They got restrictive because their brand as a mega corporation recovered in the 2010s whereas prior to that, the Disney brand was in a bad place. With tons of money and a more cohesive, unified image as a company, they are more controlling on how their larger brands are depicted in any Disney media.
It's largely why we see arbitrary rules in their brands, too, like how the Disney Princesses are to never look at each other in any merchandise or marketing material because they exist in separate "realities". They allow exceptions but its rare.
I think it will depend on the specific Disney animated film, regardless if some of their more recent films do well at the Box Office ($400-900 million or $1.000 billion) or is made before the release of Princess and the Frog and Tangled (Pocahontas, Lilo & Stitch, Treasure Planet, Atlantis, etc..). As I said before in my previous posts,
As Nomura and the Development staff said in past interviews they did go on to say that Disney including the people that worked on the more recent films (Tangled, Frozen, etc..) that the new KH3 Disney worlds are based are still around and did put guidelines/restrictions regarding on the worlds giving Nomura and his team less freedom on these specific worlds, even Pixar also put guidelines to Nomura and Square Enix on the worlds based on their movies (Toy Story and Monster's Inc.), of course not in the same level as the guidelines seen in the Tangled and Frozen worlds, but it was mostly noticeable In the Monster's Inc. given how picky and restrictive they were on not allowing Randall to be a boss (more so a mid-boss) in the level, compared to the Toy Story world imao. San Fransokyo, from Big Hero 6 was I say the ONLY new Disney world out of the 5 new worlds (Kingdom of Corona, Toy Box, Monstropolis, and Arendelle) introduced in KH3, that Disney didn't put Guidelines and restrictions on given that the story was set after the events of the movie instead of being a retelling of the original film which allowed Nomura and his team creative freedom, of course credit goes to Roy Conli (producer of Big Hero 6) who came up with the original story.
Olympus (Hercules) and 100 Acre Wood (Winnie the Pooh) where the Disney worlds I say that I didn't see ANY restrictions put on in KH3 given that most of the people who worked on those films weren't involved in the game and Disney who had no involvement in the previous installments just allowed Nomura and his Team to do what they want given that they appeared in previous KH titles (same can be said with the other Disney worlds in previous games like Halloween Town (Nightmare Before Christmas), Neverland (Peter Pan), Land of Dragons (Mulan), etc..). I expect the same thing for some of the earlier Disney films that become worlds in future games like Pocahontas, Lilo & Stitch, Treasure Planet, Atlantis, Dumbo, Meet the Robinsons, among others will allow Nomura and his team more creative freedom.
The Caribbean (Pirates of the Caribbean) is in the grey area while it didn't had any of the people involved from the film series nor did it had guidelines like Arendelle, Corona and the Pixar-based worlds: Toy Box and Monstropolis (mainly the latter Pixar world) in KH3, they had to trimmed things down due to time constraints as that film was nearly 3 hours long (169 minutes) and also a lot of stuff has happened in the film hence why SDG spending time with the "Jack Sparrow" made by Tia Dalma.
I say the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts III that had the most strictness from Most strict to NO restrictions are:
- Arendelle (Obviously, as said in most interviews by Nomura and the development team and MOST KH fans)
- Monstropolis
- Kingdom of Corona
- Toy Box (to some degree, but not quite)
- The Caribbean
- San Fransokyo
- Olympus
- 100 Acre Wood
I remain cautiously skeptical about the more recent Disney animated films becoming worlds in future games after the Frozen and especially the Tangled world's being wasted in
Kingdom Hearts III.