For good reason, developers often don’t let playable characters in video games get too overpowered, lest they make a game too easy to plow through. But Kingdom Hearts 4 seems to be straying from that principle, as Donald Duck was revealed to be a fully playable character in last weekend’s extended D23 trailer.
In a segment of Kingdom Hearts 4 taking place in the Underworld from Hercules, players will take control of Sora’s perennial sidekicks, Donald and Goofy, in platforming and battle sequences. The trailer also shows off a combo attack combining Goofy’s shield-spinning and Donald’s star-shooting.
“But wait,” you might say. “What do you mean Donald Duck is overpowered?” Yes, Donald is the party member who fails to heal you at opportune times, but one cutscene in Kingdom Hearts 3 shows off the sheer magnitude of his wizardry at its absolute peak. A dramatic moment at the start of the story’s endgame has Donald, defending his friends from Terra-Xehanort, fire off the Zettaflare spell–a feat almost unheard of in the larger Final Fantasy universe.
The giant freaking beam of fire hopefully speaks for itself.
A famous Reddit post that went up shortly after Kingdom Hearts 3’s 2019 release posited that this stunt proves that Disney’s favorite ill-tempered duck is the most powerful mage in the wider Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy universe. With some calculation, the user (very roughly) estimated that Donald’s Zettaflare produced over 5.5 million hit points. And if you’re unfamiliar with numeral prefixes, “zetta” represents one sextillion, or 10 to the 21st power. That’s a really big number.
Zettaflare is a rare sight in Square Enix games; after Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy XVI featured the move, with series-staple summon Bahamut delivering the spell in the form of a giant beam from space that would rival the Death Star. But in the case of Bahamut, we’re talking about a giant dragon, so Donald can technically still hold onto the title of the most powerful mage (and probably a black mage, since he stubbornly refuses to heal you when you most need it).
There’s no telling if Kingdom Hearts 4 will make use of or even just reference Donald Duck’s stratospheric power scale, but soon you too can play as him and neglect to heal Goofy on your adventure. The game is set for a late 2027 release, and series creator Tetsuya Nomura is adamant that it won’t be delayed beyond that timeframe.