Disney held their annual D23 Expo where they unveil new movies, individual properties and even some KINGDOM HEARTS III screens and footage. This time around, Sora, Donald and Goofy find themselves expanding beyond classic Disney films and reaching into Pixar. Not just any old Pixar film, but the first of its kind, Toy Story.Kingdom Hearts 3, the long awaited third major installment in the epic Final Fantasy and Disney crossover RPG series, finally has a release date, although it remains somewhat ambiguous for now. At the conclusion of a new Toy Story-themed trailer of the game shown off at Disney’s D23 expo today, developer Square Enix revealed that the game would indeed be coming out in 2018. Even better news: from the footage shown off of Sora and pals Donald and Goofy teaming up with Woody and Buzz Lightyear, the game looks fantastic, with an even deeper and zanier battle system and ultra-polished visuals.
Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story debuted back in 1995 and made a huge impact as the company’s first feature-length CGI film. Being a box office success, characters Woody and Buzz Lightyear have become the face of the franchise. Seeing that the Kingdom Hearts series is essentially a cross breed of Final Fantasy and Disney characters, it only makes sense to have Sora and the gang meet the toys. Check out the trailer below.
Disney and Square Enix debuted new Kingdom Hearts 3 details at this year’s D23 conference. That includes a new trailer, above, as well as a brand new world featured in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game.
The presentation kicked off with Kingdom Hearts 3’s E3 2017 trailer, which gave us our first fresh look at the game in some time when Square Enix premiered it in June. Director Tetsuya Nomura then arrived to help introduce the new content during Disney’s gaming-focused panel, streamed live this afternoon.
The news should overjoy Kingdom Hearts fans would’ve waited nearly 13 years for a sequel to the second major game in the series. It should also assuage the fears of those dreading the worst: that the game would simply never make it out of development hell, or in a worst case scenario get canned for good. But Square Enix — which wrapped up long and tortuous development cycle for Final Fantasy XV, its other highly anticipated RPG — appears better equipped to get its most anticipated titles out the door at last.
A trailer showed our hero, Sora, taking on various Heartless in an action-packed montage. But the action soon faded out to a much slower-paced scene: Sora, Donald and Goofy arriving in the world of Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear and Woody helped explain the Heartless problem plaguing Andy’s bedroom, joined by other toys like Hamm the piggy bank and Rex the dinosaur. They later ventured just outside of the home to take on toy-sized Heartless — and even visited a toy store, where Sora got to jump into a mech action figure for a different kind of combat.
We even get a brief appearance from Organization XIII, the primary antagonists of the game. The whole scenario will feature an original story set in the Toy Story universe, as members of the team from Pixar explained during the panel. Even John Lasseter, head of the animation studio, got involved with the film’s Kingdom Hearts debut.
This marks Pixar’s introduction into the Disney-crossover series. Disney officially purchased Pixar in 2006, just after the release of our last mainline Kingdom Hearts game. Whether Toy Story will be joined by other Pixar classics remains unannounced, but Pixar’s first feature film is an excellent choice for the Kingdom Hearts franchise as it is.
Other new worlds in Kingdom Hearts 3 include those inspired by Big Hero 6 and Tangled, two much more recent Disney animated features. Square Enix announced the Big Hero 6world two years ago, during 2015’s D23 event.
Kingdom Hearts 3 will launch in 2018.
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