Kingdom Hearts 3 New Screenshots Hint At Shotlock

Square Enix made a good show of debuting the new Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer at their E3 press conference last week. Sora’s looking good and there’s confirmation that the game’s development is well underway.

During the Square Enix Presents event, some new screenshots were displayed, and they’ve been released in HD. These screenshots (header and below) are not from the game trailer, and there’s a notable difference between the trailer and these new shots.

There’s a slight change in the status bar, which went from EX in the trailer, to Focus in the screenshots. This is a bit odd since the trailer and these screenshots were at the same event, so does that mean it’s possible that the dev team might have tweaked something before E3? We could be looking at the screenshots from a more advanced point in development.

The Focus bar was last seen in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, and was used for Shotlock. There haven’t been any updates regarding this feature, but fans have asked for Shotlock to be brought back, and this may or may not be Square Enix’s answer to that request. Keep in mind that Keyblade Transformation will also feature heavily in Kingdom Hearts 3, so this Focus meter might be for that.

Tetsuya Nomura knows when Kingdom Hearts 3 will be released, but he’s not telling us anything. Sit tight and keep your fingers crossed for frequent updates, because it’s possible the game will still come out in 2017 or 2018.

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