It can be easy to forget that Disney now owns Marvel and Star Wars. So why is that important to video games? Because, according to a recent interview with Kingdom Hearts 3 designer and co-director, characters and worlds from both of those universes could potentially be in the upcoming next gen action adventure.
Let’s be clear here: Kingdom Hearts 3 is likely a long, long ways off. Over the course of the past two E3 events, we’ve seen very little concerning the game and I’m not exactly holding my breath for any new footage at this weekend’s PlayStation Experience event held in Los Vegas.
For the uninitiated, the Kingdom Hearts series is a mix of Disney properties, the Final Fantasy universe and some original characters/worlds. It’s a wonderful concoction and, even if the overarching story is all but impenetrable, it’s hard to find fault in a game that has Goofy and Donald Duck fighting alongside Ariel and Simba.
Moving forward, though, things could look a bit different for the series, as Kotaku is reporting that more recently acquired Disney properties could also be in the mix, including both Marvel and Star Wars.
Refusing to go into specifics during interview in London, Kingdom Hearts 3’s Tai Yasue said that there are a lot of new Disney universes up for exploration and that the team is “looking at all of Disney, the new ones as well.”
“We have to come up with a world that has a lot of originality,” Yasue said. “We want variety in our new Kingdom Hearts, so we don’t want too many of one sort of world, that would look the same. For each world there has to be some meaning for it, in the plot.”
Yasue went on to use Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep as an example.
“In the Cinderella scene, the characters learn something specific by relating to Cinderella,” Yasue said. “Also, gameplay-wise, is that world something that would make gameplay fun? There’s a lot I can’t say, but there’s so much to consider.”
Well, if we’re going to just throw the door open here, what about Pixar worlds and characters, since they’re under the Disney stable now, too? And heck, what about other Square Enix properties as well, since they are the other half of this wonderful Kingdom Hearts equation? I’m not saying that games too far detached from the core of the KH series should just be thrown in for fun but, hey, what about characters from the new RPG hotness, Bravely Default?
Honestly, I could do this all day. The thought of all of these different characters getting to meet and interact is why I love the series and, hopefully, Kingdom Hearts 3 will pull in enough of the old and the new to make all of their fans happy. Now…How much longer do we have to wait before we can actually play the game?
