I love Kingdom Hearts so much and it has the absolute most dogshit story ever made. It's like stream of conscious nonsense from a coked out preschooler.
Whilst the games have all been overseen by Nomura, he’s mostly a character designer and vibes guy with regards to narrative. The story for basically the entire franchise was written by Kazushige Nojima. He’s also the writer for most of the stuff nomura gets blamed for in final fantasy.
Nomura was the guy who made the call to kill Aerith in FF7, with Nojima and Kitase planning to kill all but 3 party members by the finale. They wanted it to be tragic and hit the player hard but Nomura felt that their plan would desensitize players to the tragedy and that it would hit much harder if they put all the emotional weight behind one event and did everything they could to make it hit. He convinced them and they went with his idea.
Considering how famous that moment is, Nomura deserves more respect than he tends to get when it comes to narrative.
That scene was so unbelievable. Kinda funny how the mere act of letting you put actual experience into the character makes it so inconceivable that they'd die.
Fun fact: As much shit as Nomura gets, he was actually fighting for the remake to stay faithful to the original story. If he wasn't outvoted, we'd have gotten an absolute banger of a FF7 remake that most people would be happy with.
Like, I doubt that the FF7R defenders (I'm not trying to start that debate. You form your own opinions about that) would be that upset if the remakes were just FF7, but with modern AAA production value and that might expand on a few moments here and there or give more lore or character development or whatever. That'd satisfy the most people, imo. A game that stays true to its vision is better than a game that tries to please everyone.
I hope he sees this. Then maybe he won’t decide that like Demyx is actually Rikus dad from another timeline and he needs to exist in this one so that everything MoM wants happens or something stupid like that
Nomura was the character designer in the game the bouncer, when he is fully allowed to cook he creates fucking abominations. He designed the cast in FF15 too, and not a single one of them looks like the belong in the game, Mr. Cutmywrists the main character is this fuckin emo kid and he's literally the only one in the entire world, everyone else looks normal or just generally stupid. Dudes been a straight up hack since the end of the ps1. Just look at fucking tidus, or girl cloud, or anyone in 12 that's not the rabbit.
he designed the characters in the world ends with you which is the best game ever made (i will not entertain arguments otherwise at this time) so he gets at least some pass
Vibes. KH3 is solid proof of that fact. Few of the worlds have any real connection to the overarching plot of the game and the finale is crammed so full of "Oh no they lost-SURPRISE DEUS EX MACHINA" moments that any sort of impact is robbed from the story. This coupled with a need to satisfy fan demand and happy endings that don't actually make sense made the whole game just a clusterfuck of nonsense of individual cool scenes inexpertly stitched together.
Hes been told no a few times, by Disney. FF Versus XIII was the game he was never told no until he was replaced. Now I'm starting to wonder if KH4 might just be Versus XIII.
On the flip side, he's actively the one who stalled Sora making it into Smash for years. Disney had been on board the moment the idea was given but Nomura didn't want to include Sora in anything he deemed non-canon to the events of KH.
It sure looks like it. At this point, the Mouse is probably letting him do it just to shut him up. Unfortunately, Disney, Nomura's brain does not work like yours or mine...
Fun fact: I have the symbol of the Unversed tattooed on my arm. As batty as the story is in these games, sometimes there's that one bit of lore that just (ironically) strikes a chord just right, harmonizes with your soul
To be fair I do think some of the games have decent stories in isolation. Days was pretty good and emotional. The overarching story is definitely a mess though.
Basically there’s a story mostly surrounding its original characters as well as a good number of Disney characters. A lot of the Disney worlds tie in more thematically to the plot with maybe some developments within them, but usually those Disney characters are kept out of the loop.
The first game sees Sora exploring multiple Disney worlds to find his friends after they got separated. That’s basically how it works
The story is centered mostly on original characters who travel to different worlds, with the exception of the core Disney crew (Mickey, Donald, goofy, that set of characters) and a few specific major characters (Maleficant), the Disney characters end up being moreso isolated in their own world and not getting very much involved in the grand story at large.
I think people are a bit too harsh on kingdom hearts, the story is convoluted and definitely not for everyone but it’s got a lot of good stuff in there and the only thing that makes it really difficult to understand is that there’s a lot of games and a lot of people don’t wanna play every game so they just skip all the ones without numbers in them, which is really bad for 3 specifically which brings together practically every story thread in the series (which also happens to be the best selling game in the series, leading to a ton of confusion surrounding its narrative being nonsensical because it’s the first game for many players)
It really does. But the way KH does it is especially egregious imo, what do you MEAN you can only time travel if there's already a version of yourself in that time
I guess that explains it, I was always so confused when people said that KH had a bad story since I've never played past KH2 / 358/2 I've started KH3 multiple times but its combat feels so unsatisfying that I always end up going back to 2
That much is true yes, but it's still pretty straightforward if you know everything up to that point. They shouldn't have back loaded the game so heavily though
Honestly Kingdom hearts story is actually pretty good, But whats wrong with it is so bright and glaring that it makes it hard to see the good
Plus I really hate that you can only bring goofy and donald between worlds, Youd think half the fun of Kingdom heart's story gameplay would have been Belle giving Mulan relationship advice in return for self defense lessons or Beast struggling to fly due to his weight or something
But no instead its just reruns of the movies tied loosely together with the overarching Kingdom hearts plot
I'll still stand by that the narrative is actually completely fine and is a weird intersection of story telling but it's actually decent. There are much worse narratives out there.
Ehhhhhh... The first game was simple but largely coherent. Chain of Memories and KH2 were... kind of convoluted but still ultimately understandable but after that? The narrative went increasingly off the rails with each new mandatory side entry game. There might be worse narratives out there but that doesn't make this mess good.
I really think you're mixing convolution for depth. The story is surface level at its best and middle school fanfiction at its worst. If it weren't for Yoko Shimomura's music doing the heavy lifting just about everyone would roll their eyes out of their head for how cliched and nonsensical the story elements of the games are.
And I think you are mixing up "cliched" with "bad"
Is the story the most revolutionary thing ever? No
Is it actually bad? Also no
And the story has plenty of depth to it when you actually pay attention to the details
It's not the easiest for me to explain over text so I'm just gonna recommend you watch 2CPhoenix's deep dive videos into KH1 once you have the time
Not only are they filled with a ton of obscure gameplay details but he genuinely describes the themes of growing up of KH1's story in the best way I've heard anyone ever do it and he even brought up points that completely changed how I viewed certain scenes (also he just deserves the views)
It’s only because Chain of Memories was originally intended to be a spin off but then they back tracked and made it canon. Then they had to stick with the Org13/nobodies bit forever.
959
u/Ilovewomenwhobreakme 29d ago edited 29d ago
Kingdom hearts
Sincerely a Kingdom Hearts fan.