Kingdom Hearts 3: Gameplay, Visuals, Storyline Detailed

Tetsuya Nomura, Game Director of Kingdom Hearts 3, has gone into quite a bit of detail about the upcoming game in the latest issue of Famitsu, which is out this week. 

Among other things, the director confirmed that the story in Kingdom Hearts 3 is set to take place after the events of Dream Drop Distance. "We're proceeding along with which worlds we'll be selecting for the game," he said. "It's the final episode in the 'Dark Seeker' saga that began with the original KH, and it'll depict the final battle with Xehanort."

Nomura also went into some detail about the game's new visual art style, which differs from that of its predecessors. He says that the studio spent a lot of time figuring out what direction to take with its visuals for the next-generation. 

"Should we go for a more realistic look like in recent projects, or try something else? Along the way, we remembered that these KH characters were originally paintbrush art from Disney productions, a texture that was one of our original aims, and that it was time to return to that. So [chief creative director Takeshi] Nozue went through a series of tests, and the results are the visuals that we refer to in the team as the Kingdom Shader. It may look like a pretty drastic change, but I see it as a rich evolution of everything we've shown you up to now."

Like the graphics, the gameplay is also getting a significant overhaul where the action is described as "pretty frantic." Here's what he had to say about how the game plays out:

KH3 has three-person parties, but NPCs and other characters join the fight in each individual world, and the resulting action is really flashy and exciting. The enemy AI is a lot more intricate, too, and I think the gameplay will reflect that new dynamic balance. For example, there's a foe that's shaped like a vehicle, and Sora may jump on it and fly around; that's already implemented."

That being said, it'll be awhile before the game is released, but Nomura promises that it'll return to the spotlight very soon—either at the Tokyo Game Show this Fall, or the Disney-oriented d23 Expo Japan which takes place in October.