Director Adamant There Wouldn’t Be a Kingdom Hearts III Without Pixar and Toy Story
It’s no secret that one of the many reasons people love Kingdom Hearts so much is because of its crossovers between Final Fantasy and multiple Disney worlds. Square Enix has taken this to a whole new level in Kingdom Hearts III, expanding the series to include Pixar characters from the likes of Toy Story and Monsters Inc. According to a recent interview the game’s director pushed Disney to include Pixar characters because without them there would be no Kingdom Hearts III.
Surely the addition of these brand new characters to the Kingdom Hearts series is going to give the latest game a very fresh feel, however as it turns out there may not have been a third game without the inclusion of such worlds from Pixar. In a recent interview with Edge magazine (Issue 328) Tetsuya Nomura, the game’s director, stated his biggest priority was getting the likes of Toy Story and Pixar into the anticipated action-RPG. So much so in fact, that he was prepared not to be on board for Kingdom Hearts III unless Disney agreed.
Here’s what Nomura had to say, “After we were done with Kingdom Hearts II and were starting to consider III, we started talks with Disney. I remember saying, ‘If we can’t use Pixar, then we can’t have a third game.’ It’s that important to the game series. The whole world loves Toy Story – everybody feels the appeal of that story and those characters. So yeah, at the very beginning I directly said to them, ‘If we can’t get this, I don’t want to do it’.”
And if you’re wondering why it took so long to make Kingdom Hearts III, thirteen long years since the sequel, Nomura explained that the collaboration with Pixar took years, opening up about the process with working with the massive movie studio. “I wrote a general outline of the story and I submitted it to Pixar. It took them several years to okay the story and the character designs. Previous to Kingdom Hearts III, I think these companies kind of saw it more as like, secondary rights permissions. Now they saw it more as a product like you would brand to a toy or something.” Tetsuya Nomura continued, “This time, it was creator to creator. It was somebody who had made this animation, and somebody who was making this game. We were communicating with each other, myself and these people…so that added an extra level of complexity because each creator has their own desires, ideas, and concepts.”
Kingdom Hearts III is set to launch in a few short weeks, on January 29th for the PS4 and Xbox One. Are you excited for the return of the franchise? Are you glad for the collaboration with Pixar? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and don’t forget to keep it locked for updates!