In the offices of Square Enix, an executive was meeting with an employee representing the development team and Tetsuya Nomura. "So you have a pitch for Kingdom Hearts III." The executive asked the employee and the employee nodded.
"Yes sir I do." The employee said looking through his notes. "Can I please clarify something please sir? This game will be called Kingdom Hearts III and not Kingdom Hearts Rise of the Dream Drop Requiem Final Chapter Electric Boogaloo 8/832 Days of the Week?" the employee asked.
"No off course not, this is not one of the hundreds of spinoff games who are all equally important to the plot, now lets go to this epic Avengers: Endgame of this game series with all the hype and anticipation." The executive replied.
"Great, now for this game I have streamlined the combat to make it more accessible and flow more especially with this flow system and being able to run up walls. For collectables you can find these Game and Watch minigames inspired by classic shorts, collect ingredients for a Ratatouille minigames section and you can find Mickey Mouse emblems around the worlds to take pictures with your phone." The employee told him.
"Wait, the kid who grew up on an island now has a phone?" the executive asked taken aback.
"Yeah, you can even take selfies with the characters." The employee excitedly clarified.
"Going from what was clearly something stolen for a Disneyland game, what other ways have you streamlined the combat?" the executive asked.
"Well now no more swapping out party members: Donald and Goofy are with you at all times and so are the guest star Disney cast." The employee said.
"Smart." The executive said.
"We have now improved the Gummi Ships and we are adding theme park styled attractions which are super powerful and will help clear out the enemies and appear often." The employee said.
"But won't players get upset about this, especially if it is the replacement for the summons?" the executive asked.
"No, we are Square Enix so we will have both these attractions and summons." The employee explained.
"Won't that make it super easy to beat the enemies, bosses and level up thus rendering this epic finale to a saga of this long running game series known for tough bosses basically a cakewalk?" the executive asked.
"Whoops." The employee said realising their mistake.
"Whoopsie..." the executive said.
"So you want to know about what we have done with the Disney worlds?" the employee asked.
"Off course, this is supposed to be the main selling point to make sure people still buy the games." The executive said.
"Well we start off with Hercules and it leads to this cool Clash with the actual Titans!" the employee explained.
"Wait a second, the actual Titans of Greek mythology?" the executive asked alarmed.
"Yeah, yeah yeah! Cool way to start things off right?" the employee asked proud of himself.
"You know these Titans were pretty much nigh unstoppable beings in both the movie and especially the Myths right? You are saying we start off this and later we go to Big Hero Six so the threat level goes down?" the executive asked pointed out.
"...I never thought about that..." the employee said sheepishly.
"You know we are super tight with Sony right? They are not going to be happy if we end up pointing out our spiky haired kid who fights darkness with a key and hangs around with Donald Duck is more badass than one of their big guns Kratos right? If the Titans are a lesser bad guy for him to fight?" the executive asked.
"Whoops." The employee said again.
"Whoopsie." The executive said again.
"Well on Tangled world I was thinking we can do the movie's events leading up to this super cool boss with Gothel as a Heartless. There is going to be so much dancing and showing Rapunzel the wonders of the world outside her tower. She is basically going to have more time with Sora than with Flynn." The employee said.
"So just like with Ariel, we have a situation where the Disney Princess has more chemistry with our spiky haired kid who sees dead people than with their canon love interest." The executive pointed out and the employee went to the next part.
"Well we have Big Hero 6 where there is a Darkness infested version of the original Baymax Plus some fun shenanigans with Monsters Inc." The employee said with the executive interested. "Plus Pirates of the Caribbean with a horribly brutal and unfair pirate ship race against one of the Organisation members. I am going to make the suckers who play this want to smash their controller and regret the day they ever played a video game console." The employee said darkly.
"Wait? What?" asked the executive concerned.
"Sorry, dealing with dark issues making this piece of the game." The employee said apologetically. "But you know we get to do Frozen? I was thinking that we can do a deeply personal story where the Darkness of Elsa's issues culminate in a boss battle where we have to help before she loses herself and become a Heartless..." the employee said but the executive interupted.
"No, you don't do that." The executive said to the employee's surprise. "Listen Disney is super protective of its new biggest money maker. Do you know what we had to pay to get the go ahead to use Frozen? We had to pay all the money earned from Final Fantasy XV and that includes all the DLC." The executive informed him.
"Well uh... We can have Sora, Donald and Goofy follow Elsa after she escapes and it leads to what appears to be Hans' Heartless with a full recreation of Let It Go?" the employee asked.
"Can do but my eardrum has burst again because you mentioned that song." The executive said. "What about Toy Story?" asked the executive.
"Well we are going to reveal that in the universe of Toy Story is this game called Verum Rex all based on Final Fantasy with a cool mech minigames and being able to play in mechs." The executive said.
"Wait Verum Rex it translates to... Nomura is still sore about Final Fantasy XV, isn't he?" the executive asked raising an eyebrow and the employee nodded.
"We are going to have so many funny moments with Buzz thinking Sora, Donald and Goofy are in denial about toys like he was and it is going to be super cool with the mechs and I am pretty sure in-universe the mech toys are going to be worth a fortune. Woody is going to have this badass moment where he tells Young Xehanort that no one loved him and he is hollower than any toy." The employee said excitedly.
"Everyone on your design team is Toy Story geeks and put all your effort into this one world, didn't you?" the executive said raising an eyebrow.
"Was it really that noticeable?" asked the employee.
"Now tell me about the Disney bosses?" asked the executive.
There was an awkward silence.
"... I knew we forgot something..." the employee muttered.
"How about all the Xehanorts and Organisation members to fight?" the executive asked.
"We do fight most of them... At the same time in groups with the other cast members in the final stretch of the game in a sequence... To get them out of the way." The employee admitted.
"So how about the story?" the executive asked and there was an awkward silence.
"Do we have to? The team member in charge of summarising the story of everything prior to this game is now constantly drunk and cursing everything that led him to this job." The employee asked hesitatingly and the executive nodded. "Well Sora is basically sent to train to fight Xehanort and master this power of Awakening... More talks of Darkness and Light the same old but it turns out Aqua has fell to Darkness..." the employee said.
"Oh no! How big an impact on the plot is this going to be?" the executive gasped.
"Not much, she gets beaten and the Darkness is freed from her." The employee explained.
"Underwhelming and with how the state of the stories are, I am wondering if Nomura is just making all this up as he goes along inventing answers to mysteries later as if he was working on Lost." The executive replied and there was a minute of silence.
"How has it taken you this long to realise that?" the employee asked.
"Dang it but I am sure he has learned his lesson now. You know we have him working on a trilogy remake of Final Fantasy VII." The executive said.
"Pretty hard to complicate that." The employee said and the executive nodded. "Anyway before the final battle Kairi gets killed but Sora uses Awakening to save her and Donald Duck uses Zettaflare." The employee said as the executive's eyes widening.
"You know how powerful that spell is? You do realise this makes Donald Duck the most powerful character our games ever had?" asked the executive astonished.
"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Now onto the final battle with Xehanort and the X-Blade." The employee said.
"Well after all his decades of planning, all the different versions of himself he pulled together, all the people he manipulated, all the complicated schemes that the heroes barely put a dent to even though they keep beating his other selves and against a kid with only a few years worth of experience as a Key Bearer it is going to be super difficult to finally beat him once and for all." The executive said.
"Actually it is going to be super easy; barely an inconvenience." The employee replied with the executive stunned. "He is just going to keep beating him and then it turns out that all along Xehanort just wanted to purge the worlds of Darkness and all his talk of the balance between Darkness and Light and favouriting Darkness was apparently just him lying out of his ass. Then his old best friend comes and forgives him and they go to the afterlife in peace." The employee said as the executive's mouth was open.
"Wait? Xehanort after all the lives he ruined, all the people he killed, worlds he destroyed and the war he began gets to just go to Heaven all forgiven?" the executive asked.
"Well he makes Sora a Keyblade Master and that makes up for it." The employee said but the executive shook his head. "Anyway; because he abused the power of Awakening, Sora disappears and it turns out that Xigbar of the Organisation was one of the Foretellers and was behind Xehanort all along so he could return the others for the new saga of games." The employee said.
"I don't know why I would expect it to end any other way." The executive muttered.
"But I was thinking for the DLC..." the employee said.
"Money..." the executive muttered happily.
"It ends with a tough post-final boss with the main character of the Verum Rex game from Toy Story and he is there to save Sora." The employee said.
"What? Well I can't wait for the next game to see what answers Nomura makes up to explain all this." The executive said.
"We already have plans because you know the music rhythm minigames from Kingdom Hearts II?" the employee asked.
"The part of the game everyone hates, yeah?" the executive replied.
"The next game is going to be nothing but that."
"What?"
The Screen Rant article The Next Kingdom Hearts Game is a Rhythm Game is shown.
Let me make this clear I love the KH games and I loved Kingdom Hearts III despite the flaws. This is just me wanting to do something fun as a big fan of Pitch Meetings and since the show is getting its own YouTube channel soon.
