Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 210: Kingdom Hearts 3

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

Have we really never done an episode on Kingdom Hearts? Well, it's surprisingly old, and now that the long-awaited third game finally exists, there's never been a better time. This long-running Square franchise has a history as long and complicated as its plot, and we dedicate the first half of this episode to discussing the origins of Kingdom Hearts and just where it's been going for nearly two decades. Then, on the other side, we take on Kingdom Hearts 3: a very new game that still feels remarkably old in good and bad ways, and one that refuses to be anything but itself. This week, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Henry Gilbert, and USgamer's Caty McCarthy as the crew straps into their gummi ships to fly the friendly skies of Kingdom Hearts. This is one episode where we're not a-hyuckin' around.

This week on Retronauts, we're talking about the happiest games on Earth. post for this one, Bob Mackie. And today's topic is Kingdom Hearts 3. And, of course, we'll be talking a bit about the series as a whole. Before I go into this any further, who is here with me today? It's me, Jeremy Parrish. Jeremy's wearing his goofy suspenders as normal and his strange hats. Thank you for coming, Jeremy.

Yes, I'm a talking dog unlike Pluto, who is an inferior not talking dog. Stand by Me really laid out of thesis about this whole thing, I think. Who is our Kingdom Hearts expert? I'm putting that on you, by the way. On me? It's me, Katie McCarthy, features out there with U.S. Gamer. And, yeah, I'm a scholar in all things, Kingdom Hearts, having been a kid that grew up with the Kingdom Hearts. Okay.

That's great to have on this podcast. And we have a Kingdom Hearts bystander here as our final guest. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert. And as I said, at the end of watching a bunch of Kingdom Hearts primers, got it memorized. I don't know that mean. Really? Wait, who says that? Axel says that at a tonne in KH3.

He's one of those guys with the hair. He has red hair. He also know him as Lee. Yeah. They're all so different with so many different personalities. But, yeah, so Kingdom Arts 3 came out as of January. Actually, this episode will be releasing a few days after you recorded. It's a really quick turnaround.

So this is all going to be fresh opinions, fresh out of our brains and into your ears. But after 13 years of waiting, Kingdom Hearts 3 is out. And by the way, Kingdom Arts 2 released the same year as Retronauts. So they're both 2006 products. Exciting. And we're both aging horribly. So we need an entire podcast series to cover Kingdom Hearts as a whole. Like I feel like if we did a Kingdom Hearts episode, we need multiple episodes because there are like nine, technically nine games.

So I want to split this into some light talk about the series as a whole in the first part and then talk about the sequel, the latest sequel in the second part to see how it reflects upon the series as a whole. Before we go on, though, I want to talk about our experience with Kingdom Hearts because Katie is a bit younger than I. And Kingdom Hearts has been a fun experience for me, like experiencing as an outsider the nostalgia of other people and seeing if something will fulfill that nostalgia or let them down. And it's been very fun. As someone not even that much older than the people who grew up with Kingdom Hearts, I was like 20 when the first game came out. But Katie, like, when did you find Kingdom Hearts? And how has it affected your life? Kingdom Heart, the first Kingdom Hearts is like my first big game I played on my own.

So I guess, like, I played like stuff on Dreamcast on my dad's on the weekends. but like kingdom hearts the first game that I played at home alone and it was like the first like RPG I got really into and I was probably like 11 or 12 when it came out so I'm like 26 now I don't know math but my mom was really in the final fantasy when in the 90s when I was growing up and I watched her play those so she got that game for me thinking like oh it's final fantasy characters and also Disney because you're a kid and you love Disney or whatever and I got really into it. And so following it through the entire series, you've played every game? Have you...

There's a few. I haven't played, like, I haven't played Chain of Memories, which is the Game Boy one. It's later. Yeah, it's like a card game. I don't... I've watched videos of it, so I, and I know the story that happens in it, but I've never played that game. I didn't play the mobile game, which is like... Code.

There's like a lot of... Oh, did you play coded? Well, there's a code game. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's too many mobile. There's so many. Oh, my God. Yeah, I've played most of them though like i played 3d s one PSP one uh the weird like fragmentary passage

so i think out of all of us you probably have played the most i probably played the most yeah yeah we're gonna rely on that knowledge uh Henry how about you what's your experience oh well uh I'm the same age as you Bob and uh when a hundred and three and so I was in my 20s when the first one came out and I liked it conceptually you know of like this crazy thing that like Disney of all companies is working

the square of all companies. It just sounded so odd to me. And then I really got into the first one just for the production values. I was like, no game had looked like this or had all these voices in it. It just felt like such a prestige title. I really got into it. Then by the time the side games came out as the first side games like Chain of Memories, and into two, that's when it hit me that how incredibly and,

style convoluted it was and based on my age I was like I've kind of been on this merry go around before with convoluted anime stuff I'm not as into this now I would still visit in on it because I still love the production design

of it and just the a lot of concepts of it and the music but I didn't watch it that closely and then three once three got announced I just wanted to play it and experience it just to go to the end of this road, even though it's not the end

at all. No, no. At least to a longer, more complicated road, if anything. Meanwhile, my husband is, he's in his late 20s, closer in age to the main audience. And, like, I do get to experience it through him. Like, he, he

showed me today how he memorized the, like, final conversation between Zemnes, no, and some, the, oh, God. Insomseer of Darkness? The villain of Kingdom Hearts,

One voiced by Billy Zane and Sora, how he's like, you are born in darkness and ultimately return. But he knew all the lines to him. Like, he is the audience not me, though I still enjoyed it memorized. He did get it memorized. I'm catching on, I'm catching on. I had a similar, like, this came out when I was 20, and I was a big square fan, and I was there for the production values and for the sheer novelty, because it would just seem

so weird. And I was willing to tolerate some bad gameplay just for the sheer novelty value of that. And I did play the second game, and that's where the series really lost me. There were some interesting decisions made at that point, but they really lost me with that game because I think they were focusing less on Disney and more on like, what if we had all of our own characters in case we lose the license for Disney characters? We'll talk more about that later, but Jeremy, how about you? You're the elder in the room. Yeah, so back in Ott 2, let's see. Yeah, when Kingdom Hearts was first announced, the idea was so bizarre, like Henry said, Final Fantasy meets Walt Disney.

I feel like everyone I knew online was basically, you know, instantly rejected it out of hand. And I said, this is so weird. I don't see how this is going to work. I love it. I just love it. And then the game came out, and I realized I don't love it. I just don't enjoy playing it in any way. It is kind of the quintessence of bad 3D platforming and kind of busy work mini-games.

And the battle areas are just like the definitive, here is a big empty box where you fight the same three enemies over and over again. I just didn't enjoy it at the time and I still don't enjoy it. When the first game came out, the girl I was dating at the time really got into it. So I saw like most of the game, but I didn't have to play it myself. And I feel like that was probably the way to experience it. But because, you know, then I got into the games press a couple of years later. And as the guy who was like, oh, he covers Japanese stuff, oh, he covers role-playing games. Guess who got to cover the Kingdom Heart games over and over again, especially at events.

So I've played almost all the Kingdom Hearts games, except three. I haven't had a chance to play that yet. But I didn't play them a lot, but, you know, I would play them like at events. I've played coded. I played it like on an original Japanese cell phone, for God's sake. I played a chain of memories at E3 trying to figure out what the hell is happening while E3 is happening all around me.

So yeah, I've played pretty much all of them in some capacity. I imported two along with, I think Kingdom Hearts 2 had the Final Fantasy 12 demo in it or something like that in Japan. Yeah, in America, Dragon Quest did, but maybe it was different in Japan. I think it was different in Japan. I think that's why I imported it and did a lot of import coverage of the Final Fantasy 12 demo. But I also played, it might have been two separate things that happened in close conjunction. But I played, you know, through the opening chapter of Kingdom Hearts 2 in Japanese.

And I was like, who is rock sauce? What is rock sauce? How do you make sauce out of rocks? It's so weird. What is happening in this game? Why are they sitting around? just like talking on a clock and eating ice cream. What is going on?

That sea salt ice cream looks good, though. And then it turns out... They're not ice cream. And then it turns out that if you played in English, it also makes equally little sense. So I felt a little better. I felt a little less confused. Like, adrift. I guess it's okay to like Kingdom Hearts, by the way, if you're listening.

I don't want anyone to get mad. Yeah, yeah. Like, I don't resent anyone. We have different opinions in the room. To me, you know, kind of like what Henry said, you know, kingdom hearts is this outsider experience. for me. I just, I cannot connect with it in any way. It is these things that I enjoy and then they come together in a way that I don't enjoy at all. But I don't, you know, resent or think less

of someone who likes Kingdom Hearts. Like, I totally get, you know, especially, you know, for someone who's like 10 years younger than me, 15 years younger than me, like coming into it and being at that age where you're like, oh, this is, this is exactly what I need. That's great. That's awesome. I'm happy that it has fans. And I just, please don't. think less of me for not wanting to experience Donald Duck this way. Although I will say, oh, my God, Donald Duck in Japanese is amazing. Oh, that's a good Donald Duck. Well, I can't actually form words.

Like, he can actually say Ohio Gozai Mas in Japanese with that voice. Wow. I cannot do that. I mean, like, I feel like the Donald Duck voice actor for English is getting a little too old. It's sounding very tortured, especially. So I tweeted about this. It got a lot of reception. but I think the worst thing Donald Duck can say in the game is Organization 13.

When they make Donald Duck say that with his duck lisp, I can feel the voice actor dying. Like, please don't make me do this anymore. What about this looks like a good spot to search for ingredients? Oh, my God. Slow that down by like 20 times, you'll have that sentence. That's Donald Duck's catchphrase in that game. So essentially, this is how it started, this is how it started. It's kind of different now, but I think at its core, this is what it is.

It's basically a way to play through truncated versions of your favorite Disney movies, and all of that is held together with a thick glue of JRP and anime tropes. So the essential experience is you replaying these smaller versions of Disney movies, interactive versions of them with RPG elements, and then the stitch all that together, there is a very anime, JRP story with new characters. That's essentially what it is as a whole. but it's morphed a lot since then I think Square again is more interested in their own characters

than having to do Disney things but we'll talk more about that later but let's talk about the mastermind of Kingdom Hearts and he's come up a million times on Retronauts I don't know if you've ever really deep dive into his career or him as a person and I will say he's been a pretty big punching bag throughout the history of my history with the Games Press

because he's a guy who can't seem to get things done but he did get Kingdom Arts 3 done so that's an achievement for him but Tetsuya Nomura. And he did pass off Final Fantasy Versus 13 to Hajima Tabada, which is also an accomplishment. And I guess he seems pretty salty about it.

Ooh, I got stuff to say about that later. I want to know about this. But so Nomura, just a quick, like, bio on him. He really roast the Power at Square in the late 90s as the character designer of games like Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 10, and also he was sort of their guy for just side games like Paraside Eve, Ray Fencer Musashi, Ear Guys, and the Bouncer. He sort of defined the look of square games in the late 90s in early 2000s.

Definitely, if you saw a square game, he would normally be the lead on the art or defining what the characters looked like. Yeah, he was very much their PlayStation 1 artist because his very angular sort of Akira Toriyama inspired art style translated really well to the limited low-poly models of PS1 games. I mean, he did the little Popeye people for Final Fantasy 7 and then, the lankier characters with their shooting swords for Final Fantasy 8? His asymmetric steampunk works beautifully for it, though I think it's key to point out here that he is a, like, designer of cool characters, not the guy who was writing scenarios. He was not the plot writer of these games.

Right, right. He would have influence on some games stories, but not, for the most part, he was just an artist. But let's talk about his early life. So he was born, I believe, in the early 70s. And he took an interest in gaming that his family actually encouraged. Whenever we hear about these guys, their families always say, no, you should be a doctor, you should be a lawyer, you should be this. His family encouraged him to pursue gaming.

He programmed games, very simple games. He loved things like Dragon Quest. And his original ambition was to become a manga artist. But that is a very hard career path to take. So he chose a much more practical path and decided to be, a commercial illustrator for, you know, ads and magazines and things like that. Yeah, to be a manga artist or, you know, a comic artist, you need to be able to, you know, visually tell stories.

And I don't know that Nomura isn't necessarily good at doing that. And I say this as someone who studied to be an artist and is also, like, would love to be a comics artist, but am not good at telling stories visually. So I kind of do the Nomura thing, which is like, here's some people standing around in a scene. and please do not ask me to draw people having like a dialogue together or living a slice of life experience. Yeah, he's more of like a fashion artist because all the art I see of him is like,

here's a character posed in clothing. Like at most they'll be leaning against something, but most of the time they'll just be in a void. Yeah, I feel like Parasite Eve key art is sort of like, is Nomura in his purest form. Like there are illustrations of Ayabria like, you know, posing and like putting her leg up and stuff. like she's, you know, leaning against a chair or something,

but there's not actually a chair there. It's just like she's in this pose, in a white nothingness. So, yeah, that's kind of the style he works in. Chairs are hard to draw. That's what I'll say. They are. Is it like an office chair? Is it a desk chair?

You can draw on your own chair. Stool. You figure it out. Use your imagination. It's very fashion model type of poses. Yeah, for sure. So he began at Square with Final Fantasy 4, at the bottom rung there,

as a debugger of the game. So he was at Square very early. In fact, he's been there for almost like 30 years now, which is crazy. He started designing things art-wise for Final Fantasy 5, where he designed monsters. So he was out there designing very Amano-style monsters for the game. That's where he first tapped into his art abilities for Square. And actually, he wanted to work at Square because he was looking for a job, and he saw, like, a Square ad looking for employees, but it had a mono art on it.

maybe, like, who knows, like, something for Final Fantasy 3 or 2 or something like that, but that's what drew him to square. Like, I want to work for a company that does this sort of thing. Like, this kind of art really speaks to me. And he considers Amano one of his major influences, just weird because I don't see that at all. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. And he kind of did replace him, too.

He did, yeah. So during the development of Final Fantasy's of this era, typically staff members, the teams were pretty small, especially compared to today. So, Sakkuchi would have his teams bring him, you know, their ideas in the form of, like, a document. Like, give me all your ideas for what you want in this game. And staff members would typically, you know, write them all out on a computer and print them out and give them to Sakaguchi. But Nomura, for Final Fantasy 6, I believe, he basically made, like, a handwritten thing with, like, illustrations and diagrams and designs. Like, he really wowed Sakaguchi. And that's basically how he climbed the ladder at square by going above and beyond what was

required of him. Like, he showed an early flare. He really stood out. And that's how he became the graphic designer of Final Fantasy 6. And that's the first game where he had input on story. I believe he created the characters of Shadow and Setser and their backstories. Those are such no more types. They really are, yeah.

And that's why those are the only Final Fantasy 6 characters that show up in stuff that he does. Oh, you're right. Well, here in Obisakiguchi is a really, I mean, interesting figure for him. And, like, I mean, Katie, like, Erychus is the character of Erika's in the world of Kingdom Hearts is a total tribute to Sakaguchi and his importance to just square in its whole history, too, right? Probably. I mean, I feel like something in Kingdom Hearts is that the characters, or Erika's is very

defined or, like, looks Japanese, you know, compared to, like, all the big-eyed, you know, other characters in the world. So I can definitely see that as being. being a very, and he's like a mentor type figure too. And he's got the Sakaguchi mustache. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I love that mustache.

Eric is a pet is square spelled differently. Oh, that's a good. They're too clever with those names in King of Parks. But yeah, let's go. Final Fantasy 6 was his first major role. He designed Monster 5, 6. He was the art design, sorry,

the graphic director, directing how the game looked. And really, like I said before, his salad days were 97 in 2002, where he was on almost every main Final Fantasy outside of 9, which was more of a throwback to older games, the older Famicom games, very different than the Nomura style. And Kingdom Hearts in 2002 was the first game he directed, and he's only directed Kingdom Hearts games since then in terms of games that were actually released. So not Final Fantasy versus 13, but apparently he is now directing the Final Fantasy 7 remake

after it was taken away from CyberConnect 2, I believe. I think he was always directing it I think he was just overseeing CyberConnect 2 Okay I think now he's even more in control though Because Kingdom Hearts 3 is over And the development now is internally at Square So I think he's even in a major role there now

But that is technically the next game he is making Although that is going to be The next King of Hearts 3 for Square I think Who knows when that will be coming out I think there's been like one mock-up screenshot to date In like a logo probably There isn't a gameplay demo A few years ago

No wonder I forgot I think that was a CyberConnect 2 demo Yeah so that probably got thrown in the trash But they've shown off Like you know renders of the characters So there's something exists Some sort of arts for the game But yeah we don't know when it's coming out

Apparently It's not a real game Barrett and Tifa look pretty cool It's a fun It's a fun idea for a game If it plays like Kingdom Hearts It can't be It can't retell the story of Final Fantasy

because it's too big, like, or FF7. I'm okay with it being an extra RPG. I don't want to play the Kingdom Hearts. Let's move on to the background of Kingdom Hearts. I think this is very interesting because Henry and I do a lot of animation history research for our What a Cartoon podcast and for our Talking Simpsons Network podcast. And looking at where Disney was in the early 2000s in the late 90s when these deals were signed, you can see why Disney would want to do this.

So back then, so now we're in 2019. As of this recording, the whole five. thing just happened. If you go on Disney's front page, the Disney company, you'll see Bart Simpson there with what, like Avatar and other things like that. Yeah, like Disney owns everything.

John McLean, the xenomorph. They got it all. I mean, the joke, like, oh, can X be in Kingdom Hearts? Those are no longer funny because everything can be in Kingdom Hearts now. But back in the early 2000s... Except Star Trek.

Except Star Trek. They don't own Star Trek yet. Give it time. Or the DC Universe. So no Batman. Give it time. That's what I'm saying. But almost 20 years. ago, they were not doing so well. I'm sure they were still making so much money, but they were not making all the money. So if you look at the different parts of their business, parks-wise, California Adventure just started. Nobody like that. Nobody wanted the theme park

version of California. Their movies were all underperforming, things like Atlantis. I believe Treasure Planet was around that time. Even things like Hercules and Mulan were not being the big hits like Lion King and Aladdin and Beauty and the Beauty and the Beast. They were kind of in a slump and ultimately Disney wants everyone to be their audience and they mainly wanted men, young men, because they were the audience they really couldn't pin down because you know, little boys could like the musicals but then they'd eventually grow out of them or be told like you're not supposed to like that. You know, they were very much gendered products. And it should be pointed out that the same year Kingdom Hearts released was the same year Disney turned

around in terms of their animation. So it led to when Lilo and Stitch came out. So they, they, they recovered the same year Kingdom Hearts came out but in that like on a three or four year period they really needed more support and I think that is the only time this deal could have been signed for Disney in that in that period of time the weird Bob Iger apocalypse where everything was going wrong well they're just in the middle they're in such a search for something too it's why they rebooted Tron because they're like would you get Tron what if we did Tron you'll come back for that they they didn't know what they wanted to be.

So, teaming up with, I mean, too, Disney stuff is, I mean, it's huge here, but also in Japan, they love Disney stuff. So you go to a Japanese company for that is a really smart move. So a huge cross-cultural appeal. Also, another contextual thing for this period in time, we all forget this probably, but at this time, Square was poised to be the next entertainment monolith on part with Disney. Like, they're going to be making movies. They're doing.

Animation for the Matrix spinoff. Oh, that's right. The Animatrix, too. Yeah, prior to the spirits within flopping, that was what Square was poised to be. Things didn't work out so well for them. They still did very good after that, but they were cut down before they could reach that level. And Disney probably wanted to be in bed with them. Like, this could be the next big company we want in bed with us.

We want them on our side for when they reached their heights. We want to be working with them. So, like, all these things happening at once, I feel like our Y, Kingdom Hearts, was allowed to happen. Outside of that context, I really don't think it could have ever happened. And I wonder how long that deal was good for because I feel like Disney,

we'll talk more about three after the break, but I feel like Disney is now more aware of what Kingdom Arts is doing than ever before. And it feels even more restrictive and even more, the parts of the game that are Kingdom Hearts feel like they're so isolated from the parts that are Disney stuff.

I heard that the Frozen stuff is like super, just like, you know, like, like that Lord of the Rings RPG RPG that EA made where it's like hey here's all these guys who are kind of like the Lord of the Rings characters from the movies having an adventure right next to the people in the movie

but not actually taking part. Yeah, that's cool, right? In most of the Kingdom Hearts retellings it's like, oh, so maybe Sorrow was in this scene with Donald and Goofy with Frozen. It's just like, hey, look at that song she's singing over the hill. It's just like they're always like in the background. Well, there's this hilarious out-of-context

official Kingdom Hearts manga panel of Donald explaining it. He's like, no, chaos. I forget how he puts it, but it's ordering chaos, and you can't disturb these worlds too much. It's like the prime directive of the Kingdom Hearts team. And Donald explains it to you right on that panel. Donald says general order number one. Donald talks like he should never talk.

I want to hear that voice actor say that dialogue bubble that I never believe is real, but it is real. Thank you. So how this happened was, so some square higher-ups around the time of Mario 64, they wanted to make a 3D game with the same degree of movement as Mario 64, but they were like, we don't have any characters to push this game.

We make so many Final Fantasy, there's no, like, one standout Final Fantasy character. It was probably before seven. And I believe No More overheard this. This is the apocryphal story. I'm sure it was much more business-like, but apparently no more overheard this conversation or this meeting. And he said, I want to direct this game. I want to lead this game.

I want it to be about my character that I create and we should get Disney involved because Disney has very popular characters. We will never have a character as popular as Mario or Disney characters. So that is basically where this came into being. Interestingly, according to my research, Square was working in the same building as Disney at some point during their history. So their executives would have lunch together occasionally, and they were like, they had connections previously. So that's how they were able to talk to each other. I mean, it was probably like a Disney auxiliary office, you know, not like their main headquarters in Japan or something, but... Like a licensing office or something like that, yeah, something along those lines.

I mean, they did used to work in this, Square used to work in this big building in Shinjuku, really close to the station. And, yeah. Yeah, I could see, you know, that being an office complex where they had, you know, like a Disney office with 20 people in it. and, yeah, get the conversation rolling. It's a nice office. It's a nice office park. I'm just bragging that I've been there. I've been there, too.

I've been inside of it. But, I mean, that's the new one, Bob, not the old one. Oh, God. The new one's great, though. Is that, like, weird-looking building? I think I walked by it when I was in. Yeah, it's got, like, the windows were all misshaping. It looked cool when I walked by it when I was in Tokyo.

Yeah, but I look at it and I'm like, I feel so bad for the window washers. That's got to be, it's like, it doesn't observe normal human geometry. It's like, you know, non-Euclidean space or something. this feels name dropy but the best cheap as sushi I had is in their office park oh yeah yeah it's so good it's really good get it if you're there and also you can't meet Hajima Tabata anymore he's gone no I did

and then drop a name right there in your face you can go to their cafe and hear them play the final dungeon music for Final Fantasy 8 on infinite loop over and over again until you're like when do I get to fight Ultimisha the workers have gone insane I got to have slime pancakes there regular pancakes cut into the shape of a slime

I got to lock up a show room and Sephiroth looked up my skirt. But yeah, I wanted to point out that, like, that is why, I mean, we just see Disney as, like, the thing that, the company that owns everything. And they did own a lot of things in that time period, but they were looking for, to diversify their audience. And Kingdom Hearts was part of that, for sure. So I want to talk about the generalities of Kingdom Hearts before you move on to three after the break. So, Kingdom Hearts stuff in general. So, Katie, you can correct me if I'm wrong.

But for my account, there are nine games. There might be ten. I think, like, one game. One game is like a reworking of another game, like a cell phone game. There's a couple. There's also a re-chain of memories. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, counting like just like the bit, yeah, like I would count chain of memories and re-chain as like the same game. It's just basically a port that looks better and it plays better. But I don't know. So there's like, I'm going to try and do this off the top of it. So there's first kingdom hearts. There's chain of memories. There's kingdom arts two. And then.

I'm done it for that. Yeah. And then it goes to. three, five, eight, over two days. Nice, nice. Okay, what's after that? It might be coded after that. And then birth by sleep?

Birth by sleep? Oh, man, there might be less than. Okay. Dream drop distance. The dream drop distance is the 3DS one. There's key, or is King's Mart's Key. It's like a lower X thing. They pronounce it cross, but also it's supposed to be pronounced key in the context of the game.

It doesn't make any sense. Is that the smartphone game? That's the smartphone game. It's also a browser game. It's like key, like the Greek letter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's one I'm forgetting. Oh, there's a fragmentary passage which shipped with Kingdom Hearts 2.5 final remix.

It's like a— A fragmentary passage. Yeah, it's like a three-hour game. Ever let no more near the title of a game. Yeah, there's like a bunch of tildas in that name, too. It's great. I've turned around on this. I think it's kind of awesome how alienating these games are to outsiders.

And they succeed despite that, especially – we'll talk to – we'll talk about three, but three does not care if you don't know anything. It's not going to explain anything to you. And I like how just brazen all of this naming is. It really fits in line with the philosophy of these games. Like, we don't care if you don't get this. Like, this is for Kingdom Hearts fans only. But most games feature the Trio of Sora, who's sort of like the human Mickey Stand-in, Donald Duck and Goofy, in an action-rpg context, sort of like Secret of Mana, if you want to throw up back to that. I always think of Secret of Mata when I think of Kingdom Hearts.

I don't know if that's wrong, but it feels like the next generation of Secret of Mata, to me at least. Why do you have a handy Mata games? Yeah, I mean, it's better than any of the actual generation of Secret of Mata games. Yeah, even if you don't like Kingdom Hearts, it's better than Donda, which, like I say, great soundtrack on that game, by the way, but wasted on a bad game. I'll go to bad for children of Mata, but that's a great one. I do like that one. But so each Disney World you visit in these Kingdom Hearts games, they usually feature like a guest character

that will assist you in battle although you can't bring them to other worlds because as I've known from people who worked on Disney stuff they don't like different realities interacting when we had Nina Matsumoto on our podcast talking about the Disney Afternoon collection she wasn't allowed to have the characters interacting with each other they'd be like in separate windows looking in different directions

on the cover of that game and then when I did the cover art for that episode last week I put them all in the same physical space don't let Disney find out about that. Chip and Dale were standing right at Screeze McDuck's feet, looking up at amazement in him having a VGA 100-rated copy of Duck Tales 2 for N.S. Because he's rich.

The licenses would disapprove of that misuse of the characters. That's why Mickey Donald Goofy, those type of mega characters who get to walk around the parks everywhere, they can break the rules in K.H. But everybody else has to stay in their lane and, like, very, very sectioned off. Where do the three caballeros fit in here? Man, I'd love them. They'd be in Caboero world. They'd be in their own, like, South America, Central and South America world.

That Donald would then transform into his caballero self for that. They don't make Kingdom Arts worlds out of those weird Disney compilation movies. They ought to. The Make Mind Music World. Right, yeah. Get yourself a song of the South World. I would play that. That's awesome.

Yeah, they'd be a driving game, yeah. Donald would turn into a version of himself in the film like Mickey Donald and Goofy did when they went to the, the Three Musketeers World. I like that. But, I mean, with those kind of restrictive rules, you can see why it takes

12 years to put out a fucking King of Arts game. Oh, we'll get to that. So this series started on the PS2, but it was very, it just jumped from platform to platform, usually on portables.

So everything like Katie said, like Game Boy, advanced, cell phones, smartphones, DS3, PSP, though the next big console release always seemed like it was just around the corner. Like everyone, even though the other games were quote-unquote real Kingdom Hearts games,

everyone was waiting for three or whatever the next console game would be and these are all playable via two collections on current systems there's also the story so far which has everything oh so you can get them both together I think there's some games that are just a big cutscene because they're like you don't need to play this

you know like coded or something they turn out to a cutscene yeah I thought so because code is like almost like a puzzle action game or something it was like intelligent cube meets kingdom arts Well, same with 358th. Like, it was a DS game. I think you mean 358 over two. It was a DS game and you can't put that really on a PS.

Solve for X. Three. So they instead just, I believe they just HD-Fied the cutscenes and stitched it together as best they could. But I always wondered with the proliferation on so many different systems, if that was because Kingdom Hearts was the biggest hit Square had at a time of dire. financial situation where they had to merge with NX and that's why they're like we need every Kingdom Hearts game on every system we possibly can.

And at a time when Japan was getting used to H.E. development and it was like the narrative was that Japan can't make games anymore and they're only making games for portable systems now. Of course that's reversed. All the biggest games are Japanese and on modern systems now, but back then that definitely wasn't the case. When Chain of Memories

came out, it was when Square really wanted to be on the GBA, like they, that was, they didn't a shit about being on the GameCube. They wanted to be on the GBA. Yeah, they made good with Nintendo to do that in 2003. I mean, they did give us Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on GameCube, but really

their heart was on GBA. There's a remake of that coming out now, right? Yes. Yes. On Switch. And Chocobo Mystery Dungeon, everybody just came out, and I'm can't wait to go download it. Is that a version of the Wii game? Yes. I love that name. Everybody. Every buddy. Isn't that great? That's so cute. I love Mystery Dungeon games, and I love Chocobos, and I love buddies.

So what could possibly go wrong. So I want to contain this into maybe like 10 minutes, but the story of Kingdom Hearts we're all laughing. I will say up front, I do have another podcast session in an hour. It's true. And I have to like eat again and go to sleep. But I will

say, like my opinion is like I like convoluted stories, but like Henry said, I grew out of them. If you talking about Kingdom Arts up front would be no different than if we were talking about like Evangelion to an outsider. But I feel like playing Kingdom Arts 3 is like watching the Evangelian movie

without seeing the TV show. Just like, who are all these people? What are they doing? What's the context? I feel like the Kingdom Hearts series, biggest crime is that Kingdom Hearts 3 took so long to come out. Yeah. So you have something like six or seven games

that are literally just them spinning their wheels narratively and not actually accomplishing anything and just trying to say like, where is there a gap that we can squeeze some sort of story into? And so you end up with like this endless iteration of the key people. I was telling a Henry like via Twitter or whatever that it was sort of a, I think it's a little pretentious for me to say this, but it feels like Arabian nights where the woman has to tell a new story every night to avoid being killed. That's like no more to avoid having his job murdered. Like keep stretching the story, keep expanding. That's essentially what it is because, so my take on it was like it's like the result of precarious IP negotiation and just like his inability to finish a game. So like the story has changed as the result of just so many different factors and it's moved in so many different ways. And Henry recommended this great video. which I'll link to one of many on the internet like here is the most

abbreviated summary of Kingdom Hearts story and it's still 40 minutes long but from the very beginning there are so many proper nouns and so many different versions of characters that I was just like Teflon it was just hitting me and like bouncing off of me like even with that descriptor I had no idea like what was going on like I said earlier in the series from the second game I feel like Square and Nomura wanted to build a safety network It was like, in case Disney says no, we have so many characters we can tell these stories about. And from three, I feel like I play three. The Disney stuff feels like something they're getting out of the way.

Like, okay, we'll get through this stuff and then you'll feature all the characters you like and all their endings and all their stories and stuff like that. But now it's oddly enough, like to me, playing through these games, the Disney thing feels like a formality. Like, we have to do Disney stuff, so just play through these. But then you're going to get to the stuff you actually care about because the Disney World's, don't have any real effect on the story. Like at best that McGuffin will be in that world and that'll be it. But

Katie and Henry help me with the story. What's happening? And do you like it? So I'm like I consider myself a Kingdom Hearts fan having grown up with it and I consider like the first game on my favorite games. But I remember playing two and not liking two. Two only played once. So it's been

like over over 15 years I guess at this point since I play King Hearts too. And then I like birth by sleep a lot. And there's like a few of the other ones like the 3DS one's pretty bad but what i like about or what i used like about the first game was that it was a pretty simple story like you could comprehend it really easily it's just about friendship and like a loss of friendship you know and dealing with that and like the grief of growing up yeah uh and i feel like as a series has gone on that has

definitely gotten way more complicated but i feel like that's still kind of the core and i think in kingdom march three it's kind of comes back to like there's still a lot of complicated with fluff and really dumb shit, but it's still about, like, you know, friendship and also humanity and, like, what that means, which I feel like the game is, or the series has evolved more towards with Kingdom Arts 2 dealing with, like, nobodies, which are, like, clones or people or whatever. Yeah, well, yeah, I think that, yeah, the plot should be so simple. It really is there in one of, like, it's really about so many different, just, like, trios

of people interacting with each other. And, you know, sometimes you bounce off each other, sometimes you don't, you enjoy each other. And it's about connections with hearts. And it's also that, like, Sora is such a, just a innocent, lovely kid. Where is his parents? They do exist. They're in the first game. Yeah, that's, like, the first game established, they go to the island, you know, to have fun.

And they're, like, parents that exist. And after that, just like, yeah, he doesn't have parents anybody. Yeah, his parents is a spirit. And, but yeah, the way it gets worse and worse, I think something, too, that makes it convoluted is, it is that, like, they just had to keep punting. Like, it was like, well, three hasn't been negotiated yet. We got to punt again. We got to keep exploring this thing. Somebody else.

More amnesia. More amnesia. So much amnesia. So many doubles, so many digital doubles, so many. Digital doubles. It's true. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I've heard goofy talk about data. And also a thing that makes it take forever is that also about the story that Al little the Disney stuff matters in the many in the many videos of retrospectives I watched of like explaining the story almost no scenes from any

Disney World are in there because nothing that matters happens in them and at most they'll be like you'll get done with the Disney World and then the villains will show up like ah they're moving on to the next Disney World and then they'll have some more interchange like exchange and then they'll that's it one

and Amora also is like he is a reverse weeb like he loves he really is into star wars he's into star trek he's into uh lord of the rings type stuff especially erikis who we mentioned earlier like birth by sleep is just a star war's prequel yeah for sure it's about the fall of the jedi order to zanort who is basically a palpatine oh wow so organization 13 is like they're like jedi's yep yeah i thought so well they're more they're more like synths but there's 13 of them instead of the rule of two and a synth only speaks an absolute's Bob. You need to keep that again.

I don't like any of this conversation. But yeah, so when you have stories like that, like that's him, you're adding the complications of Star Wars to that. But that's also something really cool that he puts in that, like, characters like Erychus, voiced by Mark Camel. And then you also had Anselm the Wise was once voiced by Christopher Lee. And same with Leonard Nimoy in the skin, too. Zanort was Leonard Nimoy.

It was perfect. He had Erychus and Zanort were fighting each other. It was Luke Skywalker fighting Spock, but the fucking things take so long that everybody dies before he can make. He was good as Aenort, too. Like, he had that perfect, like, creepy voice, you know. Oh, God. It's, I mean, Rutger Hauer plays him in the new game, and he's also very good. Yeah, he's pretty good.

But there's no replacing Spock. You can't replace Spock. What I like about the series, though, is that this sounds like a weird compliment. But, again, I like how it doesn't care if you're on the outside. It's very much about, we made. this very expensive thing and only this amount of people will actually be able to engage with it on the level it's intended to be engaged with. I found it interesting that if you go to the summaries page and you're a little like gummy phone or whatever where it's like chapter one

and it gives you like a paragraph of what happened. I would read those and be like, that's what happened in this chapter? This is very concise. Like nothing what these people were saying conveyed this information. So I feel like in terms of like the abstract of the story, it does make sense. But like the communication of that story is not done as well as like here's what's happening in the scene on paper. And then the acting and the dialogue does not convey that very well. This is a square soft or square inix, I guess, a problem.

I mean, Final Fantasy 13, there was so much. Oh, that era especially. Just like you didn't get in the game. And then you would read the database codex or whatever and be like, oh, huh. I guess it would have been good to have known what the cosmology of this universe is and what the big floating broken moon thing in the sky is and what the role of the goddesses had to do.

Yeah, but they didn't actually explain that in the game. They're just like, whoa, I got a LeSie mark. Let's go like have an adventure on the road and just keep walking in the straight line for a long time. And also the major complication in KH is that I think he can only create so many characters. And so every character has to have like a double. double or an echo of yourself or

separate identities, like Riku, I think, has at least three other Rikun itself. Yeah, there's, yeah, there's not too mistaken for the other Riku. Yeah, well, then... Who's also in there. I mean, it all, I feel like it all began, and I, KH2 is where

this all got this so complicated. Yeah, it's where it went weird. It's where you meet Roxus. And then you, and then when Mickey tells you, that's not handsome, you're like, what the fuck is it? And so you have to constantly say Anselbringer of darkness or Anselm the Wise.

Like, that's the, otherwise people don't know what's answering. And Anson, the Wise is like a good guy, but you don't know that until like the end. There's just like so much going on. They also got rid of some of the catnip I liked in this game. For me personally, it was the Final Fantasy characters. And I guess there is a story reason why they're not in the third game. But it never made sense to me from a, I guess, sales reason or just a way to attract people to the series. He's like, I felt like that was always a major factor.

Like, you'll meet Aeryth, you'll meet Waka, there's Mughals and Chocobos. But now it's like, a Mughal sells you things and that's it. Like, I don't know why. Maybe it's no more trying to take more ownership over the whole thing. Like, these are only my characters in this game now. Yeah, it's really weird. I think you said in the interview, like, before Kingdom Arts 3 came out, that since Kingdom Arts has such a well-established, like, original character base, they don't need the

Final Fantasy games or Final Fantasy characters like lean on anymore. But it doesn't really make sense because they're like a, pretty integral part to the Kingdom Art series, like, you know, like, Leon slash Squall is like a pretty big part of the thing. Yeah, the whole core appeal. The original pitch of this was Final Fantasy meets Disney. So you take away the Final Fantasy

and... It's like just Disney and also spiky here. No more characters. I think it's like now the series is old enough that people are now nostalgic for it, for sure. I mean, that's what we're talking about today. And so like in Kingdom Hearts, when King Hearts 2 came out, Final Fantasy 7 was, I don't know,

five years old. Six was like eight years old, and we were seeing characters from that series. Now if you see a character from two, that's a 13-year-old character. People are now nostalgic for Roxas. Gross. And other people like that. I mean, it's weird how nostalgia works like that, especially if you're not part of it. Before we go to our break and then talk about the third game in detail, I want to shout out Yogo Shimamura.

So she had done lots of stuff for Square before this, including the Mario RPG soundtrack, which is so good. People are too mean to that game, and I will not stand for it. But I will say this was her major breakout role for a blockbuster game, Kingdom Hearts. Although she does a lot of interpretations of Disney music. Her original stuff in this game is great. And now I think that she is like the music director for the game, so not doing a lot of the composition. But she still has a major influence on the series. But her stuff is so good.

Any thoughts on Shimon War before we go to the break? I just feel like she is such a great composer and still very prolific. I just think her music is really good. Like, I have, I feel like one of the things I remember most about Kingdom Hearts, like, when I, like, think about Kingdom Hearts, like, the music's usually the first thing come to mind, like, the music of, like, Hall Bastion or just, like, the loading screen music, which kind of, like, changes incrementally from game to game. Like, she's really good at, like, making really memorable melodies, I guess, and also making Disney music her own. She's also really good at adopting a lot of different styles and not leaning on the same sort of musical concepts. I mean, there's been a lot of composers that Square Inix or Squarespaceoft

has hired through the years and employed, and they created great music, but if you look at someone like Nobu Umatsu, like every Final Fantasy soundtrack has kind of like the same cadences. Like you can always tell it's the airship theme because it always kind of sounds the same.

You know, Yasunori Mitsuda is pretty much everything is going to sound kind of Gaelic. Masashi Hamazu, everything is kind of like that sort of echoey concert hall piano style with strings and it's all great and I love it but I feel like she's the only

of their, only one of their composers who has been able to just like step outside of herself and create music that really you know adjusts to the tone and the style of the game and isn't necessarily like you hear it and think oh it's Shimomura it's more like oh this is the perfect music for this game

and yeah I agree about her making Disney music her own, like turning bibbidi-bop-di-boo into like some sort of, you know, Final Fantasy battle theme, that's a tall order, and she did it. I feel like they're letting them do less because I could have done without the 20-second loop if you've got a friend in me in the Toy Story world. Oh, yeah, that was a lot. But I don't think it's her fault. I think it's like, no, we want the music represented as it exists.

Yeah, I think, well, Shimon, Shimon, she, yeah, her work is amazing on it. I think the music is the secret sauce of why everybody loves, really loves. loves those games and stuck with it. And especially, like, also with the soundtrack, Uttata Hikaru's music, like that, that created a whole new generation of J-pop nerds in America. Oh, yeah. Like the- I listen to that in my car. Simple and clean.

Simple and clean. All the songs are great up to her new songs and this. And, like, Utada's entire, talk about seeing how much time has passed. Like, her entire life has changed incredibly since that first song she did. And that's, it's like she was born. to do Kingdom Hearts because she is a celebrated J-pop star like of

second or third generation pop star in Japan but also grew up in America so she can make a song that can work both in American English and in Japanese and works perfectly to appeal in the same way like it's

that's everybody when you're confused in the game you're just like boy but I remember simple and clean was so great I don't care how confusing this story point is that song. Oh, boy. It's a good memories. But we'll be back after the break with more talk about Kingdom Hearts

and specifically Kingdom Hearts 3. We're going to be able to be. So we're back, and we're just going to talk about Kingdom Arts 3 for the rest of this podcast. Essentially, that's what this podcast is about, so it's time to talk about it. And, Katie, you were the reviewer for U.S. Gamer for this game. We just talked about how you spent an entire weekend not sleeping, presumably eating very little and playing lots of Kingdom Hearts 3. I only eat like chips and salsa. And I recommend people read your review, but can you give us your general take on the game before we started digging into it?

I just want to know, like, what would your, like, your take B on King of Mart's 3 after the review and after the whole process? I will say in retrospect, I probably scored it too high. I probably would have given a four out of five if I were to do an amendment today. I give it four and a half. That's pretty high, you know? That's true of every game I ever reviewed. Yeah, same. I scored them all too high.

And then I'm like, one day, like, eh, I could have gone lower, you know? Or there's like one rare reasons. Like, oh, like, Splatoon 2, I think I gave a 4.05. I'm like, I actually really, like, I still play that. So I probably could have given that a higher score. But, yeah, I can't way really loving it, which I was honestly very apprehensive because I really don't like the 3DS1 dream job distance. It's total nonsense, horrible, like, action combat. I did review that one up back in the day.

I think he gave it like a C or C minus. Yeah, it's like so bad. That's probably one of the worst games in the series. And that's like the one that leads directly into three, weirdly enough. And then I really like birthed my sleep a lot, and I like the first game a lot. So it's like out of the whole series, my two favorites are like from a long, long time ago. So I was like very apprehensive going into three, but I ended up really liking it. And I think it's because I enjoyed the combat more than I ever have in the series before.

I do want to talk about that more later because I feel like I was surprised by how little changed about three compared to past games. I want to go over really quickly the development cycle because it was less tortured than I remembered. I remember it being a lot more tortured. It's not like Duke Nukum Forever or Resident Evil 4 or anything like that. It was pretty simple, actually. I'm sure it was much more complicated behind the scenes. Simple and clean. Yes, simple and maybe not so clean.

But this is what they're telling us. This is their story. I imagine there was a lot more like internal politics and fights and things like that. So we all know that Nomura was busy working on Final Fantasy versus 13, which would become Final Fantasy 15 over time after being given to a new director, although I believe that it became 15. before Hajime Tabata took over. I'm pretty sure that was the case.

I thought it was simultaneous. I thought they basically sent him over and he was working as boss behind the scenes for a couple of years before it was publicly announced. I think, like, in my research, it said that the game became 15 before, a few months before it was now and said No Mora would not be the director. So that could just be the surface level of what we're telling the public thing

where he was never the director or he wasn't the director for a long time. I think he was working, Tabato was working as the director for quite a while before it was announced. But for a long time, Versus 13, which I believe was announced right after the release of Kingdom Arts 2. It was at E3, 2006,

along with the rest of the Fabula. Fabulous, Nova, Crystallus, Solis. We need to do an entire podcast on that thing, whatever became of that. But, yeah, so Final Fantasy Versus 13 was going to be the action RPG version of Final Fantasy 13's blah, blah, blah.

We just said the word. You don't need to hear it again. But that universe. That became 15. What's that? FNC. FNC. Not going to do that again. So Nomura supposedly was working on that.

No, I mean, he was. But he was like up front about it. Like, I'm too busy working on this. Kingdom Hearts will not be out until this is out. So not until after 2012, which was wishful thinking on his part. Because as we know, Final Fantasy 15 did not come out until early 2017. Or was it late 2016? 2016.

It was like December. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, he wasn't wrong. It did come out after 2020. That part was extremely true Yeah, that part was very true But so this game Was formally announced

That E32013 I believe I was in the audience For that Sony conference What is Sony conference? Yeah What else did they announce And I don't remember Well, oh actually no

That was when they announced Versus 13 is gonna become 15 Right, it was like a back-to-back Oh yeah That's crazy That's when Square shot themselves in the foot The logo change, right? That was the big moment

It was like, oh my God And then everybody was like Well, then where's KH3? And then that was the next trailer right after it. Yeah. And that's where it's Sora back on Destiny Island, and he picks up a keyblade. That's right. And an old one, as would be later revealed, owned by Erykis, that was left by Aqua to leave the doorway to the dark dimension.

I can't retain all of this. I've watched a lot of videos this morning. Okay. Just don't ask what he had to get rid of in his memory, too. What is my husband's birthday? What words did you forget by learning all this? But E32013 was the first formal announcement of the game that we all assume would be happening at some point.

E32014 was the first teaser with quote-unquote gameplay footage. In September of that year, Nomura was removed as the director of 15, Pomphecy 15. But I believe after that gameplay teaser, Nomura sort of apologized, where he was like, we announced it too early, we're too early in the process to be showing you these things. And it was one of the E3s. I remember being there, and they showed Kingdom Hearts 3 things.

And there was like a very bad video of Numerra, like in a closet somewhere, recorded an iPhone. He's like, I'm still alive. I'm still working. He holds up today's newspaper. Like, it's going to happen. Kingdom Arts 3 will happen. I think 3 feels like it took too long because you just assumed after 2 that 3 had to come in the next few years. Or within the next decade even.

Every time there was a new Kingdom Hearts game out, by the end of it, you're like, well, this is where they're leaving it off for when they'll kick it up in three. And you just assumed a three announcement would be any day now. So that's why it really felt like it was a decade before you actually heard about the game. And what really impacted the release of the game was it started on the luminous engine, which I believe all of the Fabula Nova Crystallus games were being made with, correct? Yes, it was originally called the White Engine. The White Engine.

Is Final Fantasy 14 still running under that? I don't remember what the movement there was. I think 14 went from like some sort of terrible bespoke engine to the luminous engine. But eventually they moved to Unreal 4, which really slowed things down. Like moving to an entirely different engine is what impacted the release of the game the most. And apparently Kingdom Arts 3 was released or sorry developed alongside 2.5 HD remix, which taught them a lot about HD development on that level, on that skill, especially with Kingdom Hearts assets. And basically from there, it was a drip feed announcement of, you know,

new worlds for like years there'd be like every what's that disney cop of d23 or whatever like for like two or three years in a row it's like now you're going to get big hero six world now you're going to get monsters ink world like there just be like a drip feed of announcements until the eventual release and i believe there were some early leaks the game was supposed to be out in like october of 2018 i remember seeing that monsters ink uh screenshots very very early oh i mean the big league happened like at the start of january or maybe the holidays i think it was December. Yeah.

That's, uh, and though that's also why they held back this secret ending as a downloadable. Uh, okay. They're like, well, they didn't get this secret though, hackers who got a retail copy early via nefarious means. Apparently they chased out. They actually found the person who sold it. And they, uh, they're getting a whoop in right now. He's being disappeared.

So I feel like this game fits well with retronauts because it feels like an old game in good ways and bad, like, playing this game now in 2019, it feels like a game that was developed 15 years ago in terms of the design. Like, it is a very old school, as in like early 3D game, sorry, early, early console 3D game mindset. And that, so very much like the other Kingdom Hearts, this one plays out via a series of fairly shallow mini games, like a ton of mini games sit together. And we just did a lot of Final Fantasy 7 podcast, and we were just sort of astounded by seeing how many ways they use minigames in seven. And I feel like the same spirit is still alive in Kingdom Arts, the same spirit of

that era. Like everything is a mini game. There are so many mini games. There are so many mini games in battle. Like he is very obsessed with this idea of the mini game, which I find pretty fascinating. And also, I kind of want him to move on from that idea. Well, in some cases, they can't avoid a minigame in the 100-acre wood. They, you're not allowed.

I got oddly into that, even though I hated it. I was like, here it comes. I was like, I like this puzzle game. But you can't have violence in there. Like the estate says no violence, no swords. So you're going to be, you know, rolling pumpkins at your apricots or whatever. It does feel like an old school mindset because my theory was those old games relied so much on mini games because there was not enough technology available to really develop one 3D concept.

up so they had to move between a lot of them. And I want no more to be to realize like, no, you have so much technology at your fingertips. Like things like, so there'll be some light spoilers. If you don't want to know about what worlds are in the game, you're listening to the rock podcast. But things like the Pirates of the Caribbean level, I thought like this could be a full game. Like sailing from island to island and doing all these things. But it just every idea is so shallowly developed.

I feel like none of them are given the treatment they need. There are a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas. But I feel like there's an obsession with. a variety and that was very much the idea behind these early 3D games where it's like we can't give you this big 3D experience so here's like a lot of little things we can we can have you have fun with i think they did a good job of picking films that connect thematically to the idea of finding hearts and making connections and like the pirates actually ended up being one of the most connective because the end giant battle at the end of pirates of the caribbean

and three is them fighting over a heart in a box. Oh, that's right, yeah. Which is basically Kingdom Hearts as well. Like, and it fit, too, with the continuing subplot of Maleficent and Peck like Pete. I'm like, we're looking for a box. That's right, Maleficent. Yeah. Is that box from the Mole game, too, or something like that?

Yeah, I thought so. I can tell you a lot about that box if you really want to know. You can't name something a black box. It means something else. You don't know what's in it. It's a secret. And you won't know at the end of three. either on these. You see it.

Did the plane go down or something in Disneyland? It's their tie-in to Lost, which is also at Disney property. Well, you see, Bob, when the master of masters, a hundred years ago, before the Kaplan War, he handed off to the foretellers, a prophecy

and a box that is not allowed to be open. And to the fifth foreteller, that was Lu Shue. He was like, you cannot open this box. And who is Lu Shue? I wonder. But he hid that box for the longest time. I was taken for Mushu, I assume. And then he started the Key Blade War, which, like, killed everyone.

Yeah. Honestly, the mobile games is him building Kingdom Hearts 4. Yeah, it feels like it. Yeah. It's all set up for Kingdom Hearts 4, so don't really pay attention to that now. But another throwback in this series is, so I feel like it is very much, like, this game feels like it comes from like a 2000 mindset, like the year 2000, just the way it's developed and the way he goes about building this game and that there's an obsession with a lot of these ideas that were

very novel in the early era of 3D gaming that we've moved on like photography is a thing which is cool because now you know selfies are a thing in a lot of games but it feels like a very much find the things in the world and take photos of them to you know unlock things that feels like dead rising that was like a novel thing 13 years ago dark cloud too dark cloud two yeah like things like that feel like very much like they would be more novel if exploring these 3D worlds was still new and also ideas like snowboarding mini games and grinding on things like These are all like from... Sonic Adventure-ass shit right there.

Like, I feel like my analogy for Kingdom Hearts 3, it's like the tribal tattoo of games. Like, it is very distinct in what it represents and what era it is from. And it is very dated. Even though you don't really consider, like, Kingdom Arts 1 was a very good-looking game for the time. It was very, you know, high-tech. But now it is an old game. And I feel like this feels like a retro game. This feels like a PlayStation 2 game.

And that sounds crazy. But if you were a kid who grew up with those games, this could be a throwback. for you. I don't know if you feel that way, Katie. Oh, sorry. I just want to know from Katie's perspective, like, when you play King of March 3, you were a kid who grew up with, like, PS2, does it feel like a throwback to you? Yeah, for me, that's, like, what I really liked about 3 is. Like, I was kind of worried they would try to make it go in a weird direction, but it does

feel like a PS2 game. And I think that's, like, kind of cool. But then there's, like, weird things where it's like, yo, Twilight Town, you're like, oh, whoa, there's NPCs. And that was, like, never thinking of King Mark's World's where they're always so barren. or like... And pirates you dance with people. Yeah, yeah.

And then there's like, yeah, you can like swim underwater and like it's not like horrible combat like the Antar or the Little Mermaid World I think, which is like, oh, so bad. But then, and then I'm trying to think what else. Oh yeah. Like cutscene like would like transition into gameplay and I was like, whoa, this is like weird. So it's just like they're just being cut scenes and like they finally found a way to like transition into just the game. And I felt novel, which is not really that novel. I wish I did that consistently because I hate, especially.

towards the end of the game where it's like very much, again, of the era of game design where it's like cutscene, run, cutscene, run to the next one. It's just like, and then fade to black between each running segment. But when they would transition from a cutscene to gameplay, it was really well done. But I think they are still a little old-fashioned about some things, especially in the more. I feel like you don't really hit gameplay for like at least 20 minutes in the beginning. There's so many cutscenes. It takes a long time.

Sorry, Jeremy. That's retro PS1. You're going to say something? I just feel like retro PS2. games, like PS2 style retro, you know, however you want to describe it, like games that evoke the PS2 era

is actually a thing that is happening and I see it most often from smaller Japanese studios that don't have the budgets to necessarily go big or who are like, well, let's maybe not create a game that is just trying to be Dark Souls. And

so yeah, like yesterday at GEC I demoed a game from Furiu being published by Spike Chun soft called Crystar and it's extremely extremely like very much this is a PS2 game with fancy modern day graphics and before that there was Knights of Azure from Gus I think published by Coatecmo and it also it felt like that game specifically felt like the second Castlevania game for PS2 at Xbox curse of darkness I think was what was called yeah like it was just very evocative of that. It's kind of clumsy, kind of bad, but also like it sparks something inside of me because it takes me back to when I was just a baby in the video games press and reviewing these games that were like 6.5 or 7 out of 10 and not great, but it was neat that people made them and then they went away for a long time. And now they've come back and people are like, let's make a 6.5 or 7 out of 10 game from 2004 and put it on PS4 or Steam.

I'm like, you know what? Thank you. I need a little bit of that. It may sound weird to listeners out there, like if you're around my age or Jeremy's age where that the idea of a PS2 throwback is possible, but the context for what is nostalgia is always shifting. And when Retronaut started in 2006, that was the era in which you could publish an 8-bit throwback or a 16-bit throwback. And now that window is shifted. A 10-year difference between 1996 and 2006 was Super Mario RPG versus Final Fantasy 12.

Yeah. That's a big gap. now, 2009 to 2019 is Demon Souls versus Securo. Well, okay, that's kind of different, but not really. That's true. It's very much, you know, same, same very, I don't know. I think the PS2 quality 2-2 comes from, perhaps comes from a scaling of, you know, vision. Because they're like they just got out of the quagmire of trying to make a modern game with versus 13.

that maybe they have as a team they're like, we should go, no more in his team, we're like, we should just go back to what we know. We can make a very sectioned off game. We don't have to make a giant open world or try to like really iterate or innovate all that much as opposed to iterate. And that's why you get all these very sectioned off worlds

and you're only collecting crabs in one place. Yeah, yeah. You're only flying on the back of, inflatable hug robot in one place. That's... Wait, where's... An inflatable hug robot. Big Herosix, yeah.

That's such a great description. I love that. I want every game to have one of those. And they actually did get Scott Adtson. They didn't get every voice actually. They did Scott Adts. They got Walshon. He needs money sometimes. Maybe Katie could comment on this because I feel like when they do a quote unquote

modern day idea, like, let's build a big world for you to run around in. And then when you're like, well, what do I do? They kind of like, uh, get collectibles. Like, there's, there's no compelling thing to do in the big world. So, like, they are approaching it with an old school mindset, but when they have a newer idea, they're really not sure how to execute on them. Because, like, I know in the pirates world, you collect a lot of, you have to collect, like, thousands of crabs, hundreds of crabs. And you're in a world later where it's very big, you have to collect certain things that are moving around more.

It's kind of annoying. Like, in the Big Hero Six world, it's a big city, sort of like a GTA city, a tiny chunk of one, but it's just like it's very empty. Like, I like the levels that were more designed just because it felt more in line with what they're. trying to achieve. Yeah, I definitely agree with that, especially the Monstersink world is, like, so boring, which is, like, such a disappointment because I, like, Monster Zinc is my favorite Pixar movie, and it's just, like, hallway after hallway, and it feels very restrictive. You kind of realize, oh, they're constrained to the setting of the movie, and the setting of

that movie was a bunch of factories and offices. Yeah, but they could have made use of the doors, you know, the portals into bedrooms and stuff. You get one scene of that. Oh, I thought. Oh, I love that scene, though, when they throw Ventis, Vamedis, into a room. They're different. Yeah, they are. They throw Benitas into a door, then throw that door into a door, and then that door into a door,

and then that door into a door, and then that door into the wood chipper. Like, it's a really fun moment. It could have been, like, a fun, like, portally experience to jump between doors and different rooms and stuff, but I feel like that sounds hard to make, puff. That is too much of a non. They only had 13 years. Come on. That is true.

That's too much of a modern experience, I think, that idea of just transitioning into a new space instantly and back, not have things like, this is a room. That's another room, things like that. Like, I feel like this game. is very much of that mindset and no more's mindset too. improvements and things that actually felt like a real sequel was the gummy ship really does just fly around in open space and it's the I hate the gummy ship in every game before this and it's the I hate the gummy ship in every game before this and it's actually all right here. I actually designed mine, like customize it. I'd always do like the default whatever blueprint,

but I actually put like a dog on it and made it like look cool. I built, as usual with these games, I built one chip once and that was it. But I was impressed that they did make it more ambitious and they did make it as playable as it could be. But it still feels like unnecessary that sort of travel between levels. Just because, again, it's very much of this mindset. Like this game should need to be everything. It should be a shooter too on top of everything.

everything we're trying to do, which was, again, it's part of that early PS2 mindset. Like, here is a shallow version of several experiences just to give you as much as we can. But I also, like, functionally with the gummy ship in the game, it's almost pointless because often when Sora needs to go somewhere, he lets his heart be his guiding key, and it's just like, oh, it opened the teleporter to the place I got to go. Let's just fly through that. Like, it's just, why don't you do, I mean, if you're going to do that in the story, just do that every time. I even make his fly places.

Yeah, I forgot story-wise, it's kind of unnecessary even then. Only when they need a scene of you talking to Chippendale or, like, sharing a moment with Goofy and Donald. Those guys are fun. They are fun. I'll talk about the combat. Katie, you have a lot to say about this. I found it, I was expecting that there to be a lot more to it. I feel like

this could be like a Disney restriction, but in all of the games, the combat has, like, no impact. It feels like you're just batting around, like, hollow Christmas ornaments or something. And they don't even make, like, impactful sounds when you hit the enemies. It feels like Disney is stepping in and saying this cannot be violence. Like it has to be

non-impactful violence. It has to be fun violence if you're going to be swinging around swords. But I was expecting more of an evolution of the combat but it feels like ultimately you can do this very artlessly. You can mash X button and then go into these different mini games with summons

and summoning rides and doing different transformations with your keyblade. Things I expected to be developed more like magic and parrying and blocking they were just like they were in older games. I'm sure they are better, but they still feel like not necessary to engage with at all. I mean, did you find yourself engaging more with these systems that were kind of unnecessary in the past games? I was definitely using magic more, which I never would touch magic, except for like, here, obviously.

And I feel like for the form changes, I think, made me switch up my key blades more. I usually I'd just use the strongest one, but I would, like, switch it depending on the world. Like, oh, there's like a lot of flying enemies here. So I mean, he's like this weird, like Winnie the Pooh one that turns in the guns because. I guess. Is that the lock-on one? My husband used that one a whole lot. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's like, and then like the Big Hero 6 one is like pretty good. Like I would like switch it up and you can like have multiple equip so I'd like switch between them a lot. And I felt like there's like more variety in that sense. Whereas, yeah, you hit X lot and I feel like it's kind of like these games have always been. You hit X until you can hit triangle. Yeah, exactly. Be jump.

I hated. It breaks my brain. X is jump. I'm sorry, Japan. It's jump. It just is. Circle is confirmed though. Come on.

Also, let us. I know. I know. but at least it's 2019 and you can't change the button layout. Yeah, that is like annoying. It's 2002. Sorry, Henry. Sorry, Katie.

Oh, yeah. But the one thing I didn't like about the combat is like there's those weird like attraction abilities where you like hit there on the timer and those are so useless. Like they like, like, Kingdom Hearts, combat is all about moving around and jumping around and just like, you know, swinging your key blade everywhere. And often those attraction abilities just make you stationary. And it's like, that's the one thing I don't want to. to be in a Kingdom Hearts like combat arena like it doesn't make any sense and they're cool the

first couple times but after that you just want to get them over with they're like shiny yeah I just like would like switch to a different one in the queue or whatever because it's like the multiple ones I'm like I'm not even going to bother with it it's like so annoying the annoying thing is they activate outside of combat where it's like you have one stored up this attraction ability that you earn through getting a lot of hits on an enemy so once you earn one of those you can hit the X button or sorry the triangle button to have a summon of like a Disney park attraction like the the carousel or... I like electric light parade.

That's really cool too. But often it's just like, okay, I'm done with the battle. I want to open up the treasure chest. And it's like, oh, did you want to summon this pirate ship? No, no, I want to open a treasure chest. You have to go through all the animation. It's so weird that you can do that outside of combat. I don't know why.

Yeah, yeah, it is weird. You can cancel it, but it's always annoying. It still takes time. But the thing is, like, I wanted there to be more to the battle system. I did use magic more, but then I realized, oh, this takes more time, so I'm not going to do this. And things like, they give you all of these abilities for blog, blocking and parrying, but I found that there's...

Yeah, I never block. I want there to be more developed here, though, because I feel like there's so much chaos on the screen and enemies don't have really, like, tells before they attack. Like, I don't know who actually can use those abilities because they seem really cool. Like, there are so many abilities built around parrying and blocking and things like that, but I did not use any of them at all.

Man, just imagine if they, like with Near Automata, they got platinum to help design, like, combat in this. Like, that would be... But I feel like Nomura wouldn't want to work with somebody else to do the combat. He would do it his way. I mean, I interviewed the co-director of Kingdom Arts 3 at GDCs. Oh, cool. And he's like the gameplay guy, basically.

And he's been on since I think Kingdom Arts 2 remix. And he's like co-directed a few of the spinoffs but has had a role. He's basically only worked on Kingdom Hearts pretty much. But, yeah, it seems like they just wanted to keep it true to the Kingdom Hearts way, which is like easy. and then they're patching in a higher difficulty within the next couple months or something. Well, my husband actually he now is playing it

on harder difficulties for, he wants to platinum it because he's crazy. But he first played it on the easiest difficulty because he's like, I have to just experience all this story now. The story for him was very important because they'd been building it for so long, so

long. They created so many side stories and side quests and all these millions of extra characters. There's two different organization 13s. Everybody has different nobodies and somebody's and heartless and all this stuff. Like it's so ridiculously complex and all these lead up things. But I will give them credit of like, you know, if you wanted completeness to those, a lot of those stories, they gave it to you. They gave you like a satisfying conclusion to character arcs from characters from birth by sleep and 358 over two days.

as well. You're going to say the whole number. Yeah, I mean, not to spoil anything, like, the end of the game is like bad. So this game is backloaded with the lore, where it's like the Disney stuff is the formality, and then it's just like a lore quagmire. It's like everybody gets their moment, everyone gets their boss fight, and if you are new to the series or you've not played the series in a while, it doesn't care. Like, you need to know why this is meaningful.

That's kind of retro PS1. I'm thinking like Metal Gear Solid where. Yes, exactly. Let me tell you about. The son's a big boss. But I... It goes on for 20 minutes. I think, again, it's okay if you enjoy this, but I feel like this makes Kojima feel like a master of just brevity and conciseness.

And, oh, he knew this all along. Like, it feels like he's able to fake it better. And I think he had the benefit of being in control more and not having to rely on other IP rights and things like that. So he has a lot going for him. But I have more respect for him now of being like, boy, you're a better magician than no more. is in terms of being a storyteller. Well, the ending, too, the ending boss rush, I won't get too spoilery in it.

But the boss rush kind of last five hours of the game. It's so long. It also feels like they just delayed fineries to so many games and then they just do them all at once that it makes me mad. I'm like, you could have just had this ending before. You didn't have to hold all these back to happen

in three at the same time. So then they lose their importance when like five characters all return in the same like basically 40 minutes of you playing the game. They're important but they all happen so much. You're like, I can't, I'm just thinking

about the last character that got resurrected. Now you bring it back another character. Well, that sounded like Middle Gear Solid 4. Oh, it is. Yeah. You can compare a lot. Yeah, actually, that's a good comparison because it is four is like, okay, we need to finish all of these stories. It's very similar. Also, there's a revolver

Osolot type guy in the game, too. I just say that. Oh, and another thing about okay this was something pissed me off the most in KH3 I'm curious Katie how you felt like Dream Doctor Stince made a big

promise that Kyrie was a key blade wielder and she doesn't do shit and is kidnapped once again that was like the one that really annoyed me because I feel like this whole series has just like pushed Kyrie as a character around

like the one like notable female character in the whole series besides Aqua I guess who's also like doesn't really get her big moment. They tell her like, okay, it's not, I can do this. They're like, actually, Sor is going to do this. Go over there. And Alk was like, like, in theory, the most powerful keyblade master, like, existing

at the moment. And then she didn't like, on paper. Yeah, on paper. And then she doesn't even get her, like, big moment. She, like, oh, okay. Yeah. Didn't Mickey imprison her in some sort of thing? No.

Is that a spoiler? I'm sorry. She sacrificed herself to save Tara that sent her to the dark place. Yes. Which is also where Mickey went. to at the end of Kingdom Hearts, which he then ran into Aqua. He knew Aqua from his mark of mastery thing

that he did 10 years before the first Kingdom Hearts. I have no context for this, but I love the guilt-riddled Mickey who lives in a world of his own hell, just of his own making. Just he made, like, I don't even understand what's happening. I just love, like, I've committed so many sins. It's so different than the Mickey I know.

I am sad that we just have. Got-free. yeah well also speaking of actors who passed away like that it's not the mickey of the first yeah that guy will never sound like mickey to me it's a very similar voice but it just feels wrong i just don't uh but yeah that when you get to see all seven keyblade masters together like it's a really cool moment and then fucking kairi gets like shoved aside again yeah it just sucks yeah even i noticed like and it's like yeah it's i think yeah it's just super frustrating that she was held up to finally be getting, like, she summons the key blade in two, and it's like a big

moment, and it's like, oh, she's got to be training to become a master. And it's like, oh, it's a sick. She's finally going to be, like, maybe a playable character like Riku is at sometimes, but yeah, I mean, even as a dabbler in the series, I, playing three, I was like, I thought the connection between Sora and Kyrie was like one of the fundamental things in the series, where it's so important in the first game. And she is just like, they barely acknowledge each other in three when they're in the same scene together.

Yeah, I mean. Riku is the real connection Sora has here. I'm not trying to just talk about like, you know, slash fiction or everything, but like a joke within the KH community is that in KH2,

you compare the reactions of when Sora first meets Kairi again to when he first meets Rikai, he is happy, but when he meets Riku again, he literally drops to his knees in front of him. Oh my God. And he's like, Riku, Rikou.

Are they your OTP? once you're pairing. Yeah, no. And then also, Axel and the blue-haired guy. God, what's his name? Issa? No, not Issa. Whatever.

I know. I can picture him. Yeah, exactly. There are literally 26 names of characters just in the organization 13. It can't be. And then you have Venetis. You have Enidus who looks like Sora. And then you have Ventis who looks like Roxas, who also sort of both look like Sora.

This is great. And Joan, Joan, who's a black-haired, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's Sheehan and Nomey, who both look like Kyrie, but for different reasons. As a wrestling fan, Henry, does this compare to the wrestling lore? Pretty similar, I'd say, actually, yeah. It pays off being an obsessive about it, though I will say nobody becomes a clone of themselves in wrestling. Who's the undertaker in this game? Yeah.

Zemnet? No. Marlusha. I'd say Marlusha. That's what I'd say is the undertaking. or who's also known as Lemmoot. Like, he's one of the guys who existed in the Keyblade War, as you saw in the past alongside, boy. Well, the cool thing, you know, the Final Fantasy Connection, I didn't know this until my husband pointed out that every member of the organization 13, the one from the DS game, they all are class types from Final Fantasy.

Oh, that's really cool. Like, one's a bard, one's a dragoon. I feel like I could have just left the mics on had Henry do this whole podcast themselves. One thing I wanted to mention is that my last thing I want to do a few listener comments, but one thing I really wanted to mention was there's a really cool thing in this game that I thought was one of the coolest things in a Kingdom Hearts where there are many, many games. Some of the coolest ones that are in Kingdom Hearts 3

are these collection of early LCD games. They are mock-ups of, like, Game and Watch games, where Sora is the star. So it's sort of like Mickey Mouse, his earliest works, are black and white cartoons. And Sora, his earliest works are LCD games. That is such a cool idea. And, like, they are, like, you could make these LCD games. Like, they follow the rules of LCD games.

One is so much just, like, vermin. Like, one is really the Game and Watch game vermin. And another really feels like the Donkey Kong Jr. Game and Watch, I'm a Game and Watch super fan. So, yeah, seeing that, I, you, the Game and Watch gameplay was on those mobile games. And I told my husband, he was playing, I'm like, boy, these look really cool. He's like, yeah, you haven't played them for eight hours to try to get a sword in this game. Yeah, I wonder what, like, kids think of those now.

Like, are those actual, like, are these things that are real? They probably don't even know what they are. I wonder. I, but I love that stylistically about them, though. It's a really cool choice. Can you speak to the youth perspective, Katie? Do you know LCD games, Katie? I know of them, yeah.

You know, I've been to some, like, barcade things. Oh, okay. Events, things. I've played a few. I know what the game of watches. I think they still exist in keychain form, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So before we go, we've got a few comments on the retinant's blog. So thanks for leaving them if you did. And these are really short, so I'll just go through them really quickly before we wrap up. So Smug Porky says, three is by far my favorite one in the series as far as gameplay is concerned. It's the first game in the series that felt to me like it knew exactly what it wanted to be, and I had fun playing it from start to finish. All the other games, including parts of two in Dream Drop Distance, came across like they were trying to test some new mechanic that either wasn't fully thought out, could be easily ignored as part of the main gameplay loop

or was just plain old not fun looking at you, chain of memories. And as a result, we're a chore to play through. Three takes the best bits from those respective systems and mechanics, simplifies them, and combines them into a combat system that I actually have fun with and want to use to its fullest extent. It's a shame that it took this long through truly a friend Kingdom Arts gameplay, but now I can say I am truly looking forward to whatever the series

the next entry in the series may be. And he says, on another note, while I appreciate the amount of voice screwed McDuck, content in three, I wish they went with David Tennant from the new show and not whoever is doing that not so great Alan Young impression. And I totally agree. I was about to delete the game personally when he said, bless my bagpipes and not bless me bagpipes. What were you thinking, voice director? Make him say it again. You know, there are a few non-union equivalents in this game. I'm not a fan. Well, I think the worst, my least favorite is Woody. I think Woody doesn't sound anything. It's a real. I think Woody doesn't sound anything. It's a real. Is that Tom Hanks' brother? No, they couldn't even get him. Oh, my God. It's, like, below that.

It's actually Frank Stallone. They found some other celebrities' brother. It's just like so nothing. Even though he gives, like, actually a pretty, my husband showed me, I'm like, oh, this is a funny speech he gives of, like, you, nobody loved you. I can tell that from how you're acting, but our people love us. It's a really weird speech that's given by Woody, yeah, Woody of all characters. The cowboy. Also, in general, there's, like, some really.

good stilted voice acting that I thought was really funny. There's like weird pauses between laughing and it felt like very like PS2-esque of like oh it's like they're definitely was reading in a script like not bouncing off anyone else and it's really funny. And it's like acting as if the next line of dialogue needs to be loaded

for the DVD. So before SORA starts the final boss battle they all all the characters talk to each other of like well you're about to start this final boss battle. That's right. everyone, which is more than eight characters,

all have to nod and go, hmm, hmm, hmm, it's a minute. I'm like, guys, you know, the end of the world is right there. Maybe you don't all have to agree to this with a nod. They just all nod together. It really stands out in the Tangled world where they recreate a scene from Tangled that has incredibly like snappy comedy to it and really quick edits that I was like, I haven't seen Tangled. I know this is taken for Tangled

because they would never make something this fast-paced in Kingdom Arts, ever. So our final comment is from Seth Finkelstein, who says, I spent so long wondering what Kingdom Hearts 3 would look like on an HD console, how they would handle modern Disney films, how the storylines would conclude. At the end of the day,

I know I was disappointed, but there is no way I wasn't going to be. There's so many layers of nostalgia baked into this game, nostalgia for the series, nostalgia for Disney, nostalgia for PS2-era games. But playing the game couldn't transform me back to 2005. when I sat in the basement beating Kingdom Arts 2.

It can elicit something similar or familiar, but now as an adult, it wouldn't feel exactly the same. At the end of the day, everyone has their thing from adolescents that they will defend or raise up as a superior product because of the time in their life they discovered it. Perhaps to certain anime or superhero comics or vintage NES games, for me and my guess is a lot of late 90s, early 2000s kids, it was Kingdom Hearts.

It taught me how established properties can be launching pads for original stories and how the limitations of corporate interests can create overcompromise and underproduce. So no matter how long Kingdom Arts 4 takes to come out, I'll still be there day one to try and grab a piece of my childhood again. And that is very insightful. That's a very good way to wrap up this podcast because as an outsider, I don't understand the love for the series,

but nothing can explain nostalgia. Like it is very much being there at a point in time, and I think Retronauts is very much about that. Where we were and, like, how our feelings were different and informed by our childhoods. Yeah, I'm sure people who love Kingdom Hearts are, like, like, what the hell is wrong with you that you love Clash at Demonhead, Jeremy Parrish? And all I can say is I was like 14 years old, so there you go.

Exactly. Yeah, I think... All of our opinions are not logical. No, I like it as a window into what people younger than me loved about a game. And also, I love in a way how shitty it is or how complicated it is. Like, it's unneedlessly so. It talks to my heart. as a fanboy who likes other convoluted garbage my whole life.

So I can love it from that direction. And also, as a continuity nerd, love, like, giving myself an A in memorizing character. It's the most important thing. Yeah, I mean, the last thing I ever want to be, especially for this podcast, is to be, like, my nostalgia is a true nostalgia. And something that irks me is people that didn't get the memo where it's like, they think, oh, it's okay to make fun of this thing, right? We all hate this thing.

It's like, no, people like that. You're just old. And I don't want to become one of those people. So, you know what? Have fun with Fortnite. Play your battle royals. They're all good. Enjoy Kingdom Hearts.

It might not be my thing, but you're free to enjoy it. And it may mean something to you. So to wrap up, everybody. Oh, we got something else? Sorry, there was one last. I had the perfect entering, Henry. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

There was, I forgot to talk about Viram racks. Oh, good. Because if you think Nomora is mad about being kicked off of verses 13, Viram Rex expresses that because... Yeah, that's true. In Toy Story world... Is that like T-Rex from Toy Story, like, gone mad or something? His arms are better.

T-Rex actually loves Varamrex. It's one of his favorite games. But, no, it's a video game in the world of Toy Story. And the second you see it, you're like, this looks like Final Fantasy 15, except what the trailers for Versus 13 were. There's a character who is very much an Octus, there's very much a prompto.

And in Ignis. Like, there's just no Gladius. It's just three characters. And they get in robots and fight other things, which was conceptually, the mech fighting thing was what Nomura wanted in verses 13 that they cut for 15. And Veram Rex means true king. So I feel like this is him being like, I'm making this real Final Fantasy 13. You took it away from me.

Fuck you. Here it is. And now I'm just going to call it Veram Rex. Like, I'm wondering if he's going to do just his. own Viram Rex game I mean he won't complete a game I'll look forward to that in 2037 It's very funny because the characters in that world love the game

It's a big hit. It's the greatest game though I go I love this game Right that was seeing Veram Rex was quite a mindblower The first time So yeah Henry thank you for I did think that was important to say on the show Because I had no idea what to make of that scene when I saw in Game Arts 3 but we do need to wrap up Katie You're a special guest in the Kingdom Hearts expert

Please let us know where we can find you in your writing and everything like that and I recommend that everyone read your Kingdom Hearts review. I enjoyed it a lot. Help me process my feelings for the game. But yeah, you can find me on Twitter. That's Twitter.com slash you make, Katie, Y-U-M-E-C-A-T-Y. I have a podcast called Bad End. We just launched Patreon last month.

Ooh, congrats. Yeah, very exciting. We thought we were going to make like 20 bucks. We're already over 100, which is cool. So I think it's just patreon.com slash bad end. And you can also find my work on USGamer.com. I write there most days and edit stuff too.

Well, and Katie, if I may compliment you, I really enjoyed your Tetris effect review because I also am a very near-sighted person, and so it felt good to read somebody else. Having the same problem, I thought I was alone and, like, having to squint at this

game, like, it just is so, if you're not playing on a gigantic TV, that game has very granular details that are hard to parse out, but if you don't have perfect eyesight. Yeah. Thanks. Hey, Jeremy. How about you? Me?

I didn't review Tetris Effect, no. Oh, you're asking about where to find me on the Internet, right? You can find me on Twitter as GameSpide and doing Retronaut stuff. There you go. Wait, maybe I should talk about my videos. One more thing. Let me just throw that in. You make a lot of videos.

I do make a lot of videos. Check it out on YouTube. Look for Jeremy Parrish. That's me. That's P.A.R. I'm H-E-N-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there for updates on my thoughts on video games. But more importantly, updates on the podcast I do every week with Bob Mackie, me and him have two, two, two, weekly podcasts.

One, Talking Simpsons, where we go through the entire History of the Simpsons, one episode at a time, and another, what a cartoon, where we go through a different animated series, and talk about a specific episode from it with tons of cool guests, sometimes even Jeremy Parrish. And if you liked some of the... Actually, you know, it didn't talk that much about Disney animation in this, but if you'd like to hear more talk about that,

You can listen to those podcasts, including if I may suggest our premium $10 a month What a Cartoon movie podcast. We didn't want for a goofy movie that I'm very proud of. You get to hear the real range that Bill Farmer has as goofy, which you will not hear an ounce of in Kingdom Hearts. He is very plainly acting. This goofy has nothing on the goofy in a goofy movie, I will say. Disney Classic coming soon to Blu-ray, everybody. But as for us, well, actually, as for me, number one, I'm Bob Mackey. I'm on Twitter as Bob Serbo.

But as for us, Retronauts-wise, we are on Patreon. And for the low price of $3 a month, you can get every podcast one week ahead of time and ad-free and at a higher bit rate. And that sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? That supports everything that we do, this nice studio space, snacks for our guest. It flies Jeremy out here to record stuff. It pays for equipment. It does everything you can imagine a podcast could possibly involve.

And podcasting is very expensive. So if you want to support the show, please go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up today. We appreciate it a lot. Thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you next week with a brand new episode. Goodbye. You know, I'm going to be able to be.