News ► Catch up on the story of Kingdom Hearts with the Memory Archive Videos

[Chaser]

The Dark Seeker Saga is about to come to a close in Kingdom Hearts III, the story of which has crossed over a decade of video games. Because all of this, many fans may struggle to remember the important details that are going to be touched upon in Kingdom Hearts III. Thankfully, Square Enix have released five Memory Archive videos, which retell crutial parts of Kingdom Hearts's history.

Narrated by Chirithy, the videos will also be available within Kingdom Hearts III via the day one patch, and can be accessed in Kingdom Hearts Union X via the X3 menu.

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[Alpha Baymax]

These memory archive videos do a perfect job of summarising key plot threads of the series in a manner that the general audience can understand.

Shame that now YouTube is reccomending me spoiler Kingdom Hearts videos. Fml.

 

[Sakuraba Neku]

These recaps are great, but they could have explained why Sora fought Riku in KH1 and what is the X-Blade.
It's still a good summary though.

 

[Hirokey123]

God these recaps are abysmal and hearing it in english makes that all the more clear. To make things worse they are abysmal by choice because like an extra minute is all it take to make them useful. Looking at these with no context, since they are intended for new people, Days is the only one that got proper coverage. I mean It cuts after Xion's demise in the Days one but then Riku's own book covers the rest giving that game more or less full coverage.

KH1's? It ends with Riku calling himself Ansem, something that won't be explained in the slightest until Xehanort's book and a bit of Riku's. Meanwhile Kairi is last seen in a coma and the last world shown in HB which makes the segway into CoM book laughably bad. One minute Riku is calling himself Ansem, Kairi is in a coma, and they are fighting at HB and the next a new person is suddenly thrust into "SDG are searching for Riku and Mickey who got trapped behind the door to darkness". As a newbie my first thought is "wait what happened to Ansem, where did Mickey get involved, what is the door to darkness?"

CoM was pretty solid except you know we cut the whole part about Sora choosing to sleep to get his memories, which Riku's book basically opens up with having already happened so there is another bad segway. Oh and what about Repliku why is not mentioned at ALL in CoM or Riku's book when he's clearly going to be a player in KH3? Can't forget how Riku's story just ends with Days and all the subsequent stuff from KH2 and DDD isn't cover at all. The fact KH2 doesn't get a book of its own and almost has zero presence in any of the stories is extra egregious because it's arguably the most important adventure Sora personally had. It really feels like CoM and Riku's books are meant to lead into a KH2 book that doesn't exist.

As for DDD and BBS? Lets just cram them into Xehanort's book surely won't lose anything important that way right?

These are such wasted potential and it's so painfully obvious their greed got the best of them because again all it take is just a minute two or more for most of these to actually BE good summaries, but instead they just wanted fancy glorified ads for the games.

 

[Neo_]

Back in my day Jiminy would be narrating these.

Also, I don't remember the scene with Maleficent in the first video at 1:25. Is that BBS?

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

These are such wasted potential and it's so painfully obvious their greed got the best of them because again all it take is just a minute two or more for most of these to actually BE good summaries, but instead they just wanted fancy glorified ads for the games.

That's literally their reason for existing. They are indirectly selling the collections. They want people to be intrigued enough about what happened to want to fill the gaps of what they didn't bother explaining.

Why would SE give people a free full-length summary of their games when they want to sell copies of their collections?

(I agree with you 100%, though)

 

[mytomxxx]

Fear to watch then get spoiler recommendations

 

[Aquamine-Amarine]

These are so pathetic. They leave so many things out. People are better off going to the KH wiki and reading the summaries there.

 

[KHRULER]

Back in my day Jiminy would be narrating these.

Also, I don't remember the scene with Maleficent in the first video at 1:25. Is that BBS?

No, that area was not in BBS. It was the cutscene before the first fight with Malificent in KH1, the fight before she turns into a dragon (2nd battle). The only change is that the audio is shifted to that specific frame when in reality, she says something entirely different.

 

[TruestSyn]

God these recaps are abysmal and hearing it in english makes that all the more clear. To make things worse they are abysmal by choice because like an extra minute is all it take to make them useful. Looking at these with no context, since they are intended for new people, Days is the only one that got proper coverage. I mean It cuts after Xion's demise in the Days one but then Riku's own book covers the rest giving that game more or less full coverage.

KH1's? It ends with Riku calling himself Ansem, something that won't be explained in the slightest until Xehanort's book and a bit of Riku's. Meanwhile Kairi is last seen in a coma and the last world shown in HB which makes the segway into CoM book laughably bad. One minute Riku is calling himself Ansem, Kairi is in a coma, and they are fighting at HB and the next a new person is suddenly thrust into "SDG are searching for Riku and Mickey who got trapped behind the door to darkness". As a newbie my first thought is "wait what happened to Ansem, where did Mickey get involved, what is the door to darkness?"

CoM was pretty solid except you know we cut the whole part about Sora choosing to sleep to get his memories, which Riku's book basically opens up with having already happened so there is another bad segway. Oh and what about Repliku why is not mentioned at ALL in CoM or Riku's book when he's clearly going to be a player in KH3? Can't forget how Riku's story just ends with Days and all the subsequent stuff from KH2 and DDD isn't cover at all. The fact KH2 doesn't get a book of its own and almost has zero presence in any of the stories is extra egregious because it's arguably the most important adventure Sora personally had. It really feels like CoM and Riku's books are meant to lead into a KH2 book that doesn't exist.

As for DDD and BBS? Lets just cram them into Xehanort's book surely won't lose anything important that way right?

These are such wasted potential and it's so painfully obvious their greed got the best of them because again all it take is just a minute two or more for most of these to actually BE good summaries, but instead they just wanted fancy glorified ads for the games.

You're looking at it wrong. It's not "KH1, KH2, KH CoM, KH DDD, KH BBS, KH 358 Days/2, KH Coded" recaps. They are recaps pertaining to a theme. Memories, Darkness, Light, can't remember the rest and I can't look at the videos at work. Sure, each theme covers the main point of each game, but the point isn't to cover the game.

Also, as stated below, they want to push the fact that they have the HD remasters out more than ever. MAYBE they'll release them for the Xbox post KH3 since they seem to be porting a lot of other Square games from the PS3/PS4 era to Switch and Xbox, and maybe the videos could be a little extended for the in game memory archive, but why would they want to give a full recap when they've been saying from near the beginning that people need to actually play all the games? Terrible business practice right there, that's how you lose money.

Back in my day Jiminy would be narrating these.

Also, I don't remember the scene with Maleficent in the first video at 1:25. Is that BBS?

He's getting old, maybe this is their way to replace him so that when he passes it won't be so hard to either find a replacement or to just write him out of the game entirely?

I doubt they'll ever really get a new Jiminy voice because he hasn't appeared in a recent cartoon in a few years as far as I know. Unless they did another live action Pinocchio (hopefully not) they wouldn't have a new Jiminy either. RIP Mr. Cricket.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

These are so pathetic. They leave so many things out. People are better off going to the KH wiki and reading the summaries there.

They literally were made this way on purpose to sell more of the collections. I’m really not sure what anybody expected.

 

[Neo_]

No, that area was not in BBS. It was the cutscene before the first fight with Malificent in KH1, the fight before she turns into a dragon (2nd battle). The only change is that the audio is shifted to that specific frame when in reality, she says something entirely different.

I haven't seen that scene in ages, but it looks like they cranked the brightness up.

He's getting old, maybe this is their way to replace him so that when he passes it won't be so hard to either find a replacement or to just write him out of the game entirely?

I doubt they'll ever really get a new Jiminy voice because he hasn't appeared in a recent cartoon in a few years as far as I know. Unless they did another live action Pinocchio (hopefully not) they wouldn't have a new Jiminy either. RIP Mr. Cricket.

I was wondering if he speaks in KH3 though; I bet he does.

 

[Sephiroth0812]

I have to agree with Spockanort.
Just like X Back Cover, they are practically stealth advertisements for the collections of the old games.

At face value, they do give the general gist of the main important plot points and what's it all about and that's all they do, but that is exactly what they're intended to be.

Casuals who might get more interested in details of the story are encouraged to play (or watch cutscene walkthroughs) of the older games this way.


Generally I do think they're well made, but the coverage of BBS and Coded is a little too much condensed.

 

[TruestSyn]

I haven't seen that scene in ages, but it looks like they cranked the brightness up.


I was wondering if he speaks in KH3 though; I bet he does.

He might, but they did imply that the Gummi Phone or Kingdom Mobile or whatever it's called is replacing his Journal. I haven't seen that part of the menu in spoilers so I can't say, but they might be sweeping him under the rug. He could be staying at home even! Sora's getting old enough to snapchat and instagram his adventures for himself.

Now that I mention it, I think it would be pretty cool if we had to snap pictures of the heartless for archive purposes. I just hope they give item drop information in the journal as well.

 

[Sephiroth0812]

He might, but they did imply that the Gummi Phone or Kingdom Mobile or whatever it's called is replacing his Journal. I haven't seen that part of the menu in spoilers so I can't say, but they might be sweeping him under the rug. He could be staying at home even! Sora's getting old enough to snapchat and instagram his adventures for himself.

Now that I mention it, I think it would be pretty cool if we had to snap pictures of the heartless for archive purposes. I just hope they give item drop information in the journal as well.

It's not like that at all, much more heartwarming in fact but that's a spoiler so don't read if you want to experience it in KH III first hand.

Edit: Nope, no spoilers outside the spoiler section, sorry.

 

[TruestSyn]

It's not like that at all, much more heartwarming in fact but that's a spoiler so don't read if you want to experience it in KH III first hand.

Edit: Nope, no spoilers outside the spoiler section, sorry.

Yeah, might wanna backpedal lol NOT ALL OF US HAVE OUR DELUXE WITH BRING ARTS YET SEPH! T_T

EDIT: *sniffles*

 

[Neo_]

He might, but they did imply that the Gummi Phone or Kingdom Mobile or whatever it's called is replacing his Journal. I haven't seen that part of the menu in spoilers so I can't say, but they might be sweeping him under the rug. He could be staying at home even! Sora's getting old enough to snapchat and instagram his adventures for himself.

Now that I mention it, I think it would be pretty cool if we had to snap pictures of the heartless for archive purposes. I just hope they give item drop information in the journal as well.

I swear there was a scene where he jumps on Sora's shoulder in the Gummi Ship, so he at least appears outside of his model in the menu.

 

[Xagzan]

These memory archive videos do a perfect job of summarising key plot threads of the series in a manner that the general audience can understand.

Shame that now YouTube is reccomending me spoiler Kingdom Hearts videos. Fml.

I would recommend getting the VideoBlocker extension for your browser, and then adding KH-relevant keywords to the block list.

 

[Dandelion]

He's getting old, maybe this is their way to replace him so that when he passes it won't be so hard to either find a replacement or to just write him out of the game entirely?

I doubt they'll ever really get a new Jiminy voice because he hasn't appeared in a recent cartoon in a few years as far as I know.

What? Of course they'd replace him, Disney keeps a roster of actors to take over for classic roles. In fact, they already replaced him. Kingdom Hearts has had three Jiminies. The first died, the second left voice acting because he felt called to Jesus, and the third is who we have now.

 

[TruestSyn]

What? Of course they'd replace him, Disney keeps a roster of actors to take over for classic roles. In fact, they already replaced him. Kingdom Hearts has had three Jiminies. The first died, the second left voice acting because he felt called to Jesus, and the third is who we have now.

Really? I wasn't aware of that. He's a classic character, but he's not in a lot. That's why I'm surprised. I figured if the film gets old enough and they don't resurrect any of the characters in other media (not remasters of the current product) then they'd have no need to replace the voices. Guess as long as KH exists they'll have reason to. Especially if Disney keeps its eye on KH.