty well because they seem to lend themselves more readily to the less realistic style of the series.

Personally, I'd like to see them work more heavily on expression and animation of the characters. There are cutscenes in Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 where you see the characters' faces close up, and you can see a lot of expression in them during those moments, and it would be cool to see that more in normal gameplay outside of cutscenes.

As for 2.8, I find it weird that they're making it for the PS4 when they've been rereleasing all of the previous games on the PS3 to get everyone caught up with the series. Sure, you're gonna need a PS4 to play the new game anyway, and they're using KH3's engine for the short Aqua portion, but it seems oddly inconsistent with the way they've been trying to generate interest in the series again.

 

[Yoshi King]

New Nomura interview.

Nothing really new (it's mostly some background info on how the development process has been going with the new engine and stuff), but we got the interesting implication on having multiple playable character.

I think that at this point it's a given we'll be playing not only as Sora, but as Riku and Kairi in some capacity. Maybe I'm over-estimating them though, as creating/balancing new movesets for anyone but Sora--especially ones that develop as the character grows-- is probably a huge task. Given this fact, I imagine Sora will gain levels in the same way he always has since KH1 (Riku may be eligible for the same development since he's a fan favourite), while Riku and/or Kairi start at say, level 50, with a few skills and abilities already unlocked, and then progress from there.

Who knows? Maybe they might turn the tradition on its head and have us start with training Kairi, and then when it comes time to switch to Sora, he'll be level 10+. Lots of possibilities there.

Finally, re: Ven, Aqua and Terra, I think they'll probably be playable too with some sort of preset loadout, given that the game is bringing back shotlocks.

 

[Karxrida]

So I was told that the interview was old and clickbait, so yeah.

 

[Karxrida]

Bill Farmer (Goofy's voice actor) was on a podcast recently and talked a bit about Kingdom Hearts (starts at 57:54 and ends at 1:03:00). Something interesting to note is that he's been doing recording sessions for III on and off for several years.

 

[Karxrida]

Happy 14th Anniversary.

The official Twitter just released a screenshot of Daybreak Town for 2.8.

 

[Karxrida]

Unchained x is coming to North America on the 7th.