How much time passes during world visits?

[Hero of Light XIV 2,381]

*I'm sorry for the length, but I do like to make you think, so yeah.*

 

Well, I guess I mean "How much time passes in each game" in general, but most of that would be focused on world time anyway, so it's still a fair question.

 

But yeah, for speculation's sake, what do you think the average length of time each canon world visit in the story of each game is?

 

I started thinking about this not too long ago when I recalled that 358/2 Days was really the only game in the series that was actually structured by a passing period of time (well, unless you want to count 0.2 as a means of that as well, with the years between BbS and KH happening at their own speed outside the Realm of Darkness). Each world visit relatively constituted one day, or rather a few hours of one day. It's really easy and fun to do this since Days also has a bit of a routine to it. You wake up, go to the Grey Area, get your mission from Saix, spend whatever time you can preparing, leave to the assigned world, spend however much time it takes to complete your mission, RTC (don't know if Roxas and the others report to Saix first or just go straight to the Clock Tower...), spend however much time you do at the Clock Tower eating ice cream and talking about stuff, and then you return to the castle, spend whatever downtime you have there, go to sleep, and then the process repeats itself.

 

Now being a university student, I find that I tend to follow a more or less similar structure for most of my days. Wake up, get breakfast, prepare my materials for class, go to class, spend whatever time I have between classes either working or chilling, get dinner after finishing classes, and head back to the dorm to work, relax, and sleep till the next day. With this in mind, I can assume that a similar average of time is spent completing the same routine in Days.

 

Now I know people can do let's plays of each day within 11-30 minutes, but keep in mind that real world gameplay time and in-universe time perceived by the characters shouldn't be considered one and the same...depending on the game (like yeah, it's safe to assume that Sonic actually reaches the end of the stage in however much time the little counter on the screen says he did, but that's a synchronized time, KH only experiences that in minigames and timed events). Odds are Roxas doesn't just spend 5 minutes in a world, destroys everything, and goes home and spends 18 hours doing absolutely nothing after spending one hour with Axel and Xion. Odds are if the Organization gives you literally just one job a day, it must mean that it takes at least a considerable amount of time to complete it, otherwise they would just stack missions on top of each other for you every day...unless Saix is a lot more lax on work ethics than he lets on, but come on, look at that guy, you know he'd give you more work if there was a legitimate reason to.

 

SO, keeping Day's typical formula that each Day takes up one...um, day, we can assume that Roxas follows a routine not too different from a student. He probably spends a decent few hours completing his world missions, maybe more, maybe less, depending on what his task is and how far it is from his spawning point and how much mobility he has. Let's also consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the characters aren't always running all of the time. What I mean is that while a majority of the time we will typically make the characters move at full speed to reach one end of the room from another, practically speaking the characters in-universe probably don't expend too much more energy than what's necessary. Like you ever notice how everyone actually walks a lot more in cutscenes than you probably tend to make them move in actual gameplay? That kind of tells me that from their perspective, they probably aren't running around at full strength with unlimited energy all the dang time, they probably walk when there's no hurry. I know it's kind of nit-picky thing to observe, but again, trying to apply a real-world perspective to how much time passes during one of Roxas' missions, I'm going to assume that if it was ME doing that stuff instead of Roxas, I'd probably be walking and conserving my energy until I need to fight or reach certain things quickly when I know where they are. Plus certain skills or abilities like Glide or Air Dash or even Haste might actually take up energy in the form of magic (not gameplay Magic, just more subtle magic), so it's possible that characters expend some sort of resource doing stuff like that...but probably only a minor amount (if Dragon Ball's use of chi is anything to go by). Also, just a thought, but I really doubt that Sora and Roxas spend most of their time just Dodge-Rolling everywhere. I mean, have you tried doing that more than 3 times in a row? You'd get sick after 5 minutes my friends.

 

So with that in mind, Roxas spends at least 1 or 2 hours or more during one of his missions in a world depending on his task (I would imagine reconnosance takes extra time seeing as how you would have to examine almost everything), traversing normally when there's no need to extend himself, with possible exceptions depending on his mood or situation at the time (like he's in Neverland so he just traverses by flying everywhere, or he's really excited to meet up with his friends one day and just decides to Air Dash a lot of the way to leave faster, etc.). We can also assume that Roxas at least spends an hour or two in the Castle That Never Was preparing for his mission, getting breakfast, washing himself, etc. Once he's done with his mission, he meets up at the Twilight Town clock tower with his friends, and...well, I guess it really depends on the day and conversations they have that determines how long those are. I'm just going to assume another 1 or 2 hours, to leave room for them waiting for each other, talking about whatever until they run out of things to talk about, probably buying the ice cream prior to sitting down, etc. Actually since it typically takes up to 5 to 15 minutes to eat an ice cream bar (otherwise you run the risk of that thing melting), it's possible that their time on that tower goes past whatever conversations the cutscenes focus on. After that awkward conversation about pushing buttons and stuff, Roxas and Axel probably change the topic into something else after the cutscene is over. Considering how my conversations with my friends go, I wouldn't be surprised if they spent up to 5 hours maximum talking about stupid stuff, but that's probably on the odd day and not a reliable average.

 

After that, it's kind of up in the air how much time passes the rest of the day. Since the rest of Roxas' routine following the clock tower portion is relatively unimportant, it's probably safe to assume he just spends the rest of the day doing whatever at the castle. I mean, the members are apparently free to do whatever they please after they complete their missions so long as they check in the same day, so it's probably up to anyone's imagination what Roxas does when he comes home...I wonder if the Organization has Playstations...

 

Anyway, yeah, a ... not-so-brief look at how the flow of time in Days seems to work. And seeing how the title of the game relies upon a full year constituting 365 days, I think it's safe to assume the average passage of time in most worlds (at least, human based worlds) is about 24 hours, because magic sun or something, I don't know.

 

But that's a game where time is basically laid out for you. What about the other KH games that take up an undisclosed amount of time? Do they follow a similar day by day pattern? Do they follow the lengths of the movies each world is based off of (again, in-universe time, not real-world feature presentation time)? It's a lot of questions to consider.

 

I kind of doubt each world visit is an average of one day, as a lot more plot tends to happen within one visit than in Days, where you keep coming back every other day to see something else happening. But keep in mind that events like Mulan training with the Chinese army or Jack and Will trying to save Elizabeth and the Black Pearl took a lot more time than just one day or one night in their respective movies. And I know that we don't actually get to witness the passing of the days or seasons in most worlds, but considering scenes like the one in Pride Lands with Mufasa's spirit confronting Simba show that dawn and nighttime do exist outside of gameplay, I think it's safe to assume that time is functioning properly in each of the worlds (plus, considering Hayner's comment about "blue skies", I think it's safe to assume that Twilight Town isn't as permanently sunset as it's made out to be. I mean, how else would they define days over there, it wouldn't make sense...although Olette did say "morning" when the sky looked the same...eh, plothole...or dialogue hole, whichever). So it's possible Sora and the gang spend more than just one day in a few worlds, depending on the events and how much you want to relate them to their respective movies.

 

But I've hogged this discussion enough and I'd like to hear what you guys think. Based on what I've discussed, what do you think the average lengths of time spend in each world in each game is, and by extension, how long would each of the games have taken place individually, from a logical or narrative standpoint? 

 

And once again, I'm sorry for the length, I just had to get my thoughts out there, maybe help provide a way to lead the discussion.

[kingdombladesventus 53]

Interesting topic to bring up. In my fan fiction that is on hiatus, I was going to address this kind of thing. Like, from one world to another, one could be morning, the other night, and another midday from their perspective times. Also, I noticed something relating to this topic.

 

In KH2, Atlantis world, Ariel looks the same, yet her memories are questionable. In KH1, we found out that Ursula is evil and represented herself as evil. BUT, in KH2, she crying and such and Ursula was there to bargain with her-like from the actual movie-since Sora actually appeared at the time for the actual plot and time of what suppose to happen. So Ariel agrees with Ursula, like SHE FORGOT THE SEA WITCH IS EVIL, from the last time she saw her-which was the last game, acting like she forgot what she did to Sora and company. Like...did Sora going to sleep or not visiting actually affected everyone's memories? I really don't know, but it's something to think about.

[Isamu Kuno 2,512]

Time is a complete, total, utter, and absolute mess in KH. There's Universal time, which can be guessed to run at the same rate in all worlds, given how DiZ menions that Sora would be like an old freind whose been gone for a year to everyone he met. Interesting that he specifically mentions "a year" rather than "a while" which is much more ambuguous and would allow more fexibility in the individual worlds. But in 3D we learn that there's also World Time, where in time moves differently in all worlds. Given these two, we can assume is that World Time is more like time zones than a totally isolated timeline, but that's only in the Realm of Light. I think we can assume that as you get closer to the Realm of Darkness, time in each world moves slower, as time appears to move much more slowly in the RoD, because Aqua has barely aged at all in over a decade, so I think we can assume that Twilight Town does indeed appear to be stuck in permanent sunset (despite Hayners mention of blue skies), or at least that time moves slower there due to it being in the Realm Between and thus closer to the Realm of Darkness, so perhaps the days, and thus sunset, are just much longer. Then there's the Sleeping Worlds which constantly repeat the same few days and seem to work on Inception rules, whereas the deeper into dreams you go, the slower time moves, even within the same world. We can also asume that the Datascape moves at it's own speed as well because of processing speed or something.

 

We also need to consider the characters ages, Sora has been 15 since KH2, and still is in KH3, as his KH3 model is proportionately identical to his KH2 one, and I doubt he stopped growing at 15, so we can assume it has not been a full year (though world-jumping may have slowed his growth somewhat) and as such each world takes less than a month. In fact, it seems that the entirety of CoM happens within the span of roughly one month, as on Day 29 Roxas faints as a result of Namine beginning to alter Sora's memories, and on day 48, 21 days later, he wakes up in response to Namine putting Sora to sleep.

 

Given the limited time progression we have seen in KH2, sunrise in Pride Lands, night time in Olympus Collosseum, and three full days in Atlantica, I'd say each world may take about 3 days to a week.

 

So for KH that would be about 3 months, we already know CoM was about a month, for KH2 it would be roughly 6 months (I'm assuming the second visits didn't take as long as the firsts, but obviously there where more worlds to visit) For BbS we'll say about 3 days per world per character because each charater's world segment felt shorter than Sora's in KH or KH2, so about 3 months and I'm going to say about a week total each for both Re:coded and 3D because of procesing speed and dream time. (I wanted to say 3 days each but I figured one world=one day would make for easier math, plus 6 days between the end of KH2 and the start of KH3 seems to short, 2 weeks seems like a better fit)

 

What do you think?

 

P.S. On a somewhat semi-related note, I know we havn't seen any evidance to support this, but wouldn't it be cool if KH3 had a Day/Night cycle? The Kingdom Shader could really take advantage of that.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Isamu Kuno

[Sorarocks93 678]

I can't remember where, but wasn't it said that KH1 takes about 2 months?

[VisitJoan 2,713]

This. Thanks for explaining that everything you see in the game isn't exactly what happens in-universe. Too many people take it way to literally. Yes, there is stuff that happens to Roxas and Sora and whomever that isn't shown in the games. That's what makes the manga so great. All the stuff in the manga could have happened.

 

Anyway, about Twilight Town. I honestly think that there, "blue skies" is just a concept - something seen in picture books and read about in stories. The way they tell time is by clocks. It's 10:00 when the clock says it's 10:00. There are people in the real world who tell time like this. For people who live within the Arctic Circle, there are times in the summer when the sun doesn't set, and times in the winter where there is no sun at all. They know what time it is because they have clocks.

 

I also think it's safe to say that there is some sort of universal time. Most of the people in the game universe don't know this, as most aren't aware there are other worlds, but keyblade wielders and Nobodies who travel between worlds would have to use it, like we do when we say that there are 10 years between BBS and KHI. It probably works the way it does in Star Wars or other sci-if series where universal time is based on one planet/world. I think it could be possible that watches are able to keep time based on they world they were created in as we see this in DDD when the two watches showed different times. I think the time in Days is a little different then that universal time, since the Organization would base time on TWTNW. This may, or may not, be the same time that is used in other games. 358 days for Roxas could have easily been 365 days or more for Sora, but when averaged out, approximately one year passed in both worlds.