The Kingdom Hearts franchise is definitely a widely beloved series and we’ve been waiting for the third installment for years ever since Kingdom Hearts II released in 2005. Now that we’re getting close to its official release date, new information is slowly coming out into the world that suggests that Kingdom Hearts III was almost completely scrapped if it wasn’t for Pixar worlds. In a new issue of Edge, apparently, the game director behind the upcoming installment was prepared to pull the plug on the title over the use of Pixar IPs.
There wasn’t enough time to put anything Pixar into Kingdom Hearts II before the title was released into the market. Likewise, it doesn’t look like Pixar was featured in any of the other video game installments to the franchise since, but when it came time to start work on Kingdom Hearts III, Tetsuya Nomura, the game director for Kingdom Hearts III, got in touch with Disney and let them know they needed Pixar worlds.
“I remember saying, If we can’t use Pixar, then we can’t have a third game.”
That is the quote making headlines lately as it appears that the development team had a Pixar or bust motto going into the third main installment. Apparently, the team saw that the amount of love that the Toy Story franchise alone receives was something definitely worth adding into the game. As we all know, the Toy Story world is featured in Kingdom Hearts III installment along with Monsters Inc. so it seems that Tetsuya was able to gain access to the IP without any problem.
Of course, it did take the development team quite a long time to craft up Kingdom Hearts III which is helping the hype build for the release. Regardless, it looks like the development team was taking precious care of the worlds such as Pixar’s Toy Story as in the Edge magazine, the game director also made note that they were working closely with an animator who originally made Toy Story adding to the level of complexity to the overall development of Kingdom Hearts III.
As mentioned, Kingdom Hearts III is releasing this year where we can finally explore the Toy Story world for ourselves. More specifically, Kingdom Hearts III is launching on January 29, 2019, for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One platforms.
