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Eurogamer conducted an interview with Tai Yasue, co-director for Kingdom Hearts III, about the switch Kingdom Hearts III made from the in-house Luminous Engine to Epic's Unreal 4 Engine.

You can read more at Eurogamer.

It's Tuesday and that means podcast time!

As the year winds down, we look forward to new film releases, especially after certain trailers from a certain beloved series that a certain podcast host talks about for like 20 minutes straight. @Misty, @libregkd, and @Calxiyn first of course discuss some pre-release goodies about KINGDOM HEARTS HD 2.5 Remix, which releases worldwide this week (spoiler: we complain a little more about the Collector's Edition).

From there we launch into our major movie discussion, highlighting Disney films in particular -- Into the Woods, Cinderella, Pan, and of course Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We also, as usual, answer user-submitted questions! @Plums calls us back to childhood (again! y'all are getting a little obsessed with our pasts), @Risky Biznu makes us feel super pathetic and lonely, @Misty and @Calxiyn get burnt by @Graxe 's superhero lottery, and @Eric Luna confronts his inner struggles with Cup Noodles.

Please everyone enjoy the episode, submit questions or guest applications, and leave us a comment below!


Interested in being a member guest on the podcast? Fill out our form here and we'll be in touch. Ask us a question by visiting this page or sending an email to podcast@kh-vids.net!

Disney and Square-Enix held a private launch event at the Walt Disney Animation Studio lot this week to celebrate the launch of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX. Fans that were able to attend were treated to a variety of things and I happened to be one of the fans in attendance. Unfortunately, photography or recording of any kind was prohibited during the event, so this written description is all that you'll be able to get out of me for this launch event.

To begin, once everyone was ushered into a theater, the event opened up with the two newest trailers for the latest KH collection, Disney Worlds Connect and the Disney and Final Fantasy Character Cameos, playing on the theater screen. Next up the executive producer, Shinji Hashimoto, took the stage and thanked all the fans in attendance and for their continued support throughout the years. Emiko Yamamoto, executive producer from Disney Japan, was then introduced and she recalled the story of how Kingdom Hearts all began and how the franchises has grown into something they never thought was possible.

After the executives made their introductions and gave their thanks to all their fans, the next item up for the event was live piano performances of various tracks from the Kingdom Hearts series. Livan, from the Video Game Orchestra, opened up with segment with Kairi. He would also play renditions of 1st Mov Sora, Working Together, Missing You Naminé and Scherzo di Notte, each one receiving a round of applause after being complete. After Scherzo di Notte, Yoko Shimomura was introduced to the audience and was greeted with a tremendous amount of applause. She gave her thanks to the crowd and would join Livan for a duet on The Other Promise and Dearly Beloved.

When the mini-concert concluded, the next section of the event was a developer panel, which included Shinji Hashimoto as well as director of the series, Tetsuya Nomura. The panel consisted of a set of predetermined questions from the moderator with one of the first questions asked of Nomura was which scenes from the series, specifically Kingdom Hearts II, Birth by Sleep, and Re:Coded, were his favorites. For Kingdom Hearts II, Nomura stated that his favorite scene from the game was when Sora returned to Destiny Island and saw the drawing that Kairi made in the secret cave. His favorite Birth by Sleep scene was the ending of Terra's episode, where Master Xehanort succeed in supplanting himself within Terra. For Re:Coded, his favorite scene was from the new movie included in the 2.5 collection, where Roxas and Sora confront each other at Castle Oblivion. It was a scene that Nomura originally wanted to be a cinematic cutscene in the DS release, but do to the limitations of the hardware could not be achieved, so Nomura was really excited that his original vision has been finally realized. The panel went on and Nomura and Hashimoto discussed how freeing it was that they were allowed to travel to various events around the world such as San Diego Comic Con and Japan Expo in Paris to meet fans and see how enthusiastic they all were for the series.

Following the development panel, Square debuted a new trailer for the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX trailer featuring fans from around the world discussing their love of the series and how it has impacted their lives. United States, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom; many people of all ages expressed how much they loved the series and their favorite moments, characters, and games. The trailer concluded with the development team of Kingdom Hearts viewing what their fans had to say and thanked everyone for their kind words and support.

The final segment of the night, which you may have already heard from @Roxam, was sneak peak at some new Kingdom Hearts III footage. The teaser opened up with some artwork of new Heartless designs, followed by very raw animations of the enemy's idle movements. Following that the teaser showed off Sora transforming his Keyblade into dual guns, something previously hinted the last time we saw footage from KH3 and then finishing off the animation by combining his guns into a giant canon, something very reminiscence of what Terra does with his Keyblade during his boss battle in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. The teaser then switches to concept art of a city that looks very similar to Daybreak Town, the art slowly transition into a 'work-in-process' visual that is suppose to be representative of what the area will look like in the final game. It switches again to a spacious library with a chess set sitting next to a window with curtains flowing in the wind. The camera then pans out to show Sora walking around the room towards the window and when he approaches it, the screen cuts to "More Kingdom Hearts III info will be made in 2015".

And at that point, the event was over and were asked to leave the theater. Both Tetsuya Nomura and Shinji Hashimoto are scheduled to attend both the The Game Awards and Playstation Experience events in Las Vegas, which are taking place from Dec. 5th-7th. So there is a chance that more information regarding the Kingdom Hearts series may be made in the upcoming days.

The 2.5 HD ReMix Launch Showcase held at the Walt Disney Studio Lot today surprised guests with some new KH3 info, as well as an appearance by Nomura. A description of the Kingdom Hearts III tease is described below:

For more on the event itself, expect a write-up from our very own @libregkd , who was able to attend the event.

Source: Siliconera

With the release of Kingdom Hearts 2.5 just a few days away, The Official Kingdom Hearts Youtube Channel has uploaded two new trailers.

Disney Worlds Connect shows the magical worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2.5, also show casing the Disney Heroes we all know and love, as well as the Disney Villains from Kingdom Hearts 2, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep and Re:Coded.

Memorable Disney Characters and FINAL FANTASY Cameos shows both Disney and all the characters from Final Fantasy, and also is part of the Worlds Connect trailer "Set". It also shows Sora fighting along side the Final Fantasy characters in the series, and Roxas battling them.