Kingdom Hearts III

Posted by Meilin Lee : Jan 23, 2015 at 10:05 PM ( 2 , 2,597 )

Kotaku recently sat down with KH3 co-director, Tai Yasue, to ask a few questions on KH3 and the HD remasters. In the interview, Yasue mentions how 1.5 and 2.5 helped with KH3's development, the relationship with Disney, and how Square-Enix is continuously hiring for KH3. The full interview interview can be read below:

Working on the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 remixes has been good training for Kingdom Hearts 3, said Tai Yasue (co-director and game designer on Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Kingdom Hearts 1.5/2.5 HD remasters) in an interview in London.

"We have been working on 3 and 2.5 at the same time," he explains, "so a lot of people are crossing over and doing both. There are also a lot of new people working on both. In a way, we’ve learned what was good about our previous Kingdom Hearts [games] by making 2.5.

"For 3, we want to evolve it in a new direction, but at the same time we don’t want to change what is fundamental about Kingdom Hearts. We’re hiring new people continuously, so they are learning about Kingdom Hearts through making 2.5. It’s a good learning experience."

Kingdom Hearts is a unique thing to be working on, says Yasue, due to the necessity of finding a balance between respecting the Disney properties and incorporating original, creative ideas - so the training has been necessary.

"There’s a lot to get used to working with the Disney content," he says. "You have to have a lot of dedication and respect for their visual IPs for example, and when you play Kingdom Hearts 2 you see that: when you summon a character or use a spell there’s a lot of love and care that goes into the presentation. When you see Stitch coming out of the screen, for example, it’s very true to the original movie. That dedication is something you learn through the process or remaking 2."

It must surely be restrictive working within those constraints, but Yasue enjoys the challenge that they introduce. "As Square-Enix, if someone else was making a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Quest, we’d be very protective of that too," he ventures. "So we really understand the importance of not changing the brand and respecting the fans. We want to make it true to Disney - we don’t want to change it fundamentally. We always strive to make original content, but with Kingdom Hearts you have to really respect the source material, and that’s something people really like about the series.

"As someone who creates games I think the constraints make you really think. They are what make you strive to come up with new ideas - ideas that are acceptable to Disney, and also fun. That balancing act leads to a lot of surprises. It’s very challenging, but we work on it daily. We continuously talk with Disney and see what they think is acceptable… but we constantly want to surprise our players, too, so we need flexibility. It is challenging and makes you think."

The Kingdom Hearts team also benefits from sharing expertise with the other Square-Enix development units, including the Final Fantasy XV team, Yasue says - even though Kingdom Hearts development is based in Osaka. "We trade ideas - especially for PS4, Xbox One, new gen stuff," says Yasue. "We’re trying to move in leaps obviously, so there is a lot to learn and a lot to explain to other people. That exchange of ideas and technology is very important and we’re doing that inside Square Enix, with other teams."
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Source: Kotaku

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Square-Enix Currently Hiring for KH3

Posted by Meilin Lee : Jan 22, 2015 at 11:45 AM ( 10 , 4,175 )

Square-Enix has recently updated their job listings page, listing 14 positions specifically related to the development of Kingdom Hearts III, ranging from working on the UI, the UE4 engine, cutscenes, and even minigames. The open positions available (where all but one are located in Osaka) are listed below:

3BD/Cutscene Designer

Position Description: Working on cutscenes for Kingdom Hearts III. Taking part in the entire manufacturing process related to cutscene production, from storyboarding to layout and lighting.

3BD/Technical Artist (in Osaka)

Position Description: In charge of general technical assistance (workflow construction, selection of middleware etc) in implementing the high quality graphic expression of Kingdom Hearts III. In charge of construction duties for a shader on the game engine for nature representations (water, rain, snow etc), and special effects (magic etc) etc, during online games.

3BD/Menu Designer (in Osaka)

Position Description: In charge of data creation and design relating to the UI of Kingdom Hearts III. The goal is to communicate with planners and programmers to complete a user-friendly UI with an awareness of the style of the world as well as the characteristic feel of a Kingdom Hearts game.

3BD/Battle Planner (in Osaka)

Position Description: Planning the battles for Kingdom Hearts III. Specific Job Contents: battle plan creation (mainly enemy), specs creation and implementing AI that uses UE4. Minigame etc plan, specs creation and fine-tuning. Player action and gameplay plan, specs creation.

3BD/Direction Planner (in Osaka)

Position Description: Using UE4 to apply camera and direction to the explanations of the game player's techniques and maps and the introduction, advancement and completion of missions and battles. Carrying out meetings, storyboarding and ordering of materials in entirety until they are included.

3BD/Level Planner (in Osaka)

Position Description: Kingdom Hearts III level design and management tasks. Level design plan, specs creation and implementation adjustment. Minigame etc plan, specs creation and implementation adjustment.

3BD/Character Model Designer (in Osaka)

Position Description: General production work on characters to be in Kingdom Hearts III. Job specifics for Tokyo: texture creation involved in polishing up new and old models/texture creation. Design work. Job specifics for Osaka: working on character assets for PS4/XboxOne. Assigned work on the materials and shader used for UE4. Schedule and quality management.

3BD/2D Background Art Designer (in Osaka)

Position Description: Creation of 2D design documents for the 3DBG designers to work from. Creating concept plans for the natural terrain/towns etc of the various worlds of Kingdom Hearts, and designing plans for the little objects they are made of (trees, signs, houses etc).

3BD/3DCG Designer (BG) (in Osaka)

Position Description: General work on background production for Kingdom hearts III. Job specifics: working on background assets for the PS4/Xbox One. Working on layout and lighting using UE4. Schedule and quality management.

3BD/Effects Designer (in Osaka)

Position Description: Creating effects using our company's customized UE4 engine.

3BD/Art Designer (in Osaka)

Position Description: Designing the items and enemy characters to appear in Kingdom Hearts III (the goal is to create appealing designs with an awareness of the particular feel of the Kingdom Hearts universe). Proposing ideas regarding movement and gimmicks along with design plans.

3BD/UI Programmer (in Osaka)

Job Description: Carrying out maintenance, optimization, implementation and design of programs for the game's HUD and menu etc. Always working with the shape of better controls and gameplay in mind.

3BD/Game Programmer (in Osaka)

Job Description: Being in charge of the maintenance and development of the gameplay programs for Kingdom Hearts III. Job Specifics: governing the actions of player, enemy and NPC characters. Implementing things relating to level construction. Implementing direction, special effects, VFX etc.

3BD/3D Graphics Programmer (in Osaka)

Job Description: Taking applications for staff to support the programming side of the visual expression of Kingdom Hearts III. Carry out maintenance, optimization, implementation and design of real time rendering programs.
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Credit to Goldpanner of KHInsider for the translated job summaries.

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Kingdom Hearts III

Bill Farmer expects Kingdom Hearts III to be released in 2015?

Posted by Krowley : Jan 7, 2015 at 7:21 PM ( 16 , 4,306 )

Bill Farmer; the Voice actor who plays Goofy, has made recent tweets that he has finished recording his lines for Kingdom Hearts III and that we may be expecting it sometime this year! He has made numerous replies to fan speculation and seems fairly confident in his word that we can expect the long awaited title in 2015.

This may be nothing, but it seems we may be expecting more KH3 news sooner than we think. If not the game, we can at least expect plenty of updates in the near future!

Kingdom Hearts 3 may be closer than we expected, according to the voice actor behind one of its central characters.
Bill Farmer, who has voiced the character Goofy for years in both the Kingdom Hearts series and various cartoons, says that as far as he's been told, the much-anticipated sequel is due out later this year. He also claims his voice recording is already finished.

The word came from Farmer's tweets (via NeoGAF). Given Square Enix's relative silence on the project, it's possible that he's mistaken. When pressed by fans, though, he's has sounded very confident of his understanding.

He says they've been recording for the last few years. He went on to plead ignorance about specifics like new worlds, stating that the voice work is done before he has anything visual to reference. He also said he's done too many recording sessions to remember specific lines. Then again, being a professional, he probably knows better than to spoil plot anyway.
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Source - IGN
Bill Farmer's Twitter

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Tai Yasue Comments On KH3 Development!

Posted by Calxiyn : Dec 27, 2014 at 11:08 PM ( 3 , 2,689 )

4Gamer has done a mass survey of Japanese Developers' closing thoughts on 2014 in the gaming industry, and also what they are looking forward to on a professional and person level in 2015. Among many other developers, Tai Yasue, Kingdom Heart 3's Co-Developer was a part of the Survey and gave the following statement:

Source: http://www.4gamer.net/games/000/G000000/20141219102/
Translation: http://gematsu.com/2014/12/japanese...oles-details-coming-kingdom-hearts-iii-pokken

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Kingdom Hearts III

Tai Yasue Talks About the Switch From Luminous to Unreal 4

Posted by libregkd : Dec 4, 2014 at 1:53 PM ( 6 , 2,548 )

Eurogamer conducted an interview with Tai Yasue, co-director for Kingdom Hearts III, about the switch Kingdom Hearts III made from the in-house Luminous Engine to Epic's Unreal 4 Engine.

Square Enix ditched its in-house engine Luminous for Epic's Unreal Engine 4 part-way through the development of crossover action role-playing game Kingdom Hearts 3 - a move you'd expect to throw more than a few spanners in the works.

But according to its chief developer, the switch has been seamless, and development on the game is progressing smoothly.

Tai Yasue, co-director and game designer on Kingdom Hearts 3, the recently-released Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and the soon-to-be-released 2.5 HD Remixes, told Eurogamer in an interview that Unreal Engine 4 has impressed the team.

"The technology is moving forward a lot," he said. "That's something we've learned from the West, I think, in a big way. We're using Unreal Engine 4 right now, and that really has changed the way we make the game."

But development on Kingdom Hearts 3 began on Luminous before Square Enix shifted to Unreal 4, which begs the question: was there a problem with how Luminous was working out?

"There was nothing wrong with the Luminous engine at all," Yasue countered. "We decided that Unreal 4 was right for us. There was a huge network of people actually using it, we were communicating with the Japanese people at Epic a lot - it was like a complete product.

"It was easy to shift to, but at the same time though, there was a lot of stuff specific to Kingdom Hearts that we couldn't really do on Unreal 4 at first. So we had a lot of co-operation from Epic - they did a lot - at the same time we were doing a lot of customisation of the engine as well, to suit our needs."

These customisations have facilitated the likes of what the team refer to as the Kingdom Shader, Kingdom Hearts 3's paintbrush-like aesthetic.

"A lot of painstaking detail - the shadows for example, the really vivid colours, that sort of thing - we couldn't really do at the beginning, so we had to remake/customise the engine and add a lot of parameters."

Given that the game began life on Luminous, does that mean work on the initial teaser from E3 2013 had to be completely scrapped?

"We use the same graphical assets, so we didn't throw any of that away, and I guess a lot of the experience we got from making that for E3, that experience really translated to our development now," Yasue said.

"It was in our initial production stage, so I think we were learning a lot of stuff while using the Luminous engine."
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You can read more at Eurogamer.

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Kingdom Hearts III

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