Kingdom Hearts 4: Daring New Course – More realism in the game

Square Enix appears to be breaking new ground with Kingdom Hearts 4, according to chief developer Tetsuya Nomura.

Tokyo – Kingdom Hearts celebrated the 20th anniversary of the game series a few months ago. In the course of this, the next main title in the series was announced and a first trailer was shown. But fans didn’t get much more information at first. In contrast to previous titles, however, the trailer showed much more realism, instead of the well-known cartoon look. In an interview with GameInformer, chief developer Tetsuya Nomura now unpacks how the Kingdom Hearts series should continue.

Kingdom Hearts 4: Less Disney, More Realism – Quadratum as the basis for the game

Less Disney, more realism: On April 10, 2022, Kingdom Hearts fans finally got what many hadn’t dared to hope for: a trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4. Three years after the release of Kingdom Hearts 3, fans received the news that the story about Sora and his friends will continue – just in time for the 20th anniversary of the series. Anyone who has played Kingdom Hearts 3 knows: Sora wakes up in a completely different world and probably dimension. This was also shown in the first gameplay trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4.

Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer shows Sora waking up in Quadratum. This world looks a lot more realistic than what you are used to from the series and Sora has also received a brand new, realistic look. After this trailer, many fans rightly asked themselves: will the game remain in realistic graphics? Will Disney worlds continue or will Kingdom Hearts 4 lean more towards the Final Fantasy series?

Game Director Tetsuya Nomura is now in on some of these questions Interview with GameInformer received. There he confirms that he wants to make the game more realistic. So he says:

We spend [in Kingdom Hearts 4, Anm. d. Red.] some time in the real world. That was a challenge we had for ourselves – just to see how realistically we can do that, and that’s what we’re working on right now.

The realistic world of Quadratum will serve as the basis. Players will spend some time there and also follow Sora’s daily life more than in previous titles.

Kingdom Hearts 4: There will be Disney worlds – just fewer

Disney worlds in game: Anyone who is afraid that there will be no Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts 4 can breathe a sigh of relief. Nomura has confirmed that fans can very well look forward to Disney worlds in the next title. However, the realistic graphics probably limit the number of worlds in the game.

There’s so much more we can do in terms of graphics [von Kingdom Hearts 4, Anm. d. Red.] can do, it limits the number of worlds we can […] can create.

But there will definitely be Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts 4. However, the developer from Tokyo will probably use more realistic worlds such as Star Wars, Marvel or the live-action adaptations of the Disney classics. A world of Hercules could still be included in Kingdom Hearts 4, since the title also gets a live-action adaptation.

It remains exciting what Tetsuya Nomura thinks up for the next Kingdom Hearts title. It was recently announced that Nomura is planning a trilogy for Final Fantasy 7.

Rubric list image: © Square Enix (montage)