Kingdom Hearts Condensed

[CaptainDazzles 1]

Hi there! I recently undertook a personal project, but I think if it turns out nicely I'll put it out on the internet. I'd like some feedback from the Kingdom Hearts community. I've looked around a lot, but can't find exactly what I have in mind anywhere else.

 

Let me preface this by saying I have been a die-hard fan of the series since the first game was released on PS2. I've played every game multiple times, I know every plot point and basically everything one can know about the series without getting as deep as names of developers and stuff. I say this because some people are probably gonna tell me doing this ruins Kingdom Hearts, but hear me out.

 

As of late, I've been exposing my girlfriend to Kingdom Hearts. She loves it. But unfortunately she doesn't have the time or equipment to play all of the games. So I've resulted to watching "cutscene movies" with her on YouTube. I believe most of the ones I've watched have been uploaded by a channel called ATRileyProductions. (I'm not sure about the rules on posting links to peoples profiles and stuff, so I won't). They're great. High quality, and he even includes scenes from the Final Mix games when they aren't available in English. The only thing, is they're very. Very long. (Obviously. They're long games). But watching them gave me an idea.

 

What I've been doing recently, and hope to complete, is unifying the Kingdom Hearts franchise into one *chronological* and edited video. I say "one", but it'd obviously be in parts. It would be easy enough to get my hands on every cutscene from every game, but I wanna go further and edit out the aspects that don't add to the plot heavily.

 

My original plan was to do this for the first game. All in all, from start to finish, it was about 4 hours of cutscenes when unedited. I went through and watched all of it, and then went back and removed any parts that didn't-

A). Heavily contribute to the development of central characters (Basically, anything involving Riku/Kairi/Ansem/FF characters was kept no matter what. Also, any scenes between Sora, Donald, and Goofy that I considered important to their character and relationships were kept)

B). Heavily contribute to the development of the plot (I included anything that explains the antagonists goal, such as when Maleficent and Jafar discuss the Princesses of Heart in Agrabah. However, I cut almost all of Agrabah up until the ending when Genie reveals the keyhole. But  the sealing of all the keyholes, and basically everything that happen in Destiny Islands, Traverse Town, and Hollow Bastion was kept)

C). Heavily affect important events in more recent games (I didn't find many problems with this. I'm sure as I go through into the second game and further, I'll find instances and have to go back and put things back in)

 

I'm sure there were other instances where I decided to leave or remove something, but I can't remember right now.

 

After editing, the game came down to a bit over 2 hours. Of course, there were discrepancies. I included them arriving at every world, but some held no value besides as introducing Disney characters and villains. I didn't focus on the villains much either, aside from Maleficent. Because of this, worlds like Atlantica and Halloween Town were completely removed, aside from showing them getting there and Sora sealing the keyhole. Halloween Town is my favorite world, but I figured that all in all it wasn't very important to the plot. Besides Oogies death. But like I said, I didn't really focus on the Disney villains.

 

In the end, the story did still make perfect sense on a large scale level. It just didn't contain half of the heavily Disney oriented aspects. I tried my best to keep it so it makes sense while saving time. 

 

Since I made that, I decided to do a similar thing but for every game. Like I said, in chronological order. I'm starting with Birth by sleep and I'm going to make my way to Dream Drop Distance. I'm also going to redo the first Kingdom Hearts. 

 

I'd really like to know what opinions people have on what I'm doing. I'd also like to know if anyone has any suggestions for scenes that should be kept or discarded. Obviously, this wouldn't be good for people new to the series. I'm making this as one very experienced player, for other very experienced players to recap the events of the game.

 

And, on a more technical level, does anyone have any tips for video editing in general? I'm good, but not amazing. I've just been using Windows Movie Maker because it's simple and effective. Although extremely extremely buggy.

 

Thank you

[Hyper-Rushe 17]

Gametrailers did something similar with their Kingdom Hearts Timeline video explained and compressed all of the games major plot points into about an hour long video. so you could all ways look there for inspiration if you need it.

[Caity 3,946]

I wouldn't bother.  It seems like an awful lot of effort when you could

• Send her to the Game Trailers condensed Time Line (aspects are missing though)
• Give her to the links to the youtube videos like "Kingdom Hearts 3D full movie, Kingdom Hearts 1 full movie" which basically are all the cutscenes
• Let her play it in her own time.  If she has time to watch ages long clips surely she could just spend that time playing when she can.  There's no rule that says you have to complete the game right away or play every day.  

[Sora_Roxas26 124]

Hi there! I recently undertook a personal project, but I think if it turns out nicely I'll put it out on the internet. I'd like some feedback from the Kingdom Hearts community. I've looked around a lot, but can't find exactly what I have in mind anywhere else.

 

Let me preface this by saying I have been a die-hard fan of the series since the first game was released on PS2. I've played every game multiple times, I know every plot point and basically everything one can know about the series without getting as deep as names of developers and stuff. I say this because some people are probably gonna tell me doing this ruins Kingdom Hearts, but hear me out.

 

As of late, I've been exposing my girlfriend to Kingdom Hearts. She loves it. But unfortunately she doesn't have the time or equipment to play all of the games. So I've resulted to watching "cutscene movies" with her on YouTube. I believe most of the ones I've watched have been uploaded by a channel called ATRileyProductions. (I'm not sure about the rules on posting links to peoples profiles and stuff, so I won't). They're great. High quality, and he even includes scenes from the Final Mix games when they aren't available in English. The only thing, is they're very. Very long. (Obviously. They're long games). But watching them gave me an idea.

 

What I've been doing recently, and hope to complete, is unifying the Kingdom Hearts franchise into one *chronological* and edited video. I say "one", but it'd obviously be in parts. It would be easy enough to get my hands on every cutscene from every game, but I wanna go further and edit out the aspects that don't add to the plot heavily.

 

My original plan was to do this for the first game. All in all, from start to finish, it was about 4 hours of cutscenes when unedited. I went through and watched all of it, and then went back and removed any parts that didn't-

A). Heavily contribute to the development of central characters (Basically, anything involving Riku/Kairi/Ansem/FF characters was kept no matter what. Also, any scenes between Sora, Donald, and Goofy that I considered important to their character and relationships were kept)

B). Heavily contribute to the development of the plot (I included anything that explains the antagonists goal, such as when Maleficent and Jafar discuss the Princesses of Heart in Agrabah. However, I cut almost all of Agrabah up until the ending when Genie reveals the keyhole. But  the sealing of all the keyholes, and basically everything that happen in Destiny Islands, Traverse Town, and Hollow Bastion was kept)

C). Heavily affect important events in more recent games (I didn't find many problems with this. I'm sure as I go through into the second game and further, I'll find instances and have to go back and put things back in)

 

I'm sure there were other instances where I decided to leave or remove something, but I can't remember right now.

 

After editing, the game came down to a bit over 2 hours. Of course, there were discrepancies. I included them arriving at every world, but some held no value besides as introducing Disney characters and villains. I didn't focus on the villains much either, aside from Maleficent. Because of this, worlds like Atlantica and Halloween Town were completely removed, aside from showing them getting there and Sora sealing the keyhole. Halloween Town is my favorite world, but I figured that all in all it wasn't very important to the plot. Besides Oogies death. But like I said, I didn't really focus on the Disney villains.

 

In the end, the story did still make perfect sense on a large scale level. It just didn't contain half of the heavily Disney oriented aspects. I tried my best to keep it so it makes sense while saving time. 

 

Since I made that, I decided to do a similar thing but for every game. Like I said, in chronological order. I'm starting with Birth by sleep and I'm going to make my way to Dream Drop Distance. I'm also going to redo the first Kingdom Hearts. 

 

I'd really like to know what opinions people have on what I'm doing. I'd also like to know if anyone has any suggestions for scenes that should be kept or discarded. Obviously, this wouldn't be good for people new to the series. I'm making this as one very experienced player, for other very experienced players to recap the events of the game.

 

And, on a more technical level, does anyone have any tips for video editing in general? I'm good, but not amazing. I've just been using Windows Movie Maker because it's simple and effective. Although extremely extremely buggy.

 

Thank you

I think this would be good for people who are new to the series

[CaptainDazzles 1]

 

I wouldn't bother.  It seems like an awful lot of effort when you could

• Send her to the Game Trailers condensed Time Line (aspects are missing though)
• Give her to the links to the youtube videos like "Kingdom Hearts 3D full movie, Kingdom Hearts 1 full movie" which basically are all the cutscenes
• Let her play it in her own time.  If she has time to watch ages long clips surely she could just spend that time playing when she can.  There's no rule that says you have to complete the game right away or play every day.  

 

I'm not making this specifically for her haha. I actually wouldn't want it to be her first experience with kingdom hearts because it'd be so concise.

I figured it'd be a good inbetween place for the cutscene videos that are extremely long, and all of the various "timelines" out their that are short and to the point but just endless commentary. 

 

It honestly wouldn't be that hard. You just have to have basic storytelling skills to make everything make sense once scenes have been cut, and be adept at trimming and editing hours of video. 

[Caity 3,946]

I'm not making this specifically for her haha. I actually wouldn't want it to be her first experience with kingdom hearts because it'd be so concise.

I figured it'd be a good inbetween place for the cutscene videos that are extremely long, and all of the various "timelines" out their that are short and to the point but just endless commentary. 

 

It honestly wouldn't be that hard. You just have to have basic storytelling skills to make everything make sense once scenes have been cut, and be adept at trimming and editing hours of video. 

 

I know it's not specifically for her, but I couldn't be bothered changing her to "them" cause them sounds weird like there's some freaky alien things.  Anyone who doesn't want the full story and just wants a condensed version, could just watch the hour long Game Trailers one cause they clearly don't care about getting all the information though.  It's like me going out of my way to create a Light Box code for a website when I can reuse Lokesh Dhakar's code/component and use my time for something else that I can't reuse.  With the long cutscene videos people can pause and go back to it when they have time instead of turning the game into a chore.  

 

Granted if you are enjoying doing it though and don't have other pressing things to do (Like deadlines/looking after family/work) and see it as a hobby. go ahead, for me it'd personally be a waste of time since there's already a short version of the story out there for people too lazy to see the whole thing and there's the full versions for people so intrigued they want to know everything without playing.  They could also as easily read the plot summarys on it's wiki.