Kingdom Hearts II Kingdom Hearts III (different from my other one!)

Ok, yeah i know. I already posted a KH3 thread. But here's info about when and where. Beware. It's quite wordy. I suggest just skimming through it and eyeing out the key points for KH3.

I can bet you that we'll be seeing a Kingdom Hearts III on Playstation 3. Why? Because PS2 is in it's final days, Playstation 3 is sceduled for release later this year and Square takes forever to develop games so either this will be an incredibly outdated game on a dead PS2 or an incredibly new one on a powerful PS3.

If it's on the Playstation 3, you can bet there will be some oustanding graphics, larger scale battles and high definition picture! Expect Square to make the best of this and we'll be able to see every reflection of these "Chasers" armor in-game as well as twice as many enemies on screen at once as in Kingdom Hearts II. WOW!

Then again, Square is releasing Final Fantasy XI on Xbox 360, it's possible they could switch partners to Microsoft. This might be a bad business move since the Xbox isn't very popular in Japan and given that Kingdom Hearts is HUGE in Japan, Square will probably keep it to PS2. Phew.

As for a release date. Well, let's look at Square's track record. We saw the secret KH2 trailer after the first game in 2002. Then Square officially announced the game a year later. So that's about 2003, then they delayed it several times until they finally pinned down March 2006 for the release. That's FOUR years after the first game, people. And now, on PS3, they will have to start from the ground up getting used to developing for a new, more powerful system. Square will have to create a brand new graphics engine and battle system. That should take quite a bit of time, but don't complain, quality takes time, the more time taken, the better KH3 will be.

KH2 was delayed because game director Tetsuya Nomura was working on multiple projects such as KH: CoM and FFVII Advent Children. He has said that he will be working on another, unrelated game before Kingdom Hearts III. Check out my calculations:
Developing new graphics engine + new battle sytem + switching platforms + delays + possible delays of PS3 + other stuff = 4+ years.

I'm going to estimate we will see some previews of Kingdom Hearts III in 2008, then we'll see a release in 2011 at the earliest. WHOA! That's far off. But think, it's only five years. Let's all wish for sooner, and put some coffee on while at it.

Tetsuya Nomura has openly admitted to having a plot for Kingdom Hearts III in the works and is planning to create it. Though, he has stated that he is working on another title first.

Setting: Believed to be before KH1, unconfirmed. In a deserty plain, hundreds of keyblades forming a crossroads. A great slain beast is seen that dissolves into dust.
Mood: Dark and dreary. The dark sky and dramatic music paint and picture of sorrow and unease.
Characters: Three keyblade weilding armoured figures; one shadowy figure. Armoured characters are new to series, some believe Xehanort is the dark one.

The secret trailer reveals to us a list of all of the Ansem Reports. I can't read Japanese, but it points out a few Reports in bolded, up front text that doesn't scroll by. It says Ansem Report 8 & 9 at the bottom. Ansem Report 8 talks about Xehanorts machind that creates Heartless, while 9 has a line that may hold great significance to the trailer. The line reads "The Keyblade is said to hold phenomenal power. One legend says its wielder saved the world, while another says that he wrought chaos and ruin upon it." Knowing that Kingdom Hearts explores more than one world, more than one side of the heart it is safe to say that maybe KH3 will deal with how the keyblade brings destruction, because it doesn't seem like the happiest trailer ever.

The first keyblade in the line has been argued to be either Kairi's Keyblade used late in Kingdom Hearts II or Mickey's Keyblade, then there is The Kingdom Key, followed by Riku's Road To Dawn Keyblade. The fact that these three Keyblades are selected above all others predict great importance of the three heroes once again

There is a quick pan outwards and it is revealed that there are hundreds upon hundreds of keyblades sticking out of the ground. It strongly resembles a graveyard. There are for pathes carved out, which have a striking resemblence to the crossroads from Chain of Memories. The crossroads proved as paths between light, dark, twilight (as DiZ said) and dawn (as Riku said). Each character in the trailer comes from a different path, indicating a different state of heart. It is clear the crossroads will play an important part in KH3.

WHAT WE KNOW
The characters are original and have not been seen in previous games. They are NOT Sora, Riku, Kairi.
There are a lot of keyblades, a war is coming or has passed.
The Crossroads are important.
Has something to do with the Keyblade bringing chaos.

WHAT WE DON'T KNOW
The identity of the armoured figures.
Who the distant outlined figure is.
The place in the Kingdom Hearts timeline this trailer takes place in.
What the text means by "birth by sleep".

This theory suggests there were several Keyblade Masters, I'm going to edit their assumptions to fit my own. The original theory is that there are five keyblade masters, I'm going to say there are four. Two went off into the darkness, bringing chaos and destruction to any world they touched. The other two were of Light and Twilight, of goodness and honor. When one of the dark masters realizes the evil in the darkness, they return through the path of Dawn, this is the same path Riku took when escaping the darkness. The three good masters meet in the crossroads and in the distance, they see a dark figure appear: the Dark Keyblade Master.
Xehanort may have been one of the Keyblade Masters, and this Keyblade War causes him to lose something dear: his memory. Escaping battle, he comes to the Radiant Garden war-torn and confused, Ansem takes him in and offers any assistance possible

Tetsuya Nomura also stated that these are new characters and the scene is set in the past, but also the future in a sense. A strong indicator we are dealing with another dimension where time does not align to Sora's world

"The Chasers" is a pretty random term considering the other text. I believe that The Chasers are the soldiers who are seen in the trailer. Like the Nobodies, this is what they are referred to as. Off the top of my head, I'm going to guess that they "chase" keyblades, bringing them back to this dead land. Maybe for safety? And it's possible that they could never aquire Sora's. I'm betting, through the nature of the trailer, that these guys are bad. So, they may be another step up from Organization XIII, using XIII just as pawns. So from now on, I'm going to refer to the soldiers as Chasers.

Arguably the most confusing part of the secret trailer is that the term "The Chasers" doesn't relate to anything we are aware of. So what or who is a Chaser?

At first, it seemed that the soldiers in the trailer are "Chasers" who we thought chased either Sora, Hearts, Kingdom Hearts or something else. These mysterious beings fit the bill alright.
Further studying suggests something different...
E-mails and researching dictionaries suggests that "Chasers" are those who CREATED the Keyblades. Here is a definition from Dictionary.com:
One who decorates metal by engraving or embossing

Here is an interveiw with the creator: http://www.kh2.co.uk/?page=NI/KH2U\

here are the imortant parts

Speaking of Tifa, there's an event where she talked to Cloud after beating Sephiroth.
In Nojima-san's scenario, it explained Cloud and Tifa's connection more in-depth but I deleted it away. I thought it would be more interesting to let the gamers think about it. For example, "If Cloud's darkness is Sephiroth, then Tifa is light"; in that sense you can take it that Tifa isn't really human. The reason Tifa doesn't talk to anyone else besides Sora and co. may be because she doesn't exist as a human. Of course, I also presented her in a way that she could also be a resident of Hollow Bastion, so I think you can feely think for yourself about her.

So Yuna, Rikku and Paine showed up as faeries this time.
I've always wanted to have a FF character showing up as "something that looks human but isn't human" at least once. Since "Kingdom Hearts" is a deformed world, I wanted to have a little fun with that. And as a plus, if all three showed up in their normal human size, I was kind of worried that the screen might get a bit too crowded. At least I've aways thought that if I were to make them appear in the game, having them as faeries would make them as very interesting beings. I wasn't deeply involved with FFX-2 but from the impression I got of looking at them as an audience, their positions in this game is how I see them.

In the last scene in the ending, they received a letter from the king. I'm quite curious to what's written in it.
I was troubled for a very long time on whether I should show the letter's contents or not, and in the end I decided to let people speculate it themselves. You can guess what's in the letter by looking at those three's facial expressions: Sora looking at it blankly, Riku smirking and Kairi looking slightly worried. If it was just a "Hello, it's been awhile", they would be smiling instead so at least it's hinted it is not that kind of simple letter. Actually, it was planned to have a little more scene to it and by watching it you could tell what's in the letter. I might be able to show that scene when I get the chance to.

Nomura Tetsuya - Director and Concept Design
A secret of the game that only he knew
"Xehanort's name has two meanings. When you spell it in Roman alphabets and rearrange them without the 'X', they'll spell 'No Heart' and 'Another'. These meanings are connected to the secret movie


After the ending, there's a secret movie this time, too. What exactly is the movie trying to tell?
I actually have a solid idea on what the movie's setting will be in my head. In the previous game's secret movie, I wasn't even sure if I would be making a sequel or not, so some parts of it were quite vague. But this time I already have an idea my head where I think "This is it."

Did that scene happen in the future or in the past?
I would at least say it's an episode in the past, but.... Hmm, how should I say this? It's in the past but you can also think it's in the future, something like that.

Who are the 3 armoured people?
Those 3 are completely new people who haven't shown up at all. In fact, I've already thought of their names. Back when I was making that movie, I only had their settings but now I've even drawn their faces to give myself a clearer image of them.

The king, Sora and Riku's keyblades were there, too.
It's to show that those three armoured people aren't them but that doesn't mean they don't have connections. The words "Keyblade War" that showed up in the middle were to implicate that there were fights between Keyblades. Most of the puzzles in the first KH have been solved in KHII but there are many things about the Keyblade that haven't been revealed yet. A line from the previous game's Ansem Report #8 appeared in the movie but that is to say "It means this but it's not explained yet."

Does that mean you already have a plot for KHIII?
Hmm... I have an idea but it can't be helped because my team are planning to work on our next different title. So we're not working on KHIII now and we're not planning to work on it for some time, too. I have a plot in my head but I'm not sure if it'll be released to the world or just stay in there.

We found out that Riku's Keyblade's name is "Way to the Dawn" when examining his item slots after he joined your party. Is that Keyblade a transfigured version of Soul Eater?
I designed it with that image. Since Riku has always been using Soul Eater, he still calls it that even after it changed form. Keyblades aren't something that you can obtain suddenly out of nowhere so in Riku's case, his Soul Eater was used as an intermediary for that Keyblade.

If we directly translate "Way to the Dawn", "dawn" means "in-between night and daytime", so does that mean that Keyblade is from the In-between World? In other words, this means the Keyblades that Sora, King Mickey and Riku wield represent the Worlds of Light, Dark and In-between?
Well, if I have to say where they belong, it's just as you said. But the name of "Way to Dawn" doesn't have to mean that. This name came from the scene at the end of Riku's story in KH:COM that suggested which path he would walk on, where he said "The road to dawn."

In the World that Never Was, Xigbar said to Sora "Compared to the ones before this, you're weaker"; does that mean he's comparing Sora to previous Keyblade wielders before him?
Yes, he was. I was hinting "Xigbar has met other Keyblade wielders before." As for something more than that... I'll leave it to your imagination.

As of right now there, are a few rumors concering the Keyblade. In the second game there are so many Keyblades, not counting forms. You know Sora's Keyblade of Light (Kingdom Key), Mickey's Keyblade of Darkness(*Neo Kingdom Key) Riku's Keyblade of Dawn (Road to Dawn) and then Kairi's Keyblade of Dusk (*Radiant Sunset) And Roxas's Keyblades of Judgement (Oathkeeper and Oblivian Yes Roxas's Keyblades are confirmed to be real and not just copies of Sora's in the scene where Sora fights Roxas if you set it so Sora has Oathkeeper, you'll notice that he'll use it so it's Sora's Oatherkeeper versus Roxas's Oathkeeper and Oblivian)

*Rumored name
Neo Kingdom Key came from the theory of the color scheme, it's inversed, where the silver was is now gold and where the gold was is silver....oh look at the pic.

Kairi's Keyblade is modeled after Radient Garden.

 

i say it should be on the Wii more then the ps3. just because the ps3 sucks

 

Well this raises more questions than it answers... How did Xigbar meet previous Keyblade masters?

 

I think Xigbar will play a very important role in kh3....like a keyblade weilder slayer....

 

actually the ps2 is going to be dead in like 3 or 4 years so dont be so worried.