The Kingdom Hearts Series: KINGDOM HEARTS 4 ANNOUNCED! STAR WARS POTENTIALLY TEASED (page 175)

[Ryannumber1gamer]

A Twitter user found interesting things through save editing and showed images of them on Twitter, proving these are real:

• Critical Mode is in the game, and it seems complete. Sora has a hell of a lot less HP and MP in this mode, around the area of 0.2 although with a bit more MP. Similar to previous games, Sora dishes out double damage, but in return, takes double damage. 
• Aqua has an unused HUD portrait, showing her idle state with a smiling Aqua in a similar fashion to Sora’s idle portrait. This is definitely new, because Aqua’s idle in 0.2 remained the same between battle and idle, and was one of her in a more determined state.

What we can gather from this are two things - Critical was planned and cut from the game at the last second. The rumours rushing around at the moment is that they wanted to avoid a 0.2 situation where it was included to begin with, and despised due to the ridiculously high difficulty level, and not only was a determent to the story, but required multiple patches to get it to a level that people deemed fun, so the rumour is that they wanted to hold off, let people experience the game first, and guage reactions to the combat and difficulty, so the adjustments can be made before critical mode is released.

Whatever the case, I’d argue it’s a fair wager that Critical Mode will be added either in a patch, or through free DLC like how the theatre mode in KH1FM was added as DLC for 1.5 + 2.5. From what we know, Critical is fully complete, or near it, because the statuses for enemy damage and Sora’s damage are there, as well as the much lessened HP and MP for Sora. Apparently there are additional conditions but they weren’t mentioned. I’d put a stake that one of them is lessened XP gain as that’s something typically done in KH games, and you start off with a few more pieces of equipment. All we know for sure is that it’s supposedly complete enough that the save editor who showed this intends on doing a full play through on Critical.

Spoiler

 

Secondly, it seems like Aqua was going to be playable outside of her fight with Vanitas, as evidenced by having portraits that display her out of battle.  What this likely means is that either A. You would’ve played as Aqua for the entirety of the Land of Departure section, instead of beginning with Sora, whilst Aqua is a party member, or even bolder - since 3 seems to make massive use of 0.2 things, complete with bringing over Aqua’s entire fighting style, finisher and moveset from 0.2, my guess is maybe we would’ve had a proper Dark World section with her.

Riku might have an idle portrait but we don’t know. The problem is that Aqua and Riku are hard coded to only be playable in the sections they’re playable in - as in Riku can only be played in the Dark World, and Aqua in the Land of Departure. Aqua’s portrait was discovered due to save editing her position to be before the fight with Vanitas, since there’s a non combat section of Land of Departure before their fight. The Dark World features Riku in constant combat, with no idle areas beforehand, so it’s impossible to know if he has a idle portrait with save editing.

 

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Apologies for double posting, just wanted to post the actual images that prove the above - 

Spoiler

 

 

[Perkilator]

Hey, just a thought—what would you guys think if Princess and the Frog was in KH3, but it followed an original plot involving Dream Eaters?

[KHCast]

After 3’s trainwreck attempt at movie plots, yes to the original plot, but please no more dream eater battles 

[Johnny Boy]

3 hours ago, KHCast said:

After 3’s trainwreck attempt at movie plots, yes to the original plot, but please no more dream eater battles 

Depends if Disney is willing to stop being so damn protective over certain properties (looks at Frozen).

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

27 minutes ago, Johnny Boy said:

Depends if Disney is willing to stop being so damn protective over certain properties (looks at Frozen).

Why do I get the feeling that that's not what dictated the stupid routine of Disney worlds not really mattering in this game? (Kinda been a running thing).

[KHCast]

I’m still kinda (really) annoyed by the fact that they introduce 7 “new” princess of hearts,(outside Kairi), but we only see 3 of them. I mean fuck, at least KH1 showed all 7 despite us not visiting all their worlds. A segment where you needed to free a few of them from Xehanort and his organization in like radiant garden or something, forcing the clash at the keyblade graveyard would have been a great way to not only lead into that battle, but reveal all 7 of the new princesses.

[Rowl]

Disney kinda still needs to create a new wave of famous Disney princesses to fill in the gap. So far for this generation of kids, they only created 4 new princesses: Rapunzel, Elsa, Anna, and Moana. Maybe five if we can count Vanellope also as an official one. With Kairi they would have been only 5 of them, so two are missing. We have to wait until the next KH game when Disney has the two other princesses ready for marketing. 

[KHCast]

Umm, Tiana, Merida, Vanellope, Pocahontas? It’s not like there aren’t options. I don’t think they need to be only from new generation films and franchises. That just makes it way too blatantly cynical for me personally 

[Rowl]

Pocahontas is an old movie. I'm not sure if modern kids would be into it. Plus it wasn't one of their bigger hits at the box office. Same I can also say about The Princess and the Frog and Brace. Both of them weren't that huge juggernauts for them, so I do not really see why Disney wants to push those movies. And with Vanellope I'm not 100% if we can count her as an official princess. Or one that Disney likes to market. 

[KHCast]

Nomura also has creative liberty to a degree with what can be used keep that in mind. Disney wasn’t the one asking to put pirates in 3, for example, that was Nomura. Same with Pixar properties. And KH pre 3 still pushed the old princesses, so relevancy really shouldn’t be a factor here, especially when highly desired worlds have been from films that never broke box office. (Hell, if we went with relevance as a argument, Pirates 4 or 5 should have been the pirates film used.) World and character selection shouldn’t be based only on that. Tiana Is a legacy character from Disney’s last full length 2d animated film, as well as the first black princess, I’d say that gives some fair reason to give her (and her world) a shot.

[Perkilator]

5 hours ago, KHCast said:

Nomura also has creative liberty to a degree with what can be used keep that in mind. Disney wasn’t the one asking to put pirates in 3, for example, that was Nomura. Same with Pixar properties. And KH pre 3 still pushed the old princesses, so relevancy really shouldn’t be a factor here, especially when highly desired worlds have been from films that never broke box office. (Hell, if we went with relevance as a argument, Pirates 4 or 5 should have been the pirates film used.) World and character selection shouldn’t be based only on that. Tiana Is a legacy character from Disney’s last full length 2d animated film, as well as the first black princess, I’d say that gives some fair reason to give her (and her world) a shot.

See? Exactly! This guy gets it!

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

8 hours ago, KHCast said:

but reveal all 7 of the new princesses. 

I swear, it's like they're allergic to the thought of Disney characters crossing over with others (outside of the Mickey Mouse trio obviously) ever since they dared to have all Disney princesses or villains in a room together in KH1, sheesh.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I don’t care if you have to make Kuczo the princess of light for that world, we should’ve gotten Emperor’s New Groove.

[KHCast]

I was actually kinda expecting Honey from BH6 to be a princess. I mean she has that perky positive optimistic attitude most of them have, and we had Alice as a princess, establishing you don’t need to be of royalty, or live in a castle.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

50 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Alice as a princess, establishing you don’t need to be of royalty, or live in a castle.

Well, actually being a part of the Disney Princess franchise probably helped her out more. Still though, ain't no reason we didn't get 7 princesses in Kh3 despite them(Nomura) hyping that up to high heaven.

[Big Panda]

There could still be old princesses in the lineup. Kairi is still there afterall.

[Perkilator]

Hey, so how do you guys think these movies should be handled were they ever to be worlds in any way in Kingdom Hearts?

-The Emperor’s New Groove

-Wreck-it-Ralph

-Inside Out

-Atlantis: The Lost Empire

-Coco

-Jungle Book (1967)

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I don’t know exactly how I’d want a Emperor world, but I know for a fact I want to see the Let it Go sequence used in a different way for comedic event. Like instead of Sora and co providing stupid commentary that Elsa is cool, I’d love it for Kuzco to do his whole interruption of events, only for Sora and co to stumble into it and wonder what’s going on.

On one hand, I think it could also be cool to revisit animal combat, like how it was in the Pride Lands, and figure out a way to retool it so Sora can use his whole moveset - ala water combat in 3. I think a cool gimmick is Sora getting transformed with various potions into different animals at different points.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Sorry for the double post - but the Kingdom Hearts VR Experience is finally releasing worldwide. According to PS Blog EU, it drops on the 28th.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Apologies for triple post - but this is really important - confirmation of Critical Mode and DLC - From Reddit which in turn got this from a new Nomura interview - 

Critical Mode

Quote

Nomura on KH3 critical mode missing in KH3 "Critical mode has been Final Mix additional thing in the past, so we will release it later. We don't want to just end in adjusting damage numbers, but we constantly adjust/debug it. We don't want it just hard, but fun hard."

In short, rumours seem to be correct - they began testing Critical mode which is why there's remains in the code until they realised they didn't want a repeat of 0.2's awful Critical mode at the start.

Free DLC Confirmed: 

Quote

Nomura on KH3 DLC: Until now we release separate "Final Mix" package, but this time we want to add every additional content via DLC. As for free DLC, we will roll out whatever we finish first, but for paid DLC we want to combine a lot of things so it will take time. But we want to finish working on the DLC by this year and team to move on to the next game.

Seems like a Final Mix might happen, but it'll be conducted through DLC and Patches. They're finishing off the DLC for 3 this year before moving onto the next game in the series, so thankfully - it seems it won't be a FFXV situation.

Next game: 

Quote

Nomura on the next Kingdom Hearts game: "We have been receiving a lot of message regarding the next KH game, but honestly we haven't decided anything on even making the next game. My plans for the year is already filled up."

No exact plans yet - they're focused on DLC now. 

[Perkilator]

Hey, I just realized something: some of the lyrics to Let it Go are “conceal, don’t feel”. “Feel” ties to emotion. Emotion ties to the Unversed. Which means the Unversed could’ve totally been the enemy type for Arendelle.

Also, I’m glad Nomura’s focusing on making Critical hard and fun instead of hard! Makes me wonder what specific changes will come into play. Personally, I think we should be trimmed down to about two Situation Commands at a time.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Jeez, Nomura is non-stop with this stuff. Even more details from Reddit that come from the KH3 Ultima -

• Critical Mode will be free DLC
• A complete pack is going to be released with all DLC (Which is kind of annoying, because if you got the physical edition, this is likely the only way to ensure that all of the patches required for the final battles, and ending/epilogue is included without a download).
• There's going to be at least one spin-off game before we get 4 (GODDAMNIT NOMURA)
• Nomura really likes Hades (Possible we might see Olympus expanded with a fight with him?)
• He said it isn't very simple to add Star Wars and Marvel into KH because of the different companies involved. Just because they're owned by Disney doesn't means it's a free pass, he needs to make agreements with those involved with those characters.
• Big one: Final Fantasy characters supposedly wasn't included due to the large cast of characters already present in KH3. That said, they were planned at one point as a Polygon Model of Leon exists.
• Contrary to popular belief - Verum Rex isn't meant to be based on Vs XIII (X for doubt...)
• One DLC currently planned is to tie into something with the Keyblade Graveyard and it's noted as an additional scenario. (Given previous comments, the logical answer is this is related to Xion).
• Sora's thank you to Namine? Being covered by yet another game! That's what? Four games based on the premise of Sora finally doing this dumb thing?

Spoiler stuff:

Spoiler

• Master of Masters is the person who made the heart in the Secret Ending
• Shibuya apparently isn't the TWEWY variant. It is based on it, but it's "in a different reality" (DAMNIT NOMURA STOP MAKING ALL OF THIS SO CONVOLUTED) 

There's also tons of new renders of the cast as well.

[KHCast]

So eventually we’ll get a Kingdom Hearts game focusing on Xehanorts ambitions and why he does what he does. Ehhh hopefully will be a while before we go back into Xehanort I hope. 

Oh and it’s casually confirmed Scala is daybreak town

What’s most interesting to me is that we’ll get actual superbosses and one of them will possibly be hades

[Spidey3525]

Forgive me if this was explained in a game, but why is Squall referred to as Leon in the Kingdom Hearts games?