Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded and 3DS, 3rd Birthday details

[granville]

In the new issue of Famitsu, there is an interview with Tetsuya Nomura on several of his projects- Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded (Nintendo DS), Kingdom Hearts 3D (Nintendo 3DS), and 3rd Birthday (Parasite Eve entry for PSP). Here are the details for each title-

Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded-
- Re:Coded is being developed to allow more fans to experience the game, the DS was selected as most people have the hardware.
- Another reason for the hardware choice is that Coded was developed with the lack of analog in mind.
- The story will be the same as Coded, but aside from the event scenes the game will see many major changes.
- The game is targeting more casual gamers, and will have an adjustable difficulty setting like The World Ends With You.
- The design concept for Re:Coded is Coded+358Days+BbS.
- The co-director of BbS is supervising the battle planning for the game, while the same team will be handling the map design.
- The level up system in the game will be an expansion of the ideas from 358 Days (this may mean the panel ability system will return)
- There will be multiplayer elements, including avatars which can be unlocked featuring the characters from BbS, and Lightning from FFXIII.
- There will be a secret movie in the game.
- Currently 80% complete. [/p]
So the most exciting thing here is that Re:Coded is indeed a true remake. It shares very little in common with its episodic cell phone original. The gameplay looks really fine tuned and it looks like they've taken the complaints from the original to heart. Coded was easily the worst in the KH series, one reason being the bland gameplay. Re:Coded is being remade using the 358/2 Days engine and is full 3D with elements from BBS. A trailer of this was shown off at E3, and someone managed to capture some of the footage via offscreen camera, which i posted a few days ago. You can find some gameplay footage here-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOS-3J-y0mU

Kingdom Hearts 3D-
- This game is not a remake, it is a brand new entry in the KH series.
- This is the next stage of the franchise after Coded/358/BbS.
- Sora and Riku will be the playable characters in the game, and they will be visiting new worlds.
- There will be various hints relating to this game hidden in Re:Coded.
- There should be more information and announcements at next year's E3. [/p]
This is one we know very little about. From the screens and impressions we've seen, it seems to have graphics similar to the PS2 Kingdom Hearts games except much clearer and lacking the jaggies that the PS2 games had. It promises to be the best looking entry in the series to date thanks to the power of the 3DS. And I'm hyped to see what new worlds we'll be visiting this time! It seems to be quite early in development for now, only a concept demo was shown off at E3, although it is using graphics rendered in real time by the 3DS hardware. There's a lot of mystery behind this one, can't wait for more info! Screens can be found here-
http://www.gamefaqs.com/3ds/997779-kingdom-hearts-3d/images

The 3rd Birthday-
- The game was moved from mobiles to the PSP because the scope and quality was too large for phones.
- Aya will use a different sort of power in this game, instead of the Parasite Energy featured in the original PE games.
- You can enter into battle with a sleeveless outfit, but the defense will be really low.
- The game is an action RPG.
- Nomura understands that there are high expectations of a shower scene based on the history of the series.
- Apparently the defensive property of clothing (armor) are directly related to how exposed Aya is, so if you want high defensive gear, she's not going to be showing much skin.
- The game is self-contained and is meant to be a high quality single player experience.
- There is no multiplayer whatsoever.
- Battery consumption on the game will be high. (333mhz confirmed?) [/p]
I'm not much familiar with the Parasite Eve series to be honest. So i can't comment much here, i'll let fans of the series comment instead. The details above though interest me and make me want to know more about the series and give it a go if it's something i'd like. 3rd Birthday trailer-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v2Js5frV5A

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=399185

 

[Escape]

Kingdom Hearts 3D-
- This game is not a remake, it is a brand new entry in the KH series.
- This is the next stage of the franchise after Coded/358/BbS.
- Sora and Riku will be the playable characters in the game, and they will be visiting new worlds.
- There will be various hints relating to this game hidden in Re:Coded.
- There should be more information and announcements at next year's E3. [/p]

And I was hoping for it to be a launch title

 

[granville]

I don't think many people would expect a KH game to be a launch title. Those always take years and the development drags out forever. I wouldn't expect KH 3D to be released before the 4th quarter of 2011 if not later...

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

KH Re:Coded is already 80% complete? Interesting... That might mean we can see it late 2010/early 2011. Awesome!

KH 3D is going to be the best looking game in the series, eh? Pretty cool, although it's a pity it won't be a launch title, but that was to be expected.

Can't say much about the 3rd Birthday because I've never played a Parasite Eve game, but I might give it a try when it's out, it sounds like it could be a fun game.

 

[pcmanrules]

Well thats 2 more games to look forward to!

 

[granville]

I'm just going by the screens we've seen of KH 3D when i say it's looking to be the most graphically impressive KH game thus far-

Obviously it's very early in development. But from the 3DS' GPU specs we've seen, it's quite possible that the 3DS is the most powerful system Square Enix has developed a KH game for. Previously we've had PS2, GBA, cell phone, PSP, and DS. Assuming that the 3DS' gpu is one of the newer models of its kind, it seems possible that they can push Kingdom Hearts further than they've ever been able to do with any previous system. Which may be why they jumped on the 3DS bandwagon, Square Enix loves graphics whore systems. And 3DS is as powerful as they come with handhelds.

As for Re:Coded, i imagine that a lot of the development is done because they already had a base engine to make it on (358/2 Days) and that many of the story elements are already established since it IS a remake. It's not quite as difficult as programming a game from the ground up and coming up with a new story for it. Which again, is probably why KH 3D isn't a launch title- it's an original game which i imagine they have deal with a lot of new programming for.

 

[Jakob95]

So did kh move to the portable market? They still didnt make one for the ps3. This new kh might be kh3.

 

[granville]

So did kh move to the portable market? They still didnt make one for the ps3. This new kh might be kh3.

It's not KH3. Nomura said he wasn't going to make the official 3rd KH game until he was done with FF Versus 13 for PS3. He has been taking the opportunity to create a lot of side story games to apparently fill in the gaps in the story. Birth By Sleep was probably the best of those so far, as it really answers so much we didn't know and wanted to know. KH Days was an interesting game in that it put you in the villain's perspective and helped develop their characters more. Coded apparently has some connections to both BBS and KH3, although most people seem to think the majority of the game is rather useless filler. The 3DS game though, who KNOWS what he's cooking up this time? We're definitely playing as pre-KH2 Sora and Riku though. I don't know how that's going to work out, unless they're data projections like in Coded or something. They are clearly younger than they should appear in KH3 though, so that's out of the question.

If i had to take a wild bit of speculation here's what i have to say (contains spoilers for several KH games)-

Spoiler

This might take place within the same time frame as 358/2 Days. We know Sora and those connected to him had their memories heavily tampered with by Organization 13 and Namine during the course of Chain of Memories. Thanks to that problem, Sora had to sleep for a year while Namine pieced his memories back together. That's when we played as Roxas during Days, and we saw some of the effects of the jumbled up memories. What i'm proposing is that perhaps this 3DS game happens in an alternate version of the KH universe where the false events Namine placed in Sora's memories actually happened. Or at least a "what if" story had all those events actually happened. For those who don't know of those events, Namine was forced to mess with a lot of Sora's memories in Chain of Memories. The result ended up being that Sora thought that Namine was his childhood friend (and love interest) instead of Kairi. Riku was also a major plot point in that, at his replica was. The entire point was that the messing up of memories caused an entirely different concept of reality for Sora and the fake Riku in COM. Perhaps this 3DS game will address what would have happened had those different memories been real. Convoluted yes, but anyone who has played the series know how important memories are to the series

 

[Daizu]

I still think coded is pointless, but that's just me. If it does explain anything significant to the overall plot, please tell me.

I'm all for granville's theory on 3DS. Also, another friend told me (So this isn't my theory, just saying): Donald and Goofy's clothes are changed after the ending to Kingdom Hearts 1, and changed back again in CoM. So, there has to be a point of missing time between KH1 and Chain of Memories.

 

[basher11]

i want to play this.

hope it comes out soon if it's 80% finished

 

[ball2012003]

good to know kingdom hearts 3d isnt a remake
sad that its not a launch title though

 

[Cyan]

I played Parasite Eve 1 and finished it. I liked the gameplay and story.
Parasite Eve 2 was a Resident Evil like, I got bored and never finished the game.

PE3 seems to be going back to action RPG instead of shooting games (or maybe a mix of both ?). I'm waiting for more informations on this game

 

[ryan90]

im sorry to say this but the super anti aliased awesome looking kingdom hearts 3ds screenshots will not look like that in the final game, look at birth by sleeps screens square enix does this all the time

the final game does look amazing too as Ive been playing it, it just doesn't look like that, here are some real screens

click the spoiler to see the real images

Spoiler

Took those images using my psp and a screenshot plugin so they are the real deal. my point is that they clearly are rougher looking than the ones sqaure enix has released and that the screens can often be dishonest.

 

[granville]

I see very very little difference between those screens to be honest. The difference is negligible enough that i wouldn't have noticed it unless you had pointed it out. The jaggies are a LITTLE better in the top shots, but only by the smallest amount. I don't see much dishonesty there at all. Actually, i am surprised you used those screens to prove your point. I've seen much worse ones that have been at much lower quality. At the most, between those shots, there's maybe a 2% difference in how smooth they look, if that much. I'm able to spot jaggies very easily too. It's not that big of a difference. I'd not be disappointed or underwhelmed at all had i cared about the graphics.

I'll also mention that BBS has a lot of ghosting and pixelation issues when played on a PSP screen. It looks a lot worse in motion than it does when you output it to a better screen. Has some slowdown issues as well, even with the PSP clocked as high as it can go.

As for the 3DS game, well it's Square Enix's own fault if they make it look worse. 3DS has antialiasing, so there's no excuse not to make the game look as good as it does in those shots. And honestly, i can't see it looking much difference. 3DS has proven to be capable of better graphics than the PSP, by a huge amount, especially if they use the 2008 model of the Pica200 or later. If KH 3D doesn't look like the best game in the series, they can only blame themselves, as we've seen a glimpse of the basic specs of the GPU.

 

[Maedhros]

Thanks ryan, for the explanation.

EDIT: Granville

Do you already own the 3DS? Because you're saying it already proved that the graphics are better than PSP and we never saw anything released yet, beside tech demos, who says nothing.
We don't know what's the version of PICA200 it's using, so why do you assume that?

 

[granville]

I'm saying it based on video footage, even the weaker GPU specs, and the screens we've seen. I don't think there's any doubt that potentially, it should be much more powerful than PSP. You don't have to own a system to look at video footage or read tech specs. All you need to do is watch the Resident Evil 3DS video to see what the device can do. Sure there are some weirdos here who claim Capcom are liars, but most of these accusations come from people who don't want to believe the 3DS can be as powerful as the claims are.

As for "tech demos", the demos are accurate representations of how powerful a system is. We've already seen that many of them are to become real games, and all of them are being rendered in real time by the ingame engine.

And by all accounts, it's extremely likely they're using the 2008 or later model of the pica200, which is a LOT more powerful AND energy efficient. Efficiency is important to handhelds after all. May even be a newer model.

 

[PrinceNOOB]

All we can do is wait and see what the graphics look like when it's released so no one will be angry.

 

[Maedhros]

I'm saying it based on video footage, even the weaker GPU specs, and the screens we've seen. I don't think there's any doubt that potentially, it should be much more powerful than PSP. You don't have to own a system to look at video footage or read tech specs. All you need to do is watch the Resident Evil 3DS video to see what the device can do. Sure there are some weirdos here who claim Capcom are liars, but most of these accusations come from people who don't want to believe the 3DS can be as powerful as the claims are.

As for "tech demos", the demos are accurate representations of how powerful a system is. We've already seen that many of them are to become real games, and all of them are being rendered in real time by the ingame engine.

And by all accounts, it's extremely likely they're using the 2008 or later model of the pica200, which is a LOT more powerful AND energy efficient. Efficiency is important to handhelds after all. May even be a newer model.

 

[Jakob95]

I have to agree with Granville here. You can clearly see that the 3DS has better graphics and is much smoother then the PSP. The KH3DS screen shots even look better then the PS2 version of Kingdom Hearts 1. You also have to know that those screenshots are displayed on a 2D screen it will probably look better once its on the 3D screen as well.

 

[granville]

First of all, those specs are not taking into account all the advanced shaders and antialiasing that the 3DS can handle. Secondly, the people who reported those specs are using information they picked up from engadget, which falsely reported something they didn't actually know. This information is based on the 2006 model of the Pica200. The newer model from 2008 is much more powerful at just one 1/4 the clock speed than any system of last generation. Those specs are not to be trusted as they are based off old technology. They jumped the gun and made a hasty assumption about what specific specs the GPU was. The screens we've seen of games such as Resident Evil already dictate that this is likely using the model from 2008 or later. Those specs were hasty assumptions, and are likely far more powerful in the 3DS.

Honestly though, go comment about it in the front page article about the GPU being announced. This is not the place for that. There's all sorts of information about it there... Post here about what you think about the GPU and keep this topic on KH from now on-
http://gbatemp.net/t236444-3ds-gpu-announc...p-s-pica200-gpu