Following a major new trailer for Kingdom Hearts IV at Disney’s D23 showcase earlier this month, Kingdom Hearts series mastermind Tetsuya Nomura and Kingdom Hearts IV co-director Tai Yasue recently sat down with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, where the pair revealed a few small pieces of new information about progress on the upcoming RPG. Mainly, how big is this game fans have been waiting for since 2019 actually going to be?
After recalling how a delayed flight almost ruined their chance of appearing at D23 altogether, discussion in the interview quickly shifted to the extended trailer the pair revealed during the Kingdom Hearts Deep Dive panel and the reveal of the game’s first Disney world, Coco.
“[Coco] was one of the worlds I wanted to include the most in Kingdom Hearts IV, so it’s also the world we finalized and started working on first for the game,” explains Nomura, with Yasue praising how the Mexican setting and music make it one of the more unique worlds in the context of the series to date.
“It’s a visually-impressive world, and since everyone is skeletons here, you also have everyone moving around in such unique ways,” Yasue continues, before discussing how this brings new gameplay mechanics into the world. “There’s so much depth to explore in this world, and we’ve also increased the number of attractions you can perform to move around and vertically through this space as well. We paid a lot of attention to ways to explore, it’s just a really cool world”
While fighting with Hector in this new world, he emphasizes that, “Rather than only waving your keyblade, you can use it as a guitar, and we’ve added other musical elements to the battles too. There’s other unique ideas we’ve added too, but I can’t share those just yet!”
Notably, though some fans had been hoping to see more than just the Coco world revealed at D23 after the surprise trailer for the game was released a day before the panel, this was never planned. Overall, Kingdom Hearts IV will contain fewer worlds than prior games, meaning that if they revealed any more, they would simply run out of things to reveal if they continued to make announcements at such a rapid pace.
“These are the most detailed and polished worlds in the series to date,” explains Nomura, “In order to achieve that, there aren’t as many worlds in this game compared to other entries. I remember seeing fans hoping that, because we revealed Coco in a showcase the day before the Kingdom Hearts panel, that we may be revealing another world during the event. But if we revealed these worlds at such a fast pace, we’d run out of things to talk about a long time before the game’s release! That being said, what we revealed this time is just a small part of the full world of Coco. It’s because D23 was such a good opportunity to talk about the game that we ended up revealing the world a bit earlier than we had originally planned.”
Of course, Coco was not the only thing shown for Kingdom Hearts IV at the event, with new information also being revealed regarding the Shibuya-like world of Quadratum and the Kingdom Hearts Union χ mobile game characters such as Sigurd and Strelitzia set to appear in Kingdom Hearts IV. While the Dandelions in the mobile game are a collection of keyblade wielders, here Nomura confirms that the Dandelions are an organization working with the government of Quadratum, with these characters and Sora offering assistance to the group with the power of their keyblades. Further information on the role of the Dandelions in this world was not disclosed and will be revealed later.
If all these names sound like a lot to keep track of alongside everything else from the past 25 years of Kingdom Hearts, Nomura would agree! Especially as work on things such as the recently-announced anime has led to many new names being asked to assist on work with the series, he revealed how the team has developed tools to assist them in ensuring continuity with prior games and introducing the story to new people.
One member of staff who worked on the Union χ mobile game was in charge of compiling the lore of the series into an easy-to-understand manner, a move that led to them being brought on to work on Kingdom Hearts IV where he would liaise and explain the story to Disney. In particular, according to Nomura, “since the Union χ games are heavily integrated into the story this time, this person was brought in to proofread everything.”
This is also a practical necessary due to the scale of the game’s story compared to previous entries. “The script this time is roughly double the size of the script of Kingdom Hearts III,” explains Nomura, “I actually wanted to include even more stuff, but I was already over the limit.”
Yasue noted also that, “We’re currently recording English voice acting at the moment, and we’re roughly 60-70% complete with that process,” with Nomura also confirming that the script is complete and that, in turn, “Japanese voice recording has already finished.”
Though the team are unsure when the next reveal for the game will be, this comes amidst repeated assurances that progress on development progress, with Yasue stating that progress is currently going smoother than at any point in the series history to date. With the 25th anniversary of the franchise approaching, there are already a lot of plans underway to celebrate the occasion, including the Kingdom Hearts anime series also announced at D23 and a separate Kingdom Hearts exhibition of artwork and more taking place in Japan from February 2027. Perhaps, after all this time since the release of Kingdom Hearts III, the wait is finally over.
