News ► Kingdom Hearts III to be developed on Unreal Engine 4!

[Oracle Spockanort]

Director Tetsuya Nomura announced in a recent interview with Famitsu that development of Kingdom Hearts III has been moved to Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 instead of Square Enix's in-house engine, Luminous Studios, due unstated reasons although right now they are having difficulties rendering with the engine. Nomura says they are working closely with Epic Games to work through any issues the development team may be having with the engine and are still on schedule with Kingdom Hearts III's development.

Back in October 2012, Square Enix made a long-term licensing deal with Epic Games for use of their Unreal Engine 3 & Unreal Engine 4. Many people believed these game engines would be used only on games developed by Eidos which is a subsidiary of Square Enix. 

Thanks to Goldpanner for the translation!

---Once more, may we as about the state of development on KH3?

Nomura: It’s moving steadily along the estimated schedule. As an effect of us changing the game engine to Unreal Engine 4, which we did for several reasons, we had a lot of problems with the image creation, but we have been able to progress without incident with the collaboration of Epic Games.

Watch Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 in action below:

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Source: aibo_ac7 via Twitter

 

[rokudamia2]

Re: Kingdom Hearts 3 to run on Unreal Engine 4!

Interesting. I'm gonna go look up what this engine can do.

 

[Shamdeo]

Re: Kingdom Hearts 3 to run on Unreal Engine 4!

What a twist!

 

[Sign]

Re: Kingdom Hearts 3 to run on Unreal Engine 4!

Not surprised after hearing the entire Luminous team was folded into the FF15 team. Sucks that yet another attempt at an in-house engine failed though. Such a waste.

It does make sense, all things considered. I remember reading that article about SE purchasing Unreal licenses and thinking it was odd since neither they nor Eidos really uses UE3 or 4.

 

[rokudamia2]

So what does this mean for the kingdom shader?

 

[destiny seeker]

Re: Kingdom Hearts 3 to run on Unreal Engine 4!

Not surprised after hearing the entire Luminous team was folded into the FF15 team. Sucks that yet another attempt at an in-house engine failed though. Such a waste.

Yep. Man that's sad. Oh well.

I wonder what was giving them the problems in the first place in Luminous?

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

So what does this mean for the kingdom shader?

As we know so far, Kingdom Shader wasn't made with Luminous but was developed as something split from the engine altogether. They can export what they need if possible.

 

[Heartkeeper]

This a little embarrasing for Square, they develop an engine and they can't use it to develop their own games, or at least KHIII, really?.

 

[Sign]

This a little embarrasing for Square, they develop an engine and they can't use it to develop their own games, or at least KHIII, really?.

Not like this is the first time this happened (see: Crystal Tools - FF13)

 

[Saken]

I don't care what engine they use as long as the game turns out well. It's just a tad unfortunate that they spent so much time on it to abandon it in the end.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I don't care what engine they use as long as the game turns out well. It's just a tad unfortunate that they spent so much time on it to abandon it in the end.

Well it's not abandoned. Luminous will be used on FFXV and the R&D guys who worked on the engine are working with the Tabata's team to make it happen. After FFXV, though? Who knows. That was a multi-million dollar R&D project that they would be wasting money on if they didn't find a way to implement it in future games. Luminous still has some great tools in it, though, so they could possibly customize it to work with other engines and middleware and use it as a special lighting system as Luminous started as.

It is a shame, though.

 

[Face My Fears]

Does that mean the game won't be like the trailers or something? I don't understand what this really means. Did KH1 and 2 use an in-house engine or something else?

 

[Chaser]

KH3 will look and play better than the trailers.

 

[Cyborg009]

for those who don't know how the Unreal Engine 4 works and plays:

[video=youtube;y_7awHM-pr0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7awHM-pr0[/video]

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Does that mean the game won't be like the trailers or something? I don't understand what this really means. Did KH1 and 2 use an in-house engine or something else?

The game was never going to be like the reveal trailer, and the second trailer was assets built with DirectX 11 which is not a game engine by any means.

Right now, all it means is that the game will be made with a lot more ease than they were having. How it will play and look are things we won't know until we see it but be certain it will look gorgeous and play well.

What does KH1 and KH2 have to do with anything?

 

[rokudamia2]

Yeah Nomura said both trailers were pre rendered.

 

[Chaser]

It's an impressive engine. I was super impressed by that video.

 

[Launchpad]

People need to stop comparing KH3 to KH1 and KH2. KH1 and 2 are similar in that they share the same engine (I believe) and reuse all the assets. The graphics are the same. This is actually true for EVERY KINGDOM HEARTS GAME BESIDES CHAIN OF MEMORIES. Yeah, even the DS games just use lower poly versions of the very same PS2 models.

KH3 is completely goddamn new. They can't reuse anything. It's some hard work, and the detail is a lot higher now, judging from the alpha models we've seen, so that's why it's taking so long. You can't gauge the game's development with patterns.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Updated the article to clarify that the dev team is currently having issues rendering with Unreal Engine 4 but are working closely with Epic Games to resolve any problems. The reasons for switching from Luminous remains unstated.

 

[robvandam111]

You guys just reminded me of the Deep Dive FMV. Kingdom Hearts 3 is going to look amazingly better.