Young queer people mad about Rocky Horror are so privileged to have grown up in a time they can be angry about an incredibly progressive movie that gave LGBTQ people a community space. Literally. You’re lucky to be able to be upset about it. For us, that movie represents freedom.
when you want to joke about how the front of snezhnaya's train looks like capitano's mask bc his name is thrain but then you realize his modified heart is like a train car and the souls inside are the passengers he carries all the way to their final destination
The new Famitsu KH4 Interview with Nomura and Yasue at D23 is extremely long, but I have translated and summarized most of the important bits. I actually already posted a lot of these individually, but here is a more concise summary!
Story and Development
-Nomura says that the script for KH4 is about 2x the length of KH3
-Nomura kept wanting to add in more content, but they already went over their limit
-The Dandelions in Quadratum work with the government, and all keyblade wielders who are in Quadratum are Dandelion members.
-The story for KH4 has a lot of influence from the χ series, so they have a designated lore master that they consult with during production to make sure all the lore is accurate and relates to the entire series. The lore master also condenses the info to relay it to Disney staff
-The release date is solid and will not change. The game WILL release in the latter half of 2027
-This is the first time in Kingdom Hearts series history that production is going incredibly smoothly and on schedule
Voice Recording
-Japanese voice recording is completed and English is about 60-70% done too
-The Japanese staff are supervising the voice recording as well, so they have to work with different time zones
-Nomura confirms that the voice at the end of the D23 trailer is indeed Kairi
-They deliberately went out of their way to record Kairi’s line in EN for the D23 panel, but because the audience cheers were so loud, no one really heard it lol
-Nomura personally decides on the English voice cast for the Kingdom Hearts series. He usually is presented with audition tapes and decides who is closest to the JP counterpart.
Sigurd
-Nomura and Yasue both really like Sigurd as a character
-In terms of why you need to “beware of Sigurd,” which is a coded message from the KH 20th Anniversary, well, maybe he’s just too likeable so you need to be careful lol
-Lots of staff also like Sigurd due to his JP voice actor, who they have yet to publicly reveal
-Both Sigurd and Vali are from the mobile series games, but even if you didn’t play them, KH4 will explain who they are and properly introduce the characters too.
KH4 Worlds
-The dev team did such a good job with the Coco world that even Pixar animators praised them saying there’s no other game that can accurately depict the movie like this
-Each world is extremely immersive this time around, and while there are less worlds in KH4 than previous games, there is so much more to do in them
-For Coco, the world was decided early on and is probably the furthest in development. There are forms of transportation within the world that you can ride various attractions to get from up to down since the world is very vertical based
-In Coco, your keyblade also can turn into a guitar and make music when you use it. There may even be some surprises
Kingdom Hearts Anime
-Many speculate that the main character in the visual is from the mobile game series based on his keyblade, but Nomura says he cannot reveal anything about that.
D23 Panel
-Nomura says it was very nostalgic to reunite with Haley Joel Osment and David Gallagher for this panel
-He said he originally wasn’t planning to come, but staff (probably Yasue) convinced him lol
-He still refers to Haley as “Haley-kun” and recalls a time when he went to Los Angeles to do voice recording with Haley for Sora. Haley brought an FFX walkthrough book with him and Nomura was puzzled as to why. It wasn’t until he left that he realized Haley probably wanted his autograph omg lol
-He was very moved to see everyone’s reactions at D23, and it even brought tears to his eyes
-Disney wanted to keep his appearance secret, so he had to use the backdoors for his entry to the venue. However, after the panel, since it wasn’t a secret anymore, he just walked out normally and was immediately recognized lol
-The last time he was at D23 was in 2017 for KH3, but he regrets he didn’t have much time to look around since he had to go back to Japan asap to continue working on KH4 lol
Closing Thoughts
-Since there has been quite a big information dump lately via Nintendo Direct and D23, there might be a bit of a gap before we get our next round of news, so KH4 will most likely not have anything new announced at the upcoming Tokyo Game Show in September
-However, the team is making great strides with the game, and they hope you can look forward to more news soon as it will release gradually from here on out.
-There is a lot of plans for the 25th Anniversary of the Kingdom Hearts series next year, and one of the plans includes the special Exhibition in Roppongi. Please stay tuned for more info on all the festivities!
RONOVA: annual regional death tallies are due by midnight
VENTI: why do you need us to report them if you’re death
RONOVA: i know the numbers. this is an audit
MAVUIKA: do you want natlan’s gross or net deaths
RONOVA: explain
MAVUIKA: some of them got better
RONOVA: