Oi, nice thread.

Personally, I think my "outrage" would have been bigger than with Roxas-TT in KH2, because while that was a whole new experience (even though not good imo, and a way too long tutorial all in all), giving us 0.2 and then KH3 as one game would just feel entirely wrong.
I just can't imagine playing through the game, seeing the cutscene where Riku, Mickey and Kairi leave, and then jump into new fun adventures with Sora, yay! Sure, Roxas's story wasn't exactly happy either, but it was still very different from the "definitive" ending that 0.2 had. Also, the time skip would feel very weird to me.

Oh, and I think it's really good that the Osaka team could give us a small bit of KH3 and actually work with the feedback they're given. If KH3 were the same as 0.2, oh boy, would I be disappointed by the gameplay. From recent trailers though, I really have my hopes up that KH3 will at least be a bit better and combine good elements from the series.

I do have to kind of disagree with the Xbox issue though. Giving the players 0.2 alone wouldn't really change much about the confusion in my opinion. Okay, I guess if they did play all the games in 1.5-2.5 and 3D, having 0.2 in the beginning could have helped a bit, but then again, someone who played all these will probably take the time to watch a cutscene video of 0.2 on youtube. Sure, it's not ideal, but it's a short game and thus not really that much of a problem, in comparison to just throwing a small segment with Aqua in and then switching to Sora in an entirely different setting (only to then possibly go back to Aqua later as in her getting saved by Riku and Mickey).

We wouldn't of gotten the awesome intro remix and visuals. I'm happy with what we got, but I do hope 2-4 hours of content were added to replace Aqua's journey in the dark realm.

I still think the scenario presented by the scene with Eraqus and Young MX will be the prologue.

Yeah, that conversation between them starts off the game, then it cuts to Sora arriving on Olympus.

I like it. The lack of a proper intro/tutorial in KH3 is definitely going to be a knock against it for me; I already strongly dislike the notion of jumping right into a Disney world with no setup, I think it will feel fragmented and bad and start the game off on a flat note. I like Olympus, I like Hercules, but I wanted a real introduction to the final chapter of this saga-- starting the game off revisiting Aqua and seeing her story in the Dark Realm play out would have helped bookend the whole series, and it would have been poetic to see the foreword to KH3 link right back up with the final moments of KH1. It would have really brought everything full circle before blasting off on this new adventure, while catching new and returning players up on the current state of things. So it's poetic and efficient. I want this.

I also happen to like the KH2 prologue with Roxas, so there's that; it provided a throughline for the entire game, with questions of Roxas's fate and his connection with Sora driving a lot of the storytelling. Those questions were essential to linking Sora's story with the broader narrative and, y'know, giving the player reasons to care about the broader narrative in the process. Aqua's role in 0.2 does something similar in deepening her agency as a character and centering her as a critical variable in turning the tides. They can still do that with KH3 but it won't play as well, because it's almost certainly going to rely on a few lines of redundant exposition: the worst storytelling device-- flat, ugly, shoehorned-in exposition. Which goes right back to my feeling that KH3 is going to feel like a jumbled mess that's pulling from too many disparate parts in its early stages. I have confidence that it will work itself out into something plausible as it goes along, but it would benefit immensely from a streamlined, focused entry point. That hook which every book is supposed to have to convince the reader to keep reading? That's 0.2.

Instead we'll get The Chess Match trope cold open. Oi vey.

I don't want to sound like a fanboy, but really, I don't see why anyone who is a huge fan of the series would have chosen Xbox this gen anyway. It was always a PS series with Nintendo side stories (DDD being sort of essential).
I don't mind it being on XBox as well, as long as it doesn't suffer in development (it won't since it's being ported to XB as far as I know and not the other way around), but fans who complain this late in a series over 0.2 not being on Xbox...I just don't get them. Maybe the prologue will be included on the disc for 3? That could make sense.

Cool topic. Overall, I'd have to say we're much better off without this prologue in KHIII. The Roxas prologue in KHII, while seemingly jarring, was actually well executed in the space of KHII's story. We knew that Sora was sleeping, and we eventually learned that this character, Roxas, was important to Sora being able to wake up, not to mention his significance in ORG XIII. Playing as Roxas, in short, was thematically appropriate.

Aqua is nowhere near as important, like her or not. She is one third of a trio that is ultimately just not as important as Sora, or even particularly important TO him. Let me break this down.

The structure of a character game like KH is a lot like a well structured musical-- From the moment a player hits the start button, (especially a player new to the franchise or revisiting after a long while) they're in trouble. They're in trouble because they're immediately being presented with information that could potentially confuse them or cause them to focus their attention into things that don't ultimately matter that much. It's the writer's job to get audiences out of trouble. We don't even figure out who our protagonist is until a character expresses a profound desire for something that is currently out of their reach, and if done well, we can now relate with and root for this protagonist.


If we open up with Aqua, and she passionately expresses her desire to be home with her friends, then we're going to view her as our protagonist. It doesn't matter that we know Sora is, because that moment with Aqua will stick with us and cause Sora's adventure to lose a great amount of interest in the player, twofold for new players. KHII avoided this pitfall by centering a lot of Roxas' prologue around Sora's plight and making it important for Sora to return. It wasn't executed perfectly, but it was servicable.


KH1 opens with Sora on Destiny Islands, and he draws a paopu fruit in the secret place for Kairi. It ends with her finding it and returning the gesture.


KH2 opens with Roxas angrily questioning his existence, and ends with Sora and Roxas merging and finding peace. (this changes later, but doesn't affect KH2 as a singular package)


KH1 shows us Sora and Riku's rivalry, and the end of KH2 shows a truly satisfying reconciliation between the two on an important level.


These instances of thematic bookending are what set KH1 and KH2 far ahead of their more ancillary prequels and sequels-- they have a stronger pathos and they feel more complete because of it. KHIII opening with Aqua doing something, and most likely ending with Sora doing something would be unfortunate.


------------------------------------


There's also the technological side of it. KH0.2 was warmly received for the most part, but it received two big criticisms. First being the game performance being anything but consistent, with inputs being much laggier and delayed than it's predecessors. Second being that the game balance (especially on Critical Mode) was just completely terrible. The latter ended up being fixed entirely through an update, changing the Critical mode to be much more akin to 2FM's risk/reward system. This patch ensures that KHIII's Critical will follow a similar style without us ever having to get the bad version first. Complaints about 0.2's boss reactions (Heartless swarm bad, Phantom Aqua good) and bad movement (double jumping? really?) may also end up being heard by SE and result in a better experience in III.




wow this turned into a big post. kudos for the thought provoking subject.

(even though not good imo, and a way too long tutorial all in all)

I'd like to think they had learned from the Roxas intro in KH2 with the tutorial/intro skip remedy present in BBSFM in 2.5. Since they had the option of skipping the tutorial segment in BBSFM each time you start a new game with each character, I'd like to think that if 2.0 had been retained, it would've been an optional skip upon replay.

[QUOTE]I still think the scenario presented by the scene with Eraqus and Young MX will be the prologue.

Yeah, that conversation between them starts off the game, then it cuts to Sora arriving on Olympus.
[/QUOTE]

^However, had 2.0 been retained in KH3, I would wonder how they'd write in the fact that this was told via Mickey's retelling flashback. If the timeline is something like

Xehanort/Eraqus flashback --> Yen Sid 2.9 Meeting --> Sora at Olympus

...then the only way I could see 2.0 told as a flashback is if after Sora going to Olympus the "B" plot with Riku and Mickey begins with the flashback being told during the rescue--with Mickey filling in Aqua's involvement as they go. Either way, for 2.0 to be coherent in KH3's plot it'd have to be drastically rewritten. It's difficult to imagine how it'd flow naturally as plot and as gameplay. (Just the timeline I suggested above would make it a hard transition to start with Sora only to switch to Aqua right after.)

I, for one, can’t imagine that same outrage as there was in late 2005-early 2006 with Kingdom Hearts 2’s prologue featuring Roxas’ last seven days of existence. The prologue, which threw players into a confusing scenario that started off innocent, ended with a boy summoning the series staple Kingdom Key and being chased by a red haired man in a black hood. For those who didn’t get to experience Chain of Memories on the Gameboy Advanced, this opening was excruciatingly confusing.

As confusing as it was, the Roxas segment did well at the start by setting itself up as a seemingly standalone mystery. Not to mention, the opening did a great job to lead into Roxas' involvement.
[SPOILER]


^Through visual storytelling alone, the opening conveys that while Sora is asleep, (in a dream, with Riku & Kairi at the islands) a boy just as important as him (cued by Sora parallels) has his own destati awakening. Even before the game starts, the player should have a sense that the story is in Roxas' hands from then on.
[/SPOILER]
And this is where players who hadn't played CoM started to kick their own butts in not being able to do so. (I know I did, because while I own GBA CoM, I was unable to finish it before playing KH2. But the KHCoM manga helped me out lol, in an abridged way.)

KH2 doesn't feel like a KH, or even a Disney game at first. I'd say it really felt like the intro to an 80's B movie, or a parody of the Sandlot/the Goonies. (The designs/fashion style of Roxas' group doesn't help either.) But it IS pretty effective in you giving a diddly about what's going on even before the traditional KH elements kick in.

[SPOILER][/SPOILER]
^People tend to forget about this bit, but don't tell me this didn't make you want to know what the shit was going on because holy god.

As far as accessibility goes, I feel newcomers felt impartial (at the very least) to the KH2 intro since Roxas is just as confused as you are. At least for me, I definitely connected to him because of this.



A good number of players are also able to access the KH franchise even after playing KH DAYS as their first KH game since the writing team are pretty effective in making you want to understand the what's behind every mystery (even as collectively asinine as it gets with each game but first time players don't know that yet) with the highly empathetic Roxas.



Point is, if 0.2 was included in KH3, I don't think the flack would be as bad as it was back in 2006 with Roxas. Back then, yes, it angered many to even consider that you'd have to buy a separate game and console just to experience a handheld KH game (that had a completely different combat system to boot!!) for the sake of the plot, and Re: Chain of Memories wouldn't even be out until 2008. But it's different now with the HD Remixes, assuming you're a PS4 owner and not XBox.

Any backlash on not knowing anything about Aqua is on part of the player at this rate, and I kind of mourn the fact that 0.2 isn't in KH3 because it would've been highly effective on giving players a swift kick for not experiencing the other games very early on. If I still believed the KH3 is the only sequel I needed, it would've been nice to start KH3 with Aqua and go "oh, man, this isn't gonna work" and have the option to stop the game to instead buy/play the remixes before continuing KH3. I see 0.2 as the last warning to those who care about the story.

but at the cost of Xbox players losing a part of the story and a piece of Kingdom Hearts history that could have used the last year to be optimised a bit further.

Honestly though, new players trying to get into KH3 without prior knowledge of past games wouldn't be helped that much even with 0.2 in it's entirety. Even missing out on ONE of the unnumbered games is too much of a loss. (I had thought I didn't need to play KH3D after CoM/BBS/Re:Coded/Days; especially after Coded, I felt like I got the message LOL.) 0.2 remarkably, would be the least amount of loss.

We would not have gotten objectives or a secret boss, as there wouldn’t be any way to return to this tutorial area after the prologue‘s conclusion. Just like those chests when you’re searching for the seven wonders of Twilight Town, the chests in 0.2 that you’ve missed would have been lost to oblivion. You then have to ask, would those items have transferred to Sora anyway, even if to start out your journey with a few potions in your pocket?

Teleportation definitely made me wonder whether or not it'd be implemented to make Aqua's story revistable; or to have this unlock during Aqua's route (like it does normally) as a signal that because you CAN'T turn back once the main plot starts up again, it would've been a cue to constantly backtrack during the events of 0.2.

As for items/abilities carrying over, since we don't know who is/are the other available playable character[s] in KH3, since Aqua is part of the Seven Guardians perhaps it carries on over to her later involvements further in the game, assuming she is playable. (This opens up another question on how multiple playable characters would work--would they have full range of control just like Sora/Aqua with special limitations, or a fixed set of commands like Riku in KH2?)

Overall, I feel that 0.2 feels more essential to be bundled with 2.8 instead of KH3, as cool as it would've been. There's also the account of the 2.9 scene to act as a reward for going through it--of which I can't seem to figure out where 2.9 would've fit in the flow of KH3's narrative.

I still don't think Olympus is going to be the first world, or the tutorial in KH3. It seems too weird having a Disney World be first. Yea I get Sora said they are trying to get to Olympus, but that doesn't mean they will make it there first lmao. They could easily get summoned or crash land into Twilight Town first somehow. Or, like its been theorized, we wont play as Sora at the start, so the first world will be wherever the character we play as is (like possibly young Eraqus or Kiari).

Also Aqua, nor any tutorial character other than Sora, doesn't have to be used to show us a majority of the new elements. Roxas didn't have magic, drive forms, summons, or have access to limits. We couldn't use limits till the 3rd world, and we couldn't get access to summons till the 5th world! We aren't going to get access to every single ability immediately. Well, I certainly hope not atleast. This is also more reason as to why Olympus most likely isn't going to be the very first world we play in.

@Echoecho6

Nomuro already confirmed a while back that Twilight town will be the tutorial world in which we learn how to play the game and not Mount olympus.

Honestly, I feel that 0.2 Birth by Sleep was a necessity to be a standalone experience. For starters, a Kingdom Hearts III sample is just smart marketing. It makes the naysayers question their lack of faith for the game, and it also gives Kingdom Hearts III a much more streamlined experience. You have to remember that Dream Drop Distance was also initially part of Kingdom Hearts III in its early stages.

Also, it means that another character will take Aqua's place as the second playable character. Whoever it is would be anyone's guess, but it may provide the opportunity to flesh out Eraqus or Kairi. A sacrifice which I believe to be of value in the long run.

Yeah, you really are sounding like a console fanboy. It's not inherently wrong to want more games to be multi-platform nor for any given gamer to want games they have an interest in on their console of choice.

In any event, there's a particularly big reason for why precisely one would choose the XBox version of KH3 over PS4: The XBox One X is the most powerful machine that KH3 is confirmed to be released on. Plain & simple the absolute best KH3 experience possible is not gonna be on PS4, Pro or base. So yes, it's entirely reasonable for someone to choose that platform for KH3 & thus by extension want 2.8 & other entries on XB1 as well.

Eh... was anybody even anticipating the Xbox One X when they considered their preferred console for Kingdom Hearts III? It's ideal to play Kingdom Hearts on the PS4 because it's a cost effective means of playing the entire series under one system. I mean sure, there'll be people who buy Kingdom Hearts III as a standalone experience, but realistically speaking, I don't see the logic of dedicated fans expecting Kingdom Hearts on something that isn't either Sony or Nintendo.

I'm so glad they released 0.2 before KH3, Had KH3 been like 0.2 (pre-patch), it would've been a massive disappointment for me.

I'm not spending 500 bucks to play KH3 on "the most powerful console."

Did they talked about Drive Forms making a comeback or nah? I didn't saw anything bout it

OT:

Nah, for wouldn't work, it was cute for them to give us this game at least for me see the new game play and new graphics but nah

About the "most powerful console" stuff: Will KH3 even actually make full use of that? Sure, the game is going to be big and detailed, but I doubt it'll push the PS4 pro or even the regular PS4 to their absolute maximum, so I really don't see much supporting getting an XB for it explicitely.

Yes, the form changes have been shown a bunch now. They may no necessarily be called "drive" but they are there. We have seen Guard Form, Power Form, Second Form and whatever the blue one is in the recent trailers.

Square Enix’s solution should not be to make people catch up on the series on youtube. As the developer and distributor, they should have made it a priority to get the whole series onto Xbox.


That is true, we wouldn’t have gotten that opening. It certainly is one of my favourite openings in the series.


Prior to the launch of PS4 and Xbox One, developers announced titles that would be coming to both consoles. The last generation had a more of an Xbox support from gamers, which is why Microsoft’s missteps with the launch of the Xbox One hurt them so much and why PS4 took off. For Square, they were playing it safe and announcing games for PS4 and Xbox One. Those who chose Xbox are now left in the dust. They either should have canceled the Xbox port or brought the other games to the console.

0.2 can’t be included with 3 now. They’d have to cut content from 0.2 or provide some way and reason to let us go back to playing as Aqua in that time period. Plus it would take away future sales from 2.8.


Aqua is a level 50 Keyblade Master with various abilities at her hands, Roxas was not. A retroactive version of summons could have been used, such as bringing across some D-Link power. Using attraction flow in the final battle of 0.2 would have been a spectacle, that’s for sure.


Both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X will get upgraded versions of the game. Square Enix have been committed to both, bringing 1.5+2.5/2.8 to ‘4K’ and having Final Fantasy XV have various technical bonuses and updated textures.

I have to wonder, if 0.2 were left with 3, what would have become of Dream Drop Distance? Would it have been held back 2 months and added into 1.5+2.5 ReMIX? It wouldn’t have fit on the disc, that’s for sure so maybe it would have been its own standalone game, something Square Enix is now doing for their HD remastered like FFXII (they use to hold back remasters until it had more than one piece of content to go with it, like Type-0 having the Final Fantasy XV demo).

Oh, I agree on that, but I think as long as 1.5+2.5 doesn't get ported to Xbox, having only 0.2 before KH3 really doesn't help that much.

I have to wonder, if 0.2 were left with 3, what would have become of Dream Drop Distance? Would it have been held back 2 months and added into 1.5+2.5 ReMIX? It wouldn’t have fit on the disc, that’s for sure so maybe it would have been its own standalone game, something Square Enix is now doing for their HD remastered like FFXII (they use to hold back remasters until it had more than one piece of content to go with it, like Type-0 having the Final Fantasy XV demo).

Hm, they could've either released it on it's own, or just 3D and Back Cover and make it cheaper. Both sound rather meh, but putting it with 1.5+2.5, yeah, that would've been packed. And the price would've probably been pretty "high" (relatively spoken).

Honestly, I don't really care either way. I mean, I'm glad that we got 0.2 and had a chance to play at least some part of the game, but I'm also one of those people who really didn't mind having to play as Roxas at the beginning of KH2. (I figured he'd turned out to be an important character in some way). If 0.2 had stayed as the prologue, that would have been great, but having it be its own stand-alone game was pretty awesome and a great way to give us early access to the mechanics that we'll get in KH3.

That said, we really shouldn't be surprised or upset at the fact that the current setup of releasing 2.8 on PS4 only was the direction they chose. I mean, KH as a series has had something against the idea of console loyalty since forever. It's not like they've really changed tactics over the years. As for any concerns for people not knowing what's going on, that's up to the player base to deal with. If you want to have all the info you need to know about the KH series prior to buying the game, there are plenty of Youtube vids out there and a near endless supply of walkthroughs for you to watch. While I do understand the idea of making sure everyone has access to the games, the story and lore are still available for you to access even if you don't get the game. The only thing that anyone is truly missing out on is the chance to play the game themselves. While admittedly that might suck, with the advent of Youtube, forums, khwiki.net, and various other places to get information on the series, I don't think it's that bad.

In my honest opinion, it would be better if a supposed prologue for KH3 focused on the early days of Xehanort and Eraqus. Not to say Aqua's story isnt relevant but we already played that game and I think it's be interesting if the game started out with how Xehanort got the keyblade in the first place, him and Eraqus' friendship, and who their master was.

I thought that's what they were hinting at in two of the earliest trailers but I'm doubtful about that. Honestly, It would be jarring to start of the game off right away on a world and I don't really want Hercules world as a tutorial world.