Kingdom Hearts 3 has been in development for what feels like an eternity, and though there have been various teases, trailers and hints dropped over the years, we've somehow yet to see anything substantial about the game. Until now, as yesterday in Santa Monica Square Enix invited us to go hands on with the latest mainline instalment of its bafflingly complex Final Fantasy/Disney mash-up series. There were two playable sections on offer; one short section in the Olympus Coliseum world battling a huge Titan boss, and a much longer, expanded section in Toy Box, the Toy Story themed world. The demo in Olympus Coliseum heavily featured the new wall-scaling autorun mechanic, with Sora, Goofy and Donald scaling sheer cliff faces as the Titan pelted rocks at them from above, and culminated in a boss battle with the Titan on the summit, with Sora summoning the Big Magic Mountain attraction to finish it off, which looked pretty incredible. There were some camera issues as the framing struggled to keep up with Sora in confined stretches of the cliff face and when it was vying for space with the Titan at the top of the mountain, but it was a fun showcase of the new features in KH3's combat, including key blade transformations and the bombastic attractions.
The real star of the show is the Toy Story-themed Toy Box world. This is the first time a Pixar property has been featured in a Kingdom Hearts game, and it works - there are lots of cool little details and secrets tucked away throughout the world, from hidden Mickeys to mini-games to Final Fantasy Easter eggs. In attendance with the Square Enix development team at the Kingdom Hearts 3 Premiere event in Santa Monica was Jason Katz and Tasha Sounart from Pixar, talking about their experiences collaborating with Square on the game. Sounart is an associate creative director at Pixar, having worked in the animation department since June 1997 starting with A Bug's Life. She's also worked in games, directing Costume Quest at Double Fine before returning to Pixar where her current job melds all of her past skills together - she's also a big Kingdom Hearts fan. Jason Katz is a story supervisor at Pixar and has worked in the story department there since Toy Story, and most recently he spent six years as story supervisor for Coco.
They both said Pixar was involved in Kingdom Hearts 3 from the very beginning, giving notes on the script to make the Pixar characters felt authentic to how they would actually act in these situations. Katz said it took time and trust to understand what both companies could collectively bring to the table for the finished game, and that early on, one thing they talked about was the Toy Story universe, and what it meant. Katz explained that a big part of the Toy Story films is nostalgia; nostalgia for toys that you remember growing up, or that feeling of playing with a toy as a kid, and he remembered having really great conversations talking to the people at Square Enix and asking them, "What were the toys you remembered? What were the toys from your childhood?" From those conversations, Square brought back the ideas for the Gigas, pivotable Gundam-style robots in the toy store section of the game, "And that was when it really started to click," Katz said, "that both teams were really speaking the same language. That's when you really take advantage of the time it takes to develop a really quality story."
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