Kingdom Hearts III Transitions to Unreal Engine 4

Because @patrickklepek has beef with Square Enix Japan and especially Tetsuya Nomura. He likes to throw them under the bus at every opportunity. Obviously he'd be more than happy to post such a juicy story about them once again having engine trouble.

@cloudymusic: Most recently, D4 is using Unreal 3.

The CTO in charge of the Luminous Engine left Square Enix earlier this year. Building a first class engine and tools is super expensive.

Huh.

Well, I guess I'll hope that the art design can carry it as with the Bioshocks. Most Unreal Engine games look like total ass.

Hope this leads into some sort of PC version.

I agree, this is weird. And from what I can tell, no one in the GB crew really digs or is into the KH series. I knew about this engine change from other sources, and I expected this to be a forum post here at most. GiantBomb can be a bit selective in what game-specific content it chooses to cover via news articles like this (and I don't really mind that, usually the forums fill the gap), and this seems really random to me.

First of all; you're not very unique. Second, the KH's storyline is as big a mess as Watergate. It makes no sense.

@bakkelun: Sure it makes sense.

@bizzama: if that's the source of their breakaway from Luminous, then hopefully that means that goal is still in mind (the lighting that is).

@bakkelun: The story of Kingdom Hearts makes perfect sense within its own internally established logic of JRPG multiverse disney fever dream insanity. Whether or not said story is well told or well written is a different matter.

@bakkelun: I understand the entire story from beginning to end, and while I think some parts are dumb, the story makes complete sense. What doesn't make sense to you?

@danin: The game is in incredibly early stages of development. Tetsuya is still writing the story and picking worlds.

a pc release is possible, doubtful, but the tech is there.
they've been releasing allot of final fantasy(s) on steam.
dont ask me why but im a fan of these weirdo games [kingdom hearts] and it'd be pretty rad if they came to pc.

I guess I'm glad they made the change if they needed to, but I can't help but feel things might be a rough at Square these days. It just seems so unSquare like to make this kind of change.

But maybe a little adversity is what Square needs to reclaim the heights they once had. After all Final Fantasy was born out of desperation.

I'm surprised no one has posted that Nomura quote that's floating around. Here it is.

"If I had to pick, I am a person more on the dark side like Xehanort and co., I harness the burning anger in my heart into what I create. Kingdom Hearts III’s current development explodes very much in this sense. Each time, it’s a battle with Sora and co. who are the exact opposite of myself, it’s been over 10 years and yet we haven’t reached a conclusion.

This battle will surely last longer.

In Kingdom Hearts III as well, I am scheming many challenges that Sora and his friends must overcome, because I myself cannot lose either. And in preparation for the great battle that lies ahead, we have this one book that looks back on their entire journey.

When I think about it, I had an explosive mindset when I made the first Kingdom Hearts as well.

Thus when I look back at all the material, I feel that fever again. Fans who will continue the journey so far alongside Sora and his friends will also recall their own feverish enthusiasm. With that passion, we will not lose to darkness, and Sora’s journey will continue onwards.

The journey still continues, but I would be overjoyed if you stuck with us until the very end."

It's been a trend over the past two years (give or take) ever since Epic made an effort to push the Unreal engine in Japan and in other Asia-based countries (being owned by Tencent which is a China-based company might have had something to do with that I reckon). Another example where the Unreal engine is being used in a game with really surprising results is Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign-.

@gaspower: Oh yeah, I had totally forgotten about Xrd!

I picked up Kingdom Hearts 1.5 (that PS3 HD update) and just had the serious reminder of why I fell off the series so hard: I'm not 13 anymore. Not ragging on it really, but it's taken so long for new proper entries in the series that I just can't possibly work up any interest in a Kingdom Hearts III. Heck, the first was like my favorite game ever for a short while when I first played it, but I almost completely ignored II when it came out because I had just moved on. I ended up renting it and playing it and was mostly underwhelmed. Nothing about the mobile-only games interested me either.

What a weird series. I come from a Disney-centric family and loved Final Fantasy VI-X so you'd think it would be a perfect fit for me, but past that initial love for the first game, it's just not there for me. As a 25-year-old dude with a real job, I just can't get worked up about Kingdom Hearts.

good game

On the contrary it may be a good thing in the long run. Better to look bad and bite the bullet now then stick to your ways and die a slow death. And keep in mind until recently a very "Square" thing to do was chase VII repeatedly.

Though it may look rough now it seems like Japanese companies are finally realizing they cant just dig there heads in the sand and keep making more or less the same game over and over again hoping we wont notice.

That's really not the problem that Slag is referring to here. And it certainly has nothing to do with Final Fantasy VII.

Square Enix has been a company that traditionally has created its own engines for its games. Its experimentation with UE3 to create The Last Remnant was supposed to be the game that would help them break away from that, but as someone else that commented earlier noted, Epic's support for Asian developers was nonexistent, which led to a lot of trouble developing the game, and the end result was a less than stellar 360 version and a cancelled PS3 version, though the PC version was reportedly OK (never played it myself). What could have been a big step forward for Square Enix's development efforts in the previous generation was essentially stymied by a western engine developer that didn't understand the importance of supporting Asian markets. (And is probably why a lot of Japanese devs steered away from UE3 in general.)

So in effect, what we're seeing is Square Enix making a second go at their plan from years ago with an improved UE4 and (hopefully) Epic being more capable at supporting Japanese developers.

Not common but it does happen a fair bit, most of Mistwalkers last gen games got developed on the unreal engine and looked great.

Sometimes its a slow news day and you need to ensure new content is on the page, as a news writer/reviewer myself i often find it necessary to print some less engaging stories until the next big one comes along. Just because i don't personally find it interesting wont mean no one will, hell i wrote a throw away story about Japan's limited edition burgers and it got 3 times the amount of views that a story i wrote about CW's the Flash got and its on a geeky news site! People all love different things.

Not common but it does happen a fair bit, most of Mistwalkers last gen games got developed on the unreal engine and looked great.

The Kingdom Hearts artstyle doesn't really need a fancy engine anyway, not to say Unreal 4 doesn't seem fancy though, although I imagine texture pop in is the only thing that could mess it up but that hasn't been a problem with that engine for a while right?

The Kingdom shader sounded like an interesting idea but seemed to mostly just be a time saving effort and I imagine if they get comfortable enough in Unreal they might just be able to replicate it, assuming there was anything more then a concept to replicate.

How could you! :,o

This is a significant story as it relates to the entire japanese console dev scene. This makes the second major JP franchise to move onto this Engine (the first one being Tekken 7), and also the second time Square's internally develop engine, (first crystal tools, now luminous) is seeing some trouble being used for a sleuth of titles like they wished. Shinji Hashimoto, the guy who brought FFXIV into its glorious new engine and was leading on Luminous engine has left the company a few months back.

So japanese companies went from creating a custom engine from the ground up (ps2/3) to trying to create internal, well rounded engines for multiple titles (crystal tools, Luminous, Fox, Phanta Re(capcom)) to now maybe jus sayin' fuggit and going with unreal 4 (KHIII, Tekken 7, future titles). These days you can count the number of HD console JP dev-ed titles on your two hands.

@nickson: That story you described is really interesting, and I would love to see a long form article about changes in Japanese engine development from Patrick. There is nothing you described in this story. This is a 3 paragraph article, about something that could have been summed up in a tweet.

Like I said, when I want news like this I'll check out Destructoid or Polygon. This isn't the kind of content GB, and Patrick in particular, is known for so I don't know how Patrick picks his news stories.

right what Hailinel said. Square has been anything but creatively complacent since FFVii, people may not like the direction they've gone for whatever reason, but any objective look at their flagship franchise (Final Fantasy) would reveal major reinvention with each release.

Besides the obvious strategy, customer engagement and language change coming out of Square really ever since the Bravely Default/Lightning Returns releases, this is a major concession from a prominent proud company that has long used their own engines.

This is also the second sign in recent weeks that perhaps KH3's development may be somewhat troubled. First Nomura turns over Final Fantasy XV to Tabata and then announces this major change to KH3 (which in retrospect may have nothing to do with FFXV afterall). Couple this wiht Luminous lead Hashimoto leaving Square and Square's new focus on the Shinra tech and this shows perhaps a greater focus on lowering dev costs from a company that previously never acted like it was much of a concern.

It may just be Square being proactive, but I suspect it's Square looking at how long it takes them to get AAA console titles out and saying "we can't do this anymore. We have to find a way to ship titles faster and cheaper if we want to stay in the console game business".

@shortbreadtom: It could also be a case of PR on Patrick's part, to take a cynical approach. He gives attention to KH in this way, and moves away from the perception of just being the guy who craps on KH/Nomura every chance he gets. Not saying that justifies this getting an article, or that it does a great job if it's true, just that it's a possible explanation.

Also somewhat related

Had no idea Yahoo syndicates your content @patrickklepek

http://news.yahoo.com/kingdom-hearts-iii-transitions-unreal-152600714.html

That's kinda cool!

20XX can't come soon enough!

lol this fucking company