Dont get me wrong I love the disney side of KH it Wouldn't be the same without SDG Maleficent PeteHades the Mick and stuff but I think if Nomura is teasing his next game as Verum Rex Iwould really prefer it to not be a KH game (Or at least not the one we are used to . Here are my reasons as a long KH and Final Fantasy fan since I was a lil bern:
For those who are unaware Verum Rex is directly and aggressively based on Tetsuya Nomura's scrapped magnum opus of a game Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which he spent 7 years of his life working on.(the game was later reworked into the game Final Fantasy XV under Hajime Tabata). Yozora in appearance resembles the earliest version of Noctis from the first Versus trailers and his and Noctis Caelum's names mean the same thing. There's two guys fighting with him in the Toybox trailer who are spitting images of Versus Prompto and Ignis, and a heroine almost identical to Stella Nox-Fleuret, a main character and Noctis' love interest/Rival who was completely cut from the story after it was reworked from the ground up by Tabata for XV. If that wasn't obvious enough, in the secret movie of KH3 the beginning chords of an all new version of Somnus plays- Somnus a song composed by Yoko Shimomura with the lyrics written by Nomura himself is the main menu theme of FFXV and the Main Theme of Versus XIII. So while Nomura made it clear in an interview that Verum Rex is not 1:1 the exact same as Versus XIII, he has made it pretty clear its as close to Vs XIII and its original plan as possible - that it is basically Versus XIII Reborn.And to me as a long time fan is hype as sh*@ and super exciting basically a video game miracle
But it also makes me wish it wasn't a KH game ...
Versus XIII from the get go was going to be dark, even for a Final Fantasy game. It had blood, Shakespeare, politics, tragedy, betrayal, the world of the dead, grim reapers, lovecraft, horror, different moralities clashing (One of the taglines of the game was "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" making it in a way very different to KH). The game was essentially going to be MA15+ Kingdom Hearts - the same gameplay style and feel but without any Disney red tape or PG rating to hold Nomura back from the mature themes and deep character relations he'd wanted to put into Kingdom Hearts from the beginning.
Nomura has made a comment on this before, in an interview he said "for a long time I have been working in a world (Kingdom Hearts) where everyone is good natured and good to each other and there is no evil, perhaps I have spent too long in such a world ". He is clearly talking about wanting to make a game like KH without the PG or Disney limitations, he wants to make Versus XIII .A big thing people have wanted since at least KH2 was "What if there was a game like KH but with an original story like Roxas' summer break for the WHOLE GAME from start to finish?" I remember literally discussing this with a friends back in 2006 lol. I dont really keep up with fan discussion much now but it seems to me a lot of peoples sentiments are the same, people are super excited by the new ReMind dlc trailer, and nothing in that trailer was Disney. I love Disney in KH but people have wanted for over a decade for a KH like game without the huge Disney part and the ability to go just beyond the usual PG age restriction, where Nomura could have free reign to go no holds barred berserk in his crazy ideas and story for the game. That was where Versus XIII came in. A dark Shakespearean tragedy with themes of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and an eerie world that crossed fantasy with reality. Noctis in Versus as opposed to Noctis in FFXV who is just Naruto in Sasukes' body, was the polar opposite of Sora. Sora was a wild child who lived on an island . Noctis was a silent prince who lived in a castle. Sora is quick to help others whilst Noctis was cold and cared only for his close friends .
Nomura said the theme of the Secret Ending is "Rebirth". If Verum Rex is really the Rebirth of Versus XIII, then I would really like for it to be its own IP maybe with some KH crossovers or at least a KH game with less Disney influence, Irespect many would disagree but I would personally think it a lost opportunity to bring back the spirit and original story of the Game that Never Was only to water it down for the PG rating and shorten it immensely to fit in an un related romp through Arendelle and Moana or something
