This week saw the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier event take place, bringing with it news of the Kingdom Hearts instalment currently in development for Nintendo 3DS.
Firstly the game has now been given its final name, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, to which co-director Yasushi Yasue explained that there were many ways to interpret it. One involves some of the game’s action elements – “Dropping from heights and “Distance” coming from the gameplay that makes use of the 3D and the ability to move long distances by kicking off walls continuously, for example.
“We want to place particular focus on the form of the new Kingdom Hearts action,” explained Yasue. “We want to give the game the feel of breaking speed. We’re doing a lot of trials on the development hardware, and when you actually play it, the control feel will be even better than it looks.”
In terms of play style, fans of the series will see a little differentiation from previous entries within the Kingdom Hearts series. You’ll also find yourself switching between Sora and Riku as you continue through the storyline, with Yasue commenting that “the strategy and tempo all have a fresh feel.”
Tetsuya Nomura, the game’s director, was unable to attend the conference but did deliver a message via a press release in which he explained that “As always, we’ll have plenty of surprises,” in regards to the storyline. “To show these surprises, we selected the 3DS, which is hardware that lets us challenge new things.”
Perhaps the most important note of Nomura’s comments is that he referred to the game as “the prologue for the final battle as the story approaches the final stages for the current series just ahead of the Kingdom Hearts series’ 10th anniversary.”
To top off all the new information, Square Enix also released the debut trailer for the title, which you can catch below:
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