Dream Drop Distance A few questions about the plot...

Ok, so:

Why was KH1 Sora & Riku in the tutorial? What relevance did that have?

Why was KH1 Sora & Riku taking the Mark of Mastery exam, and why did Sora go back and forth between his Dream form and real life form?

Where was Sora & Riku in the real world when they were dreaming?

How did the Organization retrieve Sora & Riku from the Mark of Mastery exam?

If Riku & Sora were under the Organization's plan, and not really taking the Mark of Mastery exam, how did Mickey & Yen Sid know what was happening?

Plot holes on plot holes on plot holes.

 

Sora and Riku were in the tutorial because they were sent to the Destiny Islands before it was taken, so why not make the start the tutorial? Might as well.

They had to take the Mark of Mastery to prove they were strong enough to take on Xehanort, and learn how to use the keyblade correctly. (or something like that, you'd have to watch the secret ending of Re:Coded.)

Far as we know, they were still in Yen Sid's Tower, but yeah, that's kind of left in the open. But the same can be said for Young Xehanort and the rest of the 13 Darkness.

They actually explain that one in the end, mostly with Sora, you just have to take the time to connect the dots with what they were exactly saying.

They were taking the Mark of Mastery, the Organization just took control and were taking things into their own hands. The worlds were still the same, and they still went where they needed to go. They were just lead astray at the end because the Organization was ready to make their move

 

I get that, I was just asking why did the younger versions of them have to take it, but apparently "time travel" is the answer.

Gotcha.

Thanks to both of you for clearing that up for me.


One more question, although it's most likely just a plot hole: Why is Master Xehanort, and all other Xehanorts able to use the keyblade, but not Xemnas and Xehanort's heartless? Even though Roxas is able to? Is it because Roxas is actually Ventus and Ventus used to be a keyblade wielder? And if that's so, why is Xion able to use it? Because she's Sora's loose memories personified?

 

This is the game where I officially threw my hands up and said "I'm not even gonna try and get it anymore."

Yeah. I don't want to say it doesn't make sense, but if it does it requires an absurd amount of thinking to understand anything. And not the good kind of thinking, the kind of thinking where you fault the writer for doing his job poorly. Though despite all of that I loved the game.

My rule of thumb for understanding (getting through) this game was accepting that things are different because they're in some exam. It doesn't explain it any better than that, it basically asks you to accept that things are different because it wants it to be. There's no real logical reason for these things, that's just how they are. From what I remember the game tried to feed you this bs reason like "you have to go back and" but after that it lost me. As for where they were when they were dreaming I think they were sitting unconscious next to Yen Sid like we see at the end of the game, but the game never actually shows us that so who knows. I could not even begin to explain the transitions from dream world to dream world within dream world to real world.

 

Sora and Riku were in their younger bodies in DDD simply due to Yen Sid's magic. Yen Sid used his magic to give Sora and Riku their younger bodies to sort of help with the whole starting over from scratch for the Mark of Mastery exam thing. The spell wears off when they return to The Mysterious Tower.

Sora kept going back and forth between his younger form and his older form at The World That Never Was because he was going deeper and deeper into his own dreams. When Sora would be his older form would be when he's in another dream.

All the "realm of sleep" is, is dreams. Worlds can dream and people can dream. When a world falls to darkness/goes to the Realm of Darkness, they also fall asleep and they dream. The worlds we go to in Dream Drop Distance are dreams of worlds that were freed from darkness, but were not freed from their sleep. Yen Sid sent Sora and Riku back to Destiny Islands before it fell to darkness, so that they could sort of "ride" Destiny Islands into darkness, therefore ride it into sleep. Once they rode it into sleep and fell asleep, they unknowingly opened the first Sleeping Keyhole and were transported to the next sleeping world/the first sleeping world from the present-day that they need to save.

The World That Never Was is not a sleeping world. It's a real world in the Realm Between. There's a cutscene where Yen Sid says that Sora and Riku will eventually end up out of the sleeping worlds and into a world that's in the Realm Between. That world was The World That Never Was. It's not a sleeping world, but when Riku arrived there, he was still in the realm of sleep since he was still in Sora's dreams and has been the whole journey. After Riku defeats Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, he's brought back to the real world and out of the realm of sleep. When Sora arrived at The World That Never Was, he was in the real world and out of the dream. But, Young Xehanort dragged Sora back into the realm of sleep, but this time, he dragged Sora into Sora's own dreams instead of the world's dreams. Then, Xigbar dragged Sora into a second sleep. So, Sora's sleeping body was in Sora's own dreams which is why Riku saw it before he fought Anti Black Coat. Anyways, after Young Xehanort successfully puts Sora into a weird sleep coma by dragging him further and further into dreams, he brings him back to the real world and places him on one of the Organization XIII thrones.

Riku still had his Dream Eaters and his Dream Eater powers in the real world of The World That Never Was because Sora was still asleep. He still had a weird Dream Eater connection to him.

Also, the Robed Figure was there on Destiny Islands in KH1 so that he could mark the time travelling Sora with the Recusant's Sigil and so that Young Xehanort can time travel to where the Robed Figure is and follow Sora and Riku into the realm of sleep. So, now that Sora was marked with the Recusant's Sigil and now that Young Xehanort was in the same time period as Sora, he was able to teleport to wherever he was.