Heartless
‘Kingdom Hearts 4’ is real and it can hurt you
After we waited a decade for the conclusion to Sora's story, director Tetsuya Nomura has decided to start a new one with Kingdom Hearts 4.
Whether you're a Disney adult or a hopeless JRPG fanatic, everybody loves Kingdom Hearts. (Except, you know, not really.) But if you are a Kingdom Hearts fan, you now have something to be happy about: Square Enix announced Kingdom Hearts 4... and it definitely looks like more KH, for better and worse.
The trailer premiered as the main attraction during the 20-year celebration of the franchise, which took place last weekend. Square Enix also announced a mobile Kingdom Hearts game, Missing Link, but it's not clear if it's going to be available in the U.S. Knowing Kingdom Hearts, Nomura will probably stick a bunch of important plot-relevant stuff in it regardless of whether or not it ever comes to the West, but fans have definitely figured this out by now.
Well, that’s... new — As for the trailer itself, it shows series protagonist Sora waking up on a couch after seven days of sleeping. (Talk about a backache.) There, he's informed by a woman named Strelitzia that he's now in a new world called Quadratum, which looks suspiciously like our own. A monstrous demon-looking thing manifests in the middle of the city and destroys several family-class sedans before Sora runs his way forward and real-time combats the stuffing out of the bad guy. Oh, and he has his Keyblade, because of course he does.
As a whole, it's hard to know what to think about this trailer. The new photorealistic art style has produced both positive and negative reactions from fans, with many noting that the older, more grizzled Sora seems a bit strange compared to his old look. Without his ridiculous clown shoes and signature gloves, it's definitely a far cry from the Kingdom Hearts of old, but we're guessing that the usual Disney nonsense is only a few hours of gameplay away.
Since this is a teaser trailer, we have no idea when Kingdom Hearts 4 will actually come out. Based on the time between KH3's announcement and it reaching store shelves, we look forward to playing KH4 in 2028. (Not an exaggeration.)
