It's been mentioned on the Bombcast that Kingdom Hearts is a thing that hit a generation super hard and if you weren't in it then it's something that you can't relate to. It's strange, but I haven't felt like this watching a trailer since the KH2 reveal with the Nobody and Roxas. We had Another Side Another Story, Deep Dive, and Chain of Memories to build up KH2 and it finally feels like to the build up to KH3 is finally happening.

I'm super hyped. Are you?

I have fallen off the franchise quite a bit, but every KHs trailer triggers my nostalgia pretty hard, especially the music choices (though I'm always more partial to the orchestral version).

Dream Drop Distance looks really nice for a 3DS port, and assuming that's actual gameplay, the new Aqua episode looks excellent. It's running on UE4 right, like KH3 will be? Good choice.

I was hyped for the build up to KH3 when BBS released 6 years ago. Honestly this trailer lost me when none of the new footage had a single Disney character in it (outside of the back of Mickey Mouse's head), and instead focused on introducing yet another group of shadowy figures in cloaks.

I'm sure KH3 will be fine but goddamn do they know exactly how to turn me off of this series.

Kinda? Like, I'm really excited for some more KH gameplay and whatnot, but I have absolutely no fucking idea what this series even is anymore. I played 1 and 2 and that's it. A friend tried to explain the other games to me and I nearly passed out from exhaustion. I should just buy the PS3 collections, but I don't feel like hooking up my PS3 again. goddammit, I'm probably gonna end up buying them and hooking up my PS3 again.

Other news maybe DLC for 2.8 and it'll support Pro (I think it's required too, right?)

Can't say I know what I watched there, with the blue haired girl. That said, I'll probably be getting this. I loved KH when I played it, maybe a year after its release? Then I loved KH2, but after that, I stopped playing KH with all the different games on different handhelds, and when I went back to two in 2007, it wasn't something I was interested in. It wasn't until the remasters that I got back into it. I didn't get them on release, I got both Remix's at the same time last year I think, and went through the first game again. I couldn't manage to get through RE: Chain of Memories; I just don't enjoy the card combat enough. It was kind of a chore. I know how the story goes though. Watched 358/2 Days, which I kind of liked, and just a couple months ago played up to the Tron part of KH2 until I stopped, because I wanted to return to KH when it's closer to the third games release. My brother isn't as into the KH games as I am (though I am not as into them as I used to be), but he bought all of the handheld games. I didn't play any of them, other than maybe an hour of Birth By Sleep. It's cool that they're releasing all these games in a few packages before KH3, so fans have a better chance to play them, that's the right thing to do. Otherwise I would have totally been disconnected from KH, and going into three after all these years would have been weird.

Played through all of 2.5 last year so I'm not super eager to play two (or 1.2 I guess) more Kingdom Hearts games any time soon, but I am digging this remix in the trailer.

Aqua (The Blue Haired Girl) makes her first playable appearance in the Birth by Sleep game for the PSP. She's first introduced in the KH2 "Birth By Sleep" secret ending.

English version of the trailer. I don't think the remix works quite as well with Simple and Clean.

it seems weird now that there's still disney crap in these.

@golguin: Yeah, I know what game she's from, though yep, didn't know her name. I just meant that I didn't know what game it was showing with her, and it being in Japanese, made it even harder to tell what was going on. The visuals looked like they were from KH3.

Why do they always name these things like they're a Naked Gun sequel?

Oh man, Kingdom Hearts is soo dumb. And I love it :D I mean that one guy was wearing a unicorn mask. Like how silly and awesome is that?!

So in terms of what's included in this, a console HD version of KH3D seems straightforward. But, is KH2 Birth by Sleep Fragmentary passage a completely new game? Or is it just a small sequence of stages detailing what Aqua has been doing this whole time? And what the heck is KH back cover? I'm assuming it's just a theater mode outlining a pre-keyblade war story???

Last I hears, they said it was the about the length of one world (so a couple hours at best?). It seems like a demo of KH3's tech, kinda like Ground Zeroes was to Phantom Pain. I'm not sure what Back Cover is, but it sounds like a phone game that they're just putting cutscenes together for (like the 358/2 Days "Movie" they put in one of the other HD collections).

They really need to stop with these absolutely awful names.

Yeah, that's exactly what Back Cover is. I think it's actually been out on phones over here for a while (Unchained Key/Ki/Whatever I think is what it's called there), unless that's something different.

Man, there is literally nothing else in gaming that gets me as hype as KH stuff. The build up to KHII is/was still one of the best build-ups in the history of gaming for me, there was so much awesome weirdness/mystery going into that game, and KHIII looks to have a lot of the same going on. All the new stuff in this looks so damn gorgeous too.

I need my big sprawling multi-game nonsense plot now that Metal Gear is done. Just find -> replace "Nanomachines" with "heart" and boom, done.

I'm not really hyped for this or 3, I feel done with Kingdom Hearts after really disliking 3D.

Despite this, KH trailers (especially with the Utada Hikaru songs) still cause a lot of Nostalgia for me since there were 3-4 years when I was younger where I was almost obsessed with the series.

Aweeee yeah!! Plenty of room on the hype train

I really wonder how signifigant the Aqua section will be. We getting a "demo" of what's to come, or will that be signifigant in some way?

@epidehl "heart" and "(the) darkness"

Hi my name is beforet. I am trash. And I want this.

Yup, KH sure knows how to raise the level of stupid.

@babychoochoo: I will tell you and everyone interested the one thing thing you need to know about all the handheld entries. Dream Drop Distance ends with this stinger.

I love me the insanity of of post KHII Kingdom Hearts. It's peak Kojima.

I played all of Kingdom Hearts and half of KH2 this year and I have no idea what the hell is going on in those trailers.

I'll always have a soft spot for Kingdom Hearts. I must've watched Another Side, Another Story dozens of times, and Birth By Sleep about half as much. Great intros too. Games are melodramatic as fuuuuuuck.

That remix is shit until 1:50 though. Masked folks look more Disney than the Organization XIII folks, which is nice.

@ryuku_ryosake: Okay you sound like an expert. Can you explain to me how that one armored guy looks like Roxas even though Roxas didn't exist yet? I distinctly remember that moment - watching the KHII secret ending - was when I first concluded that I shouldn't care about Kingdom Hearts anymore.

@encephalon: Well the guy you seen in the armor in KHII was Ventus, one of the protagonists of BBS which the secret video is all about. In BBS, Ventus heart was broken up into light and dark. The dark part was placed into body for evil villain reasons. Basically defeats his evil clone which which damages his heart and it leaves his body.

Sora stumbles upon his wandering damaged heart and invites it into his own heart. This explains all of Sora' weirdness in the series. The ability to use a Keyblade was not passed down to him and since he a has two hearts he is the only one that can use two keyblade.

So when Sora got a nobody in Roxas it is assumed that Ventus damaged heart remained in the nobody. So it looked like him and also explains why he was such a weird nobody aka not looking like his original person and have feelings and emotions because he still had a heart and it was in fact not Sora's.

Naminee was also a weird ass heartless mainly because she is a Sora/Kairi nobody fusion from all the shenanigans that occurred at the end of KH. Roxas had to fuse with Sora to fix him at the beginning of KHII because Naminee need Ventus's heart and hidden memories to restore Sora to normal.

Basically the Aqua part is immediately after the Aqua secret episode of BBS. Honestly, I'm hoping the episode acts as a demo for KH3 just so we can get a feel for what the combat and gameplay is going to be like. I have no idea what's going on in Back Cover, but half the time, I have almost no idea what's going on in these games anyways aside from the Disney storylines. In a nut shell though, everyconvoluted aspect of the story is basically explained with the power of friendship, heartless, hearts, nobodies, and darkness. These things basically make up the premise and conflict of the whole series, I know in DDD they dropped some new stuff into the mix though, but I'll worry about that later.

There's some great people on youtube that do a damn fine good job of breaking down the story/lore of the whole franchise and it's way better than going through a wiki trying to piece everything together. I still have to finish KH2 so that will be my goal until this game comes out, but I know for a fact after I beat KH2 I'm going to refresh myself on all the story before setting on 2.8.

You have no idea how happy I am that I'm not the only person that makes this exact association.

(Also thanks for the explanation of the numbers on the "good guys" side. I remember never being able to make sense of that.)

@ryuku_ryosake: God damn, dude. I thought the Nobody stuff in KHII was bananas, but this series has gotten even more off-the-chain crazy since I left.

I want to pick it up because I'm playing birth by sleep for the first time and I'm just about to start the Aqua story which is the last one for me, and I never played 3DS. Unfortunately with the way games have been coming out busted in the dumbest ways at launch, and how Japanese Square seems like they are constantly on fire I won't buy it day one, I'm going to see what other people say first.

@epidehl: You are not wrong to be confused about the number of Lights because as it stands there are 8 candidates for the seven Lights. Those being Sora, Riku, Kairi, Ventus, Aqua, Terra, Mickey, and Lea. This is obviously means someone is is going to be bumped off the team.

The leading theory is Terra will continue to be evil through KH3 eliminating him. This is questionable in my opinion because while Xehanort does make an off hand comment that he considers Terra to still be under his control. There was also the secret ending of BBS Final Mix that implied Terra was fighting Xehanort's control. So I think he will return to normal.

My theory on the subject is the process of reviving Ventus will rob Sora of his keyblade wielding abilities. So you will likely play a good chunk of the game as the other Lights. Or due to Donald and Goofy being involved who ever pals around with them. Could be Ventus because he was technically there the whole time. Or Riku to reflect the first time Sora lost his keyblade to Riku and they followed Riku. Or Kairi because they seem to like her and Sora would want them to protect her. Eventually though someone will bite the dust and Sora will regain his abilities. Lea seems like a martyr type but could be Terra.

Now the main reason I believe in my theory is because it fits with Sora's entire character arc. Throughout the entire series people have kept telling him time and time again that he is wielding a power that is not his own. After he fails his Mastery test in 3D he is now seriously doubting himself. Also of note, Xehanort is currently missing one more to complete his XIII in the story. His plan was to make Sora his in 3D and will succeed in 3 because even without a keyblade, Sora has probably the most powerful heart which is still useful to Xehanort.

Only problem here being Terra turning back to good would cost Xehanort one out the gate. But I'm guess timing here will have Sora turn before Terra does making the XIII and coming back after the XIII start getting eliminated, Terra returning to normal, and the heroic sacrifice.

I will be super pumped pretty much only if they put 1.5 and 2.5 on PS4 as well so I can have everything on one system. The PS3 releases happened way too late in the life cycle.

Let's gooooooo!

@quarters said:

This is exactly my problem. I'd love to replay those games, but my PS3 died right before the launch of the PS4 so I had no need to buy a new one.