If you want to blame someone for Nomura's crazy, convoluted story lines, blame Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Earlier in the interview he told Famitsu that he was hoping to make the story more clear and simple.
"But while I was developing the first Kingdom Hearts, I received a single piece of advice from Sakaguchi-san*. That was, 'If you don’t make it more complex like with Final Fantasy, you won’t be able to compete.'"
In the interview he does not excuse himself for the convoluted path the Kingdom Hearts story has taken, so he is not outright "blaming" the story for going in a bad direction or even insinuating that it has.
Even so, I think most of us can agree that Nomura has taken the advice to a needless extreme and that Sakaguchi would not approve.
This reminds me of a bit in the film 'Adaptation':
Donald Kaufman: Okay, well here's the twist. We find out that, that the killer really suffers from multiple personality disorder, right? See, he's actually really the cop and the girl. All of them are him. Isn't that fucked up?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000115/ Charlie Kaufman: The only idea more overused than serial killers is multiple personality. On top of that, you explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person. See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this.
Donald Kaufman: Mom called it "psychologically taut".
Wondering if a similar conversation should have occured between Nomura and Sakaguchi
Or maybe he was just finding an excuse to blast his work?
I think Nomura did okay with the first game. Shit got annoying as FUCK when he decided to use the ambiguous/confusing/incoherent ploy during KH 2 and onwards. Something had better wrap up by the time KH 3 closes or he will lose credibility FOREVER!
Well Sakaguchi was right. Make it complex like with Final Fantasy, KH has gone aways beyond Final Fantasy complicated, passed that line a long time ago.
It's how he adds complexity to his character designs.
Seriously, Nomura needs to start working on KH 3 and stop adding to the incoherence with prequels and whatnot, but that probably isn't likely to happen considering whatever is going on with Versus XIII.
Seriously, Nomura needs to start working on KH 3 and stop adding to the incoherence with prequels and whatnot, but that probably isn't likely to happen considering whatever is going on with Versus XIII.
Or in-betweens (Re:Chain of memories?) anyways this made me think o a totally unrelates game *cough*Devil May Cry*cough* that with so many backwards is making me lose interest. I really, Really like KH but I hope they dont end ruining it...
I'd rather nomura walk away from the video game industry entirely.
He has no creativity. Hes been rehashing character design and concepts since the late 90's i dont get why so much gets weight gets put on him when he consistently fails to deliver quality work.
Then he blames his boss.
Ha.
If its taken you 5 games across multiple platforms just to tell 1 story your doing it wrong.
Hey, I liked Chain of Memories. :c Mostly because it further explained what the fuck was happening in KH2. (which is basically Namine being a tard) I was so pissed I had to write "Thank Namine" in my journal. >:/
Chain of Memories in my opinion is the only spin off that served it's purpose in that it served as a guide for KH2, its story and characters. It didn't make the plot more complex it didn't leave you constantly going "WTF that makes no sense", it pushed the plot forward and was a very smooth transition to explain the events between KH1 and 2.
The other spin offs do indeed just lead to a lot of confusion of where the KH plot is actually going, this fact alone I feel also makes the magic, creativity and uniqueness of the original game become pushed aside in what was originally a simple straightforward plot.
One more thing since when was Final Fantasy complex? You have elements between them all that ties the series together in that aspect buy you've got unique stories and characters in each game, everything explained, no need for countless spin offs to further confuse the plot ( well apart from the compilation but even then that's no where near as confusing as KH) and well I dunno if that's just me but really does anyone look at Final Fantasy and go "I don't know what the hell is going on with this plot anymore!"
Correction. Sakaguchi isn't blaming anyone. To my knowledge, his name has never been associated with KH. He just gave his old co-worker some advice.
And advice he needed. I'm sure Sakaguchi meant "Make a complex and intriguing story and tell it effectively, much like Final Fantasy used to be before I left Square and you started this episodic crap." If Nomura's idea of complexity is throwing every second chapter of a story at you, each for a different console, he should have walked away from the industry ten years ago.
Seriously, the KH plot isn't complicated, it's just... Convoluted, full of clones of Sora, and weird bullshit.
To me, KH started to go down after II. After that game, KH pretty much jumped the shark, and it's sad because KHII was one of the last GOOD games Square Enix did. Days and coded were utter shit and totally unnecesary IMO, the games were fun and all but the storylines were absolute shit, they were just filler made to needlessly lengthen the franchise. I mean, really, they were pretty fun, Days and coded are fine games if you forget they're Kingdom Hearts titles. Nice music, nice graphics, great gameplay... But it's the plot that suffers. It's just weak; the plot of Days was largely unnecesary and overall felt like a waste of time and the plot of coded is even worse. Compared to KHI, and II (and Birth), those games are nothing. Five games are really needed to build the path to KHIII? Days had LOTS of filler and only some reports, Xion and a pair of cutscenes added anything to the story, and coded was just awful, the last 10 minutes of the game were the only relevant part. Out of the three "new" games, the only good one was Birth by Sleep and frankly it wasn't enough.
At first I liked the weird-but-somewhat-cool elements Nomura added to the KH Universe but then things just got stupid and oh god Nomura just make KHIII and finish your goddamn story in a coherent way pl0x.
And the worst part is that
we'll have at least TWO other games before reaching KHIII. Let's see, Birth by Sleep 2, 3D, and still no REAL word of III? Come on, we DON'T need more games. Seriously.
