immortalfrieza

I'd say the thing that they didn't make use of the most that was the most obvious was the Keyblade Armor. The Armors are only used in the Mirage Arena, a couple scenes in space, and the ending cutscene. During none of which does the armor seem to have any actual effect. It doesn't even raise defense slightly to have it on. I wish they went full on Iron Man or something with it.

My wonder more than fear is just what terrible minigame are they going to have? All the Kingdom Hearts games have at least one godawful minigame that's incredibly annoying to complete, the Hundred Acre wood usually has a couple. If I have to listen to "It's a Small World" while shooting ice cream at ducks ONE MORE TIME... Romance blossoming between any of the original characters. I am completely against Kairi developing a romance between either Sora, Riku, or anyone else, as well as towards her or any other character romances. I've said it before but the fact that Kingdom Hearts makes no attempt at some cliche romance aside from the Disney characters that always have had them is a great strength to the story.

I don't care much for Sora as a protagonist so if he left I'd be good with it, but I highly doubt they'd off him to do it, just have him retire or something. That said, if they do keep Sora as the protagonist past KH 3 it's going to quickly get ridiculous that they depower him for like the 25th time so he doesn't just effortlessly crush everything. Sora will also have to get some actual character development at some point.

I'd be strongly opposed to any original characters getting together, any of them at all. The fact that the writers didn't feel the need to shoehorn in romances between any of it's original characters to prop the story up is a really refreshing thing to say the least about Kingdom Hearts so far. So much of fiction just loves to take any two characters of opposite gender and put them together with these extremely cliched love stories or worse throwing them together all of a sudden despite a total lack of compatibility and I like not seeing it here. The fact that any two characters can just be friends with each other including extremely close friends without having to end up together or giving off any vibes that they might is a strength of the series. As for if it's true Sora stops being the protagonist after 3, I'd say good riddance to that if it happened. Not that he doesn't work well enough, but Sora has been a really generic and terrible All Loving Hero protagonist with very little actual development throughout the series, all the other protagonists the series has had have been much better than him by a wide margin. The only way I'd be okay with Sora continuing to be the protagonist is if in the next saga he gets character development, a LOT of it and some actual issues to work through. Having Sora get some level of intelligence as well as acting like he's as experienced as he should be by now instead of just automatically and blindly falling for every cookie cutter bad guy's scheme would help too. Normua not keeping up with his own story I understand after all this time, though I myself have no real issues following it. It probably has something to do with me playing through the whole series at least once a year though.

I'd say it's probably mostly just the change in art style and proportions. Things look much less cartoony and everything else looks bigger than it did in KH2 so Kairi looks younger.

The delays that are rampant in this industry get really REALLY annoying. Developers really should do what Bethesda did with Fallout 4 and not even announce a game is even being developed until 2, 3 months tops before it's going to be released, that's plenty of time for advertising it too.

I figure it'll happen sooner or later, but they won't have some big Marvel world or anything. With Marvel I'd say they should probably do something like how the Final Fantasy characters are used, a superhero here, a supervillain there. Star Wars though I could see getting it's own world, both the aesthetic and the themes of Light and Dark Side really fits Kingdom Hearts to a T.

Agreed, the original characters and worlds are easily the best part of any given Kingdom Hearts game. The Disney characters just don't have the uniqueness that the original characters do, and by that I mean the Disney characters have already had their personalities set in stone long before Kingdom Hearts was a thing. It's hard to give character development to characters that did all their developing decades ago without completely throwing out all that development. As for the original characters themselves, I'm actually hoping Nomura decides to go back on his word and just retires Sora in particular as the main protagonist going forward after Kingdom Hearts 3 finally releases. The other original characters are fine, but Sora quite bluntly is a pretty awful protagonist who is cliched to the extreme. Not that he doesn't have any depth at all but it is minimal. Sora is just another typical all loving hero protagonist and has become hilariously powerful at this point which they have to keep on resetting him back to level 1 every game to keep him from simply slaughtering everything after Kingdom Hearts 1 with ease. I think the main issue with the Disney worlds is that the vast majority of the time they follow the plots of the movies they are based off of instead of coming up with something new with them. Whether you're talking about Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, whatever, there's plenty of potential there for original stories to be told with the same characters and world that have nothing to do with the plots of the movies. That, and the Disney worlds have become pretty irrelevant to the story of the games, they're more like filler or a diversion to stretch out the length of the game rather than something of significance to the actual plot of any particular game or even the sagas as a whole. Make original stories out of them and tie what goes on to the overall plot of the game significantly and it would do a lot to improve how fun the Disney worlds are.

A heart does not even need to be in the equation for a pureblood heartless to exist, that's why places deep in darkness that aren't even inhabited are filled with them like the Realm of Darkness. Pureblood heartless do not release hearts even invisibly because they never had them in the first place. They are formed either out of the darkness or when a heart is obliterated by the darkness, they don't have hearts to release.

Pureblood Heartless are natural heartless created either from masses of darkness or when another pureblood heartless consumes a heart, in which they draw out the darkness in the person's heart to form another one of themselves. They do not release hearts like Emblem Heartless do even if they were formed by consuming a heart because they destroy the heart when they do so. Emblem heartless are artificial heartless which are born of a machine and when they consume a heart they fail to do so entirely, they simply swallow the heart in darkness but don't destroy the heart itself in the process, thus they release hearts when destroyed, forming another Emblem heartless of the same type when they consume a heart. For instance, a Large Body Emblem heartless forms another Large Body Emblem heartless when it consumes a heart, while a Shadow Heartless will form another Shadow Heartless, As for whether Purebloods evolve, that's a bit tricky. I think we've seen it before but I don't recall any specific instances right now. I think we've had heartless eat up darkness and change to another form before, but don't quote me on that.

His name is Lea. Got it Memorized?

I think that the next main villain should be someone who entirely uses the light, a "light is not good" character, along with Light equivalents of the Heartless. Something to contrast Xehanort's "Dark is Evil," to give a more nuanced slant to things whereas the Xehanort saga has been good but pretty cliched. None of the characters thus far really would fit that role as there's not really any evil Light users in the series yet. As for Lauriam and the rest of the old characters, I think except for maybe Axel, (his name is Lea, got it memorized?) Roxas, and Xion we should just go back to the main 3 of Sora, Riku, and Kairi. Though in all honesty despite how Noruma has already said otherwise I'd much prefer if either Riku or Kairi took center stage if not a totally new protagonist because Sora was never a particularly interesting or nuanced protagonist in the first place and he's been hogging most of the games already. I'd never say a character is really played out but Sora has had enough time in the spotlight as it is.

Most of the worlds tied to the actual central plot near the end of a given game. Hollow Bastion in KH1 and The World That Never Was in KH2 and DDD for instance. For COM basically everything that takes place in the actual Castle Oblivion instead of the faux Disney worlds is my favorite, and with Recoded that goes to the Castle Oblivion portion of the game too. 358/2 Days would have to go with The World That Never Was as well, specifically the part where Roxas fights his way out of it. BBS is much harder for me to choose from because I LOVED all it's worlds so much so I'm not sure, but I guess I'll give the gold to Deep Space because I love sci-fi in general much more than fantasy.

I'd say there's quite a few video games series that could use the Dynasty Warriors treatment, just like I'd say there's quite a few video game series that could use the Bethesda style open world treatment. Dynasty Warriors is one of those game concepts that just FITS so many different IPs and Kingdom Hearts is no exception. One thing is for sure, if they ever do make a game like that Sinister Shadows needs to be in the soundtrack somewhere.

Same here. I play Birth By Sleep after KH2 because the combat system is so much better that it would make the KH1 and so on combat systems feel much worse than they really are if I were to play KH1 and the rest right after it.

If it would make Donald and Goofy useful in combat sure, but I can't see how it could work with Sora without gimping him in some way compared to previous games. The fast paced hack and slash gameplay is what the game series lives and dies on, anything that would interfere with that shouldn't be in the series (I'm looking at YOU Chain Of Memories card system).

Precisely. The problem was that each world for each character reused at least a couple of the same areas, with Disney Castle in particular being exactly the same for all 3 of them. It would have been best if there were at least a couple worlds a character that were totally unique to that character, however, it's fine that they were using the same worlds, but had the areas been entirely unique and had each story be more unique as well instead of just copying the movies straight it would have been a lot better. Even the other Kingdom Hearts games that used the same basic plot of the movies for it's Disney Worlds did a much better job of hiding it than BBS did.

This is more of a gripe with this kind of thing in general, but whenever I hear someone say that "a character's story is done" or "served their purpose" or "the story is finished" or anything like that I hate it, because all it shows is a lack of imagination on the part of the one saying it. The fact that these people saying these sorts of things can't imagine how things could progress from there doesn't mean it can't. In fact, there is NO such thing as a character who can't develop further, no such thing as a story that can't be further expanded on. Only a character that dies has served their purpose, in a fictional universe where resurrection, ghosts, and undead are possible not even then. It doesn't cheapen what came before for it to continue either, unless the writers royally screw things up and make a really terrible story. In short, there's always room for more. What the!?! People seriously say that? Port Royal looks freaking amazing in Kingdom Hearts 2 and with the advances in technology since it would only look better now. Though I doubt it'll actually be included in KH3, yeah, Star Wars would mesh extremely well with Kingdom Hearts both thematically and gameplaywise. If it does happen I don't think it'll occur until whatever the next Kingdom Hearts saga is, it's too soon after Disney's acquisition for it now.

I would have considered Birth By Sleep perfect were it not for the repetitiveness of the worlds and how awful the Mirage Arena was. Making the worlds much more unique for each character and making the Mirage Arena have some sort of actual place in the story would be what I wished they had spent more time on.

I keep calling Vanitas a Heartless because that's what he is, the pure darkness in Ventus' heart extracted and given form, which is exactly what Heartless are, the darkness in people's hearts which devours the heart of the person and casts off the body into nothingness, which forms a Heartless. Your belief that Heartless did not exist at the time of Birth By Sleep is demonstrably false, Heartless have always existed in the Kingdom Hearts universe naturally. There's two kinds of Heartless, purebred Heartless, which are natural beings formed entirely of the darkness from people's hearts and have always existed, and emblem Heartless, which are Heartless created by Xehanort artificially decades down the line from Birth By Sleep when he was the true Ansem's apprentice. There's the time Xehanort threw Ven against Heartless to try to get him to use the darkness which prompted him to create Vanitas in the first place and Aqua's journey through the Realm of Darkness in Birth By Sleep's final mix "A Fragmentary Passage if you need proof of that. Vanitas is definitely different from an ordinary Heartless, but they are composed of exactly the same stuff, the only difference between Vanitas and a Heartless is he still has a functioning heart just like Xehanort's Heartless which is why he can still think like a normal human being and thus keeps a vaguely human form before it's solidified once Ven merges his heart with Sora, as opposed to Heartless which don't and thus act only on pure instinct. Heartless don't have pupils... except you know, Xehanort's Heartless and Vanitas. Regular Heartless don't have pupils because they don't mimic human form to that extent like Xehanort's Heartless and Vanitas do. With all natural heartless the vast majority of their body is black and their eyes are gold, Anti Sora (the Kingdom Hearts enemy, not Sora's Anti-Form BTW) is the most readily apparent proof of this, thus it follows that Vanitas' hair and eyes would be. That's not confirmation, Nomura is referring ONLY to golden eyes of the members of the True Organization 13, not that any character that has golden eyes is necessarily possessed by Xehanort and certainly not Vanitas. Xehanort was not placing his heart within anyone but Terra at the time of Birth By Sleep, therefore he could not be responsible for Vanitas having golden eyes in any way whatsoever. The only reason Xehanort began placing his pieces of his heart into other people was to attempt to forge the X-blade, which he had no reason to do at the time of Birth By Sleep no matter how much of a master planner he is, he states this in Dream Drop Distance directly: Xehanort: "I once tried to create my own pure light and darkness to forge the X-blade, but the attempt ended in failure. In my eagerness, I had lost sight of the correct way to achieve my goal." Xehanort has no reason whatsoever to start putting his heart into people until AFTER Birth By Sleep's attempt to make the X-blade fails, he doesn't KNOW that his method wouldn't work at the time. Right back at ya.

No, they represent HEARTLESS, I have to emphasize that because you don't seem to get it. Vanitas was originally made entirely of Darkness, just like Heartless, and Heartless, especially natural ones which were all that existed at the time are entirely black with golden eyes. Therefore, Vanitas reflected that when he actually got a human face in his hair and eyes, it's not in any way complicated.

He wouldn't. He outright SAYS he doesn't start making use of this method to forge the X-blade until after Birth By Sleep. Xehanort possesses Terra for the sole reason of getting himself a younger body so he doesn't die of old age.

Yes, but NO ONE is half Xehanort except Terra at the time of Birth By Sleep, it isn't until after this that Xehanort starts placing his heart into people to create the X-blade. Thus Vanitas cannot be part-Xehanort, so the only conclusion that can be made is Vanitas' black hair and golden eyes are a direct result of simply being the kind of being he is.

No. Xion, Eraqus, and Xigbar all have black hair naturally, it has nothing to do with the darkness. When Vanitas was born he was for all intents and purposes a heartless, a vaguely human shaped heartless. Vanitas started out his life as basically this: Then Ven joined his heart with Sora, and Vanitas gained Sora's shape. Vanitas got black hair and golden eyes representing his origin as a being of complete darkness. Vanitas' appearance had nothing to do with Xehanort, Xehanort did not even attempt to start possessing people to make the X-blade until after Terra, and that possession is what causes the white hair and golden eyes that people have, that's the "influence" that Normua is talking about. This is because he didn't know he needed 13 darknesses and 7 lights yet, Master Xehanort even outright says this in Dream Drop Distance. Xehanort: "I once tried to create my own pure light and darkness to forge the X-blade, but the attempt ended in failure. In my eagerness, I had lost sight of the correct way to achieve my goal." So yes, there is one other character who has golden eyes naturally, Vanitas.

Anything from the whole OST really, but I think this one in particular fits: Of course, since Yoko Shimomura was one of the composers for the game that's no surprise.