After being revealed all the way back in 2013 during the Sony Conference at that year's E3, fans of the Kingdom Hearts series have been anxiously waiting for
Kingdom Hearts III to finally release.
Co-Director for
Kingdom Hearts III revealed that the game had faced some setbacks due to the developers wanting to deliver a proper game to fans. We also found out that one of the reasons for the delays was the fact that the developers switch to Unreal Engine 4; which ended up being the way to go given how great the game looks.
Recently, Tetsuya Nomura and Tai Yasue — Director and Co-Director for Square Enix's long-awaited
Kingdom Hearts III, respectively — revealed that, pretty much after they were done developing
Kingdom Hearts II, they wanted Pixar's
Toy Story to be part of the new game's narrative.
"
After we were done with Kingdom Hearts II and were starting to consider III, we started talks with Disney, I remember saying, ‘If we can’t use Pixar, then we can’t have a third game.’ It’s that important to the game series, explained Nomura while adding that "
the whole world loves Toy Story – everybody feels the appeal of that story and those characters. So yeah, at the very beginning I directly said to them, “If we can’t get this, I don’t want to do it’."
With all that said, Nomura also expllains that getting the rights from Pixar was more time-consuming than they could've anticipated; taking them even several years for Pixar to approve of the story and character designs — stating that it was also challenging to work with the acclaimed animation.
"I wrote a general outline of the story and I submitted it to Pixar, It took them several years to okay the story and the character designs. Previous to Kingdom Hearts III, I think these companies kind of saw it more as like, secondary rights permissions. They saw it more as a product, like you would a branded toy or something. This time, it was creator to creator – it was somebody who had made this animation, and somebody who was making this game. We were communicating with each other, myself and these people, so that added an extra level of complexity, because each creator has their own desires, ideas and concepts", to what Yasue adds that they "were talking to [Pixar story supervisor] Jason Katz, and what he said was he wanted us to make a Toy Story world – a toy store – that they couldn’t."
Toy Story was originally released in 1995, becoming a worlwide phenomenon overnight, which has managed to stay relevant over the years; with
Toy Story 4 releasing on the 20th of June this year, giving the beloved series its final chapter in this timeless story Pixar created. Until then, fans of the series can see Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the
Toy Story gang teaming up with Sora, Goofy, and Donald when
Kingdom Hearts III releases by the end of this month.
KINGDOM HEARTS III tells the story of the power of friendship as Sora and his friends embark on a perilous adventure. Set in a vast array of Disney and Pixar worlds, KINGDOM HEARTS follows the journey of Sora, a young boy and unknowing heir to a spectacular power.
Kingdom Hearts III will be available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on the 29th of January in 2019.