After watching this video, the whole thing seems much more glorious!!!
Big news: https://www.google.com/webhp?source...v=2&ie=UTF-8#q=kingdom+hearts+3+unreal+engine As you all know, they're using Unreal 4. People say the visuals arent gonna change but they are using this powerful versatile engine now. Maybe we could have those ''pixar-ish'' visuals. U4 handles global illumination quite well.
Hello, hella. Frankly, let's be honest, it's a bit ridiculous how much time has passed since the release of the first games. I'm kinda feeling nostalgic here.:( Think about it people, think about all the others like me who waited so long just for a teaser. Ok, ok, here we are back in 2004, I'm in fourth grade in primary school, 10 years old, still playing spyro games and final fantasy games on psOne. One day I go back home, only to find that my house has been robbed. Good thing for me; the insurances replaced my ps1 with a ps2! Amazing! My parents are cool enough to buy me two games. I take Final fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts which had been realeased the year before. Of course, I'm amazed by the graphics (remember I'm swithcing from ps1 to ps2). Somehow, FFX doesn't bring any interest to me unlike the other final fantasy did (frankly it's just because I didn't get far enough in the game). Kingdom Hearts on the other hand is like playing a dream. Seeing Disney (I was a maniac of cartoons and Disney) and Final Fantasy blended together (also a FF fanatic), I just could'nt stop playing the game. :D And like alot of gamers do, you enjoy the game with your FRIENDS!! I had companions which had heard about the game but found it ridiculous because the main character fought with a key. I had that one friend though which enjoyed the game as much as I did and we played together alot, so many memories contained in one single soft. I remembered every morning at school, it would lecture him my progression and I remember when I had beaten Riku at hollow bastion; we were so proud of Sora when he yelled: ''I DONT'T NEED THE KEYBLADE. MY FRIENDS ARE MY POWER!'' And we would get excited just hearing the hero saying cheesy stuff like that. It took me almost 2 years to beat the game. I was young and I would often die at bosses; making me take long breaks of playing after consecutives defeat. I remember my sweaty hands fighting Ansem and every time there was another phase, another body part to destroy, I pestered against Square for making a Disney game with a neverending final boss. On that first playtrough, I didn't see the deep dive secret ending, I just saw that little clip when long haired Kairi waited on the beach for sora and riku to come back. Having beaten the game in the end of 2005. I already had heard about the coming of KH2. My only source site for news was Kh2.co.uk (it was really different at that time). Honestly, after playing KH COM on a gba emulator, I was really disapointed. I found the game utterly hard, unintesrestinf from a discovery point of view. I had to force myself using cheats to beat the game so I could be prepared for KH2. And then the beast came... KH2 had been released, although not quite, in japan it had been released not in america. I did get to see when the Passion Intro was shown and I was on the verge of crying by the beauty of it. I think we all agree here to say that Kingdom Hearts 2 intro (Passion) is a masterpiece. So imagine a 12 year old who grew up with the serie seeing it for the first time.:D When the english version finally came to america, i was deceived by the englsih version(Sanctuary). Anyway, I could finally get to play the second entry of my dream saga. I will be short: I became addicted. Everything was perfect.In 2006, I though KH2 was perfect. The worlds. The story. OMG, just discovering who that mysterious boy Roxas was. Oh and oh, the moment after days of playing Roxas ( yes it took me days to finish the Roxas part), when Sora finally emerges, only to see that every one of his fighting animations had been magnifically revamped and that he was as swift and dynamic as ever. Add to that, drive forms, reaction commands, limits and new magics, it's like the game could never finish to add stuff to improve it. One my first playtrough, I didn't even get to use magic once, i was a drive addict. To sum it up, I passed one whole summer playing the game almost every day. Then I beat it. I was pretty sure there were no way I could have another experience like that and I was right (though Okami and Shadow of the colossus came that year and they were unforgettable experiences too). Then Birth By Sleep was announced. I was intrigued but not hyped. BBS came 4 years after the release of KH2 and after playing it, it was good but not as intense as KH2 was. The characters were good but it was not the team sora, donald and goofy was. More of that, I wad disapointed that square still made as fans of the game were children. I was 16 years old and I exepcted the writing to be a bit more mature. Basically, none of the handheld games made me excited because I knew, though they had relevance to them, it was not KH3. It would not properly follow the aftermath of KH2 (though DDD did but yeah...). And then, E3 2013. 10 years after the release of the first game, 8 years after the second entry, a teaser of KH3 is finally presented. The former trio is finally back! To resume my joy, go watch the KH3 announcement reactions on youtube, it was pretty much like that. Just imagine a 20 year old guy doing it running around the house calling his sister to come and watch because the BEST GAME EVER has finally been announced.. Of course, I really was pumped up, altough the teaser wasn't that amazing. I'm 20 year old now. 20 year old and ten years ago, when I was playing the first game as a 10 year old, I would've never believed it and one came and said to me that i would still play the franchise as an adult. Even more shocking, when I was 12 after beating the second game, I was sure KH3 was coming on PS3 (there was no confirmation of that but it seemed logical). And so after acquiring my ps3, the ONLY games I really waited and wished for were: FF versus 13, The last guardian and KH3. 8 years ago, I would've never believed it if one came and said: Hey kid, in 8 years, the last guardian is nowhere to be found, Versus is FF 15 and..oh, see Kingdom Hearts 3? In 8 years, the only thing you will see from it is a 2 minute alpha trailer... Although, this thread doesn't make any sense, sometimes you just realize things. It's been 8 years and KH3 hasn't come out yet...
''Sora...?'' (Poor Sora's mom)... ''We may never see our parents again'' (Riku) OK, am I the only one here who actually bothers about their parents? I read once in a forum that in the KH world, the parents weren't part of the important values of the series. I understand that allright, however, if this was the case, I would've prefered the 3 characters to be orphans at least... I mean, if parents were not that important in Sora's heart, why would they have bothered putting a dialogue from Sora's mom? She must be deadly worried about her son disapearing for about two years... I wish Nomura would've presented more the life of sora, riku and kairi when they were living on the islands and their town, don't you?
I discovered the series when I was 10. I was a crazy fan of the FF series thinking it were the best games ever made and I was a maniac of Disney movies. When I learned about the existence of the game, you don't realaize how happy I was, like i was dreaming; my 2 favorites entertainement series combined in one?? Disney drew me in! And while the disney were somehow badly executed in the first game, they managed to pull it off mostly well in the second game. Especially when the organization memebers gets in the second visits![DOUBLEPOST=1407858961][/DOUBLEPOST]I agree with zebra. Without Disney, it would just like another final fantasy fanservice game.
So this is the Kingdom Shader.... Cool right? Despite me finding these visuals very clean and pretty, I'm kinda sceptical on Square's choie here... The Kingdom Shader is designed to offer Disney's coloful visuals, however with recent feature films of Pixar and Disney animation studios, I think it would've been better if square actually troed to reach the CGI cinematic look they had in their previous games, it felt more adequate with the actual look of animated feature films... Don't get me wrong, the Kingdom shader is good but it look like an excuse for square to not work properly on their visuals...Too many game developpers make their games with cel -shaded visuals so they don't have to bother on the grpahics, what do you think?
Hello friend. Very interesting subject here. I really like the topic OP started . As much as I love this series, it does lack some things, essentially due to budget and technical constraints. I haven't watched your video completely yet but I'm leaving myself some time today to see the whole thing. However there are some things you points out that is true but also have a backside to it too. For example, on the music part, your'e saying that it would have been better if the original composers of the disney movies did the score for their respective game worlds. Frankly, it would have really been cool however, have you thought about the COST?? These composers are high budget feature film musicians and now you would want them to compose songs for each world? Dude, maybe they could ''support'' or make critiques on Yoko's work so she could grasp better understanding of the disney feel but there's no way square would spend so much money only for the OST...It's already great they manage to hire most of the original voice actors (though even there, they can't get em all, just take example at the Pirate of carribean worlds, they didnt hire neither johnny depp, keira kngihtley and bloom for the voices probably due to budget constraint). You know the good thing about having only one musical composer is that even if the disney worlds don't seem as true as the the movies they're from, thw whole thing seems connected! Shinomura really has this unique style and most the worlds reflects that. In the end, it really blends well with each other, let's add to that that she really does good battle music!! Composers make good epic music also however they aren't meant to be looped and short like in video games. Visually, I'm gonna say that Square did a really decent job! I mean frankly, for playstation 2 (and psp), this is great! Though some disney characters have weird faces like Tarzan in the first game, most the the disney protgonists are well modeled and rendered! I don't even think Disney could have done a better job themselves, TAKE A LOOK at their own games! Go see gameplay of Brave, 3D Tarzan and Alladin games and you'll notice that visually, these games are really poor compared to the KH representation of them. My favorites are mulan and Ariel http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A6NIAGyrekk/UuvxwOJxBPI/AAAAAAAAFX8/7ZVt7rfnB3o/s1600/100px-Mulan_KHII.png http://images.khinsider.com/Kingdom.../Characters/Atlantica/character01 - ariel.png On top of that, add amazing particle effect like the smoke in the mulan world and you really get something solid overall. However there's one main complaint to be made about the visuals on the characters and that's when they have FIXED GIF FACES. This is essentially due to budget constraints. In a games which have about 5 hours of cinematics, you can't expect every dialogues and cutscenes to be animated in HIGH poly (the models with fixed drawn faces are low polygons version of the characters used for gameplay squence and mostly bubble dialogue cutscenes) ! Square Would go bankrupt after developping half of the game... Now,another thing I'm gonna tlak about is the animation! ANI-****ING-MATION. Now, for me, that's a big subject!! That's something huge and important I look in my games. That's essetnially because I'm aspiring to work in the industry later as a 3d animator. Technically, video games today could not have the same visuals as a Pixar or Dreamworks movie due to technical constraints of consoles, HOVWEVER there's nothing that doesn't allow game developpers to have the same animation quality in games than in films in Cutscenes (except budget). Take a look at most AAA games today; they have realistic graphics (not as good as in movies of course) and top notch animations and characters motions . Animation wise, today in games due to MOTION CAPTURE, characters in game moves like real life people. Take for example, The last of Us, or Heavy Rain or Beyond, whatever, these games make good use of mo-cap and you get astounding results in the end. However, these are not animated by animators like in Dreamworks, Disney, Pixars and Animated movies. Why? Well, essentially because they aren't cartoonish and mostly because hand-key animation (animation that doesnt use mo-cap) is extremely costy in terms of time and money... One thing I'm glad with the KH series, is that they haven't used cheap Motion-captures yet. MO-Cap would have really ruined the whole thing for me (though it could be useful in realistic worlds like Pirates of carribean or for Tron characters). My main complaint about the animation in kingdom hearts is that it tends to be way too anime-ish. In the first game, you somehow could sense square animators were trying to reprodcue the best they could western disney animation style. However, in the second game, there were some really odd moments were the animation was way too anime-ish and somehow, the game lost one of the important disney aspects the first entry had; cartoonish motions...:( Frankly, I really hope square could put more money on the animation department for the game, especially for cutscenes! I mean look at Ratchet a Crack in Time cutscens, these are really disney style animation I'd like to see in KH. Combat animation are allright I guess, I do like the reaction commands stuff, it's swift and dynamic, could use some cleaning though. Last thing, is the background, the disney background. That's probably the biggest problem of the series. Most of the disney world plot is hardly respected, feels rushed, sometimes cheap, even original protagonists don't blend in and are totally out of characters. That's probably due to budget and maybe technical constraints. They don't have the time to developp characters properly in the games and to make interesting subplot for each world..I undesertand that, but why do they feel so EMPTY ? Most world lack NPC and really feels like they were dead, lifeless like if they were ILLUSIONS...Even town for ****s sake's lacks life. I've seen games with cheaper budget have town with way more characters than in KH and developping a tool that could create procedural random characters for square shoudnt be that hard. I mean, aren't they a big company? Isn't KH a AAA production? Technically, they can't have any excuses this time on PS4..now about budget, well, we are in 2014 and things that costed alot and were hard to do back in the days are now done with a few line of codes and clicks with proper engines...-_- In the end, I'm still going to applaud square and Nomura for the efforts. My biggest complaint is proably here about Disney themselves. DISNEY DOESN'T SEEM INTERESTED ONE FUKING BIT ABOUT THE WHOLE KH PROJECT. I don't sense any support in the series, I don't sense any marketing or budget aid... They never features KH characters in their product though the KH series have brought back and revived some of their old masterpieces... That's a big shame from their part...
Trying to find inspiration...
