KINGDOM HEARTS III: Disney’s Latest Remake

Over the last century, The Walt Disney Company has built an enviable library of intellectual property. From fairy tale classics to pop culture sensations, Disney has a knack for creating beloved characters and stories with humor and heart. Those characters have served as the bedrock for an empire of theme parks, films, and merchandise that have come to dominate popular culture. So why is it that when it comes to video games, a veritable golden goose of media entertainment, Disney doesn’t know what to do with their own creations?

By all means, they should be able to. The now defunct Disney Interactive Studios used to pump out video game tie-ins for even the smallest TV show or direct-to-DVD movie—selling those licenses to developers should be a no-brainer. The Disnerds community is sizeable, influential, and incredibly loyal—a fanbase that’s almost cult-like in status. One that would gladly buy a PlayStation or Xbox for another fix.

Like every ‘90s kid, I was introduced to Disney during its second renaissance. I wore the swag to school, listened to Radio Disney, and knew every song by heart. So when KINGDOM HEARTS debuted in 2002, its siren call of mad genius drew me in. In a vague sense, I knew about Final Fantasy, but it was the box art of Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and a goofy kid in Mickey chique that sold it.

Flying high on faith, trust, and a little pixie dust!

I loved the weird, wild idea of it—a scattered and confusing universe, patchworked with Square Enix characters, Disney worlds, and an incomprehensible lore. But Kingdom Hearts at its core is an RPG where one can take a spaceship to Neverland, fight Huns alongside Mulan, or swim through the ocean with Ariel. To share adventures with your favorite characters, and relive that little bit of childhood we all lock inside our hearts.

The first two console games delivered that in spades. With about 11 worlds apiece, KINGDOM HEARTS 1 and 2 had variety and, yes, heart. It was a wholesome experience, stitched with magic and nostalgia. And although many of the worlds overlapped, the stories built upon each other. The familiar stayed fresh, because it felt like the worlds continued to live beyond the confines of the game. And the plot, the experience of these worlds, didn’t rely entirely on the Disney movies they were drawn from.

Take KH2’s “Timeless River,” for example. It’s a gorgeous blend of 1920s animation, monochrome palette, and twinkling nickelodeon organ music—but what makes it so special is that it’s also one of the few that feels whole. It exists beyond the conflict of STEAMBOAT WILLIE as a real place, accessible and explorable beyond the scope of the riverboat in the short. A space where different versions of the same character can enter and exit, yet be completely distinguishable. And, where you feel like you can stay, play, take your time, and really drink the experience in.

Back in my day, Kingdom Hearts was inventive!

This is what I expected of KINGDOM HEARTS 3. It’s been a 14 year wait after all—which is more than enough time to develop something remarkable. And with open world platforms becoming more and more commonplace—like BREATH OF THE WILD, FALLOUT, and RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2—the bar was set high. So why is it that a game that has had more than a decade to develop can’t manage to deliver on the one experience it was created to achieve?

That’s not to say that the game isn’t stunning, because it is. Unreal Engine was the perfect conduit to recreate the worlds of our favorite films, achieving a level of resemblance that can only be described as uncanny. The animation is crisp, the cutscenes nearly identical to the source material, and the game transitions from animatic to gameplay almost seamlessly. And yet it seems too much time was spent making the game look pretty, rather than playable.

Don’t let the scope of this shot deceive you. There’s actually very little you can explore.

Most of the worlds are breathtaking. The landscapes, plants, characters and ambience have been carefully reconstructed in painstaking detail. I can’t imagine the sheer number of hours and research that went into making these environments. But it feels like that’s where nearly every minute of this game’s development was devoted towards.

The result? In essence, a snowglobe. It’s a bubble, a pristine moment from each film that’s been rebuilt to be navigable, but not necessarily interactive. Aside from the few moments of nostalgia that you get from watching the snowfall over Arendelle, it doesn’t offer much. There’s nothing engaging about walking through my favorite Pixar movies when they’re so devoid of life.

Sure, the sun filters through Andy’s window just like you remember, and it’s cool to finally be able to explore San Fransokyo… but none of that matters if there’s nothing truly substantial to do while you’re there. These treasured memories are relegated to  one-lane paths carrying you from one mob of Heartless to another. Woohoo, Jack Sparrow’s coat is rendered in photorealistic detail, but where does the drive, the challenge to push through to the end come in?

We can recognize the characters—they look, talk, and perform just like they do in the movies—but they feel hollow, thrown into half-baked plot points like clothes tumbling in a dryer. Elsa’s big emotional number “Let It Go” loses a lot of its punch when the game largely skirts her story. What’s the point of including such a badass, complex hero if she doesn’t even get to join our party and use her ice powers against the Heartless?

The most wasted opportunity in KINGDOM HEARTS 3

The truth might just be that the series has outgrown it’s Disney roots. A heavy emphasis is placed on the plot in KINGDOM HEARTS 3. In a way, it feels like a heavy-handed, clumsy apology for the series’ famously convoluted lore. And, as such, it’s unbearably expository. You can’t move Sora more than five feet without kickstarting 20 minutes-worth of laughably awkward cutscenes.

Maybe that’s a necessity for those of us who haven’t had time for every one of the spin-offs and CG movies that have moving the series’ labyrinthian story forward this whole time, but it’s the much more straightforward Disney tales hosting it that suffer as a result. For a game that is crammed and cluttered with cutscenes, the most impactful moments of each world are neutered. We don’t get to see and experience Elsa and Anna’s conflict through Sora’s eyes. We don’t get to watch Anna and Kristoff fall in love. Hans isn’t even introduced until the very last minute, with a whopping 20 seconds of screentime.

Most of the time spent in Arendelle is platforming and mindlessly chopping away at hordes of bosses on a lonely, blizzarding mountain. And back on Tangled’s Corona, you’re running through a maze of a forest or spending 10 whole minutes in a bird’s eye view of the “Kingdom Dance” sequence. I didn’t buy this game to time dance moves to colored circles and swap NPC dance partners. I didn’t buy this game to watch a literal shot-for-shot duplication of a song I already know by heart.

This is what millenials want, right? Selfies with Woody?

While the animation nerd in me is excited by the technological advancements and the beauty of the game engine, as a Disney fan I have to sigh in disappointment. With loading screens decorated with pseudo-social media posts—#realmofdarkness—the integration of a selfie mode, ridiculous side quests to find Hidden Mickey emblems, and an 8-bit retro Gameboy mode, KINGDOM HEARTS 3 feels like a deformed Play-doh sculpture of Disney culture.

It completely misses the point and doesn’t connect with the charm of the source material, while simultaneously trying to make a half-hearted appeal to Millennial and Gen-X crowds through “social media” additions. But just like Sora, Square Enix and Disney Interactive don’t really know where they’re going or why anymore, do they?