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Run It Back: Kingdom Hearts 1.5 -- The Introduction and Destiny Islands

The title screen of Kingdom Hearts remains to be my favorite intros in all of games. Dearly Beloved is a theme which by now has been arranged, reprised, and remixed into about a dozen official versions. It’s a theme so iconic that rather than start fresh with an entirely new track for each new series entry, it’s been repurposed as an overture of sorts -- every reimagining of the track can tell you something about tone, beats, and themes present in the game ahead. In this instance, the theme has a somewhat melancholy bass line married to a flittering melody. The rhythm goes in an unhurried circle arriving back unto itself, accompanied by the sounds of waves gently crashing onto the shore. Sora stands in a beautiful watercolor illustration, alone and looking out at the sea. Like most of the other parts of the game that I remember fondly, the elements come together in a way that just feels right. Sora is alone, and though his expression is relaxed you get the feeling that he isn’t quite happy either. There’s a touch of mourning to the scene, which stands as a somewhat abrupt contrast to the expectations one would bring to a licensed Disney game in the early 2000’s -- something was different this time, and it was exciting!

The menu options are unfussy. You can start a new game or load a save (and in the case of the ReMIX versions, back out to the game select screen), and upon starting a new file you’re greeted with an intro cinematic. The cinematic starts with a beautifully rendered cloudscape that flashes the title in an unstylized, spartan, and serif’d font, and fades into a scene with Sora voiced by Haley Joel Osmant narrating his thoughts. It feels a little surreal, with him floating in space eyes half closed, wondering aloud to himself if he can trust his grasp of reality anymore. It sets the tone for the series, and places its production values front and center with a flashy cinematic delivering visuals well beyond what the hardware could deliver and professional Hollywood voice acting on par with what we’d expect from a Disney production yet surpassing performances we’d heard from up to that point. It also captures a certain angst that just resonated really well with 14 year old me. My stresses were piled high though I wouldn’t know to call them that at the time. I was just beginning to process some intense personal trauma that had occured very recently; national tragedy had struck the year before, with 9/11 and the G.W Bush Administration altering the course of American politics; and of course I was just entering high school, and all the baggage that brings along. Something about the way Sora saw himself falling from the sky, eyes closed and unable or unwilling to take control of his descent, resonated close and hard with me.

This is also the first time we hear the iconic Simple and Clean track, here as the -PlanitB Mix- with clubby vibe that marks the dramatic sweeps of the chorus have just a little more flair. The soundtrack to Kingdom Hearts was so good that it led to me hunting down a copy of the soundtrack at Tower Records. The craziest thing to me was that it had a domestic release (!) complete with the english (!!) versions of the Utada tracks and an unabridged, two-disc version of the soundtrack. Yoko Shimomura has since become a favorite composer of mine, to the point where I’d instantly recognized her work when I saw the first Final Fantasy XV trailer.

As a somewhat technical aside, The PS4 remaster runs at 60 frames per second, while the original ran at about 30. While the gameplay with look and act much smoother as a result, it is worth noting that the animation in the cutscenes has been keyed to 30fps resulting in a visual discontinuity when moving to and from cutscenes to live gameplay. It’s understandable, but it also shows the beginnings of what will be a recurring question with the remastered version of the game running on modern hardware: should the game be presented as the original was in 2002, and what should be modernized to make the game more akin to something of a remaster (or ReMIX in KH parlance) in 2013 then again in 2017. Although I recognize the sheer amount of work hours it would have taken to go back and essentially reanimate every cutscene in the game would border on absurd, it does give the impression that there was some work the developers and management at Square Enix were seemingly willing and unwilling to do in a re-presentation of the game -- this is not a no-holds-barred recreation of the original, nor is it quick and dirty supplanting of the original. Rather, it’s something that lands in the world between, and I’ll be noting such seems as they occur to me.

The opening with the stained glass figures is still striking as ever, and the constant moody, cryptic narration sets the mysterious vibe well. There’s a short sequence of actual gameplay that gives a brief tutorial of basic movement and attacking controls, then asks you with somewhat cryptic messages to essentially choose a build for your playthrough. I chose defense as my boosted stat in my original playthrough because of the way it’s worded. “The power of the guardian. Kindness to aid friends. A shield to repel all.” Of course these were values that I was All About™ but to be frank in later years when I discovered speedrunners and disgustingly destructive magic builds I became all about them, and would probably have never chosen Defense as a buffed stat in any of my playthroughs to begin with. It’s telling how effective the copy is when I still feel a pang of shame in sacrificing the shield as my default stat nerf.

The opening moments of gameplay on the Destiny Islands are totally unremarkable, and serve to highlight a coming weakness in the game -- namely, the clunky as hell platforming, with something of an identity crisis to come. It attempts to make stages interesting and fun by including varied elements of traversal and platforming, but the game’s unforgiving movement and jumping mechanics make it a difficult sell. With small ledges, an obtuse camera, finicky movement and facing requirements, a seeming lack of jump buffering and ledge forgiveness (more on that here https://www.patreon.com/posts/gamemaker-tips-14531948), getting precise movement out of Sora takes a whole lot of patience. Some of this will later be alleviated with Metroidvania-esque upgrades like a glide and a high jump, but running through the game’s platforming challenges with a vanilla Sora is tedious. Punishment for missing jumps can be harsh, reminiscent of Ratchet and Clank’s Planet Novalis Waterworks where a single misstep would send you to the back of the line to redo an entire sequence.

There’s something kind of cool and again telling in the way the tides are rendered on the beach. They’re GIF-y, cycling between a few frames of canned sea foam animation. Out of place as they may look running natively on a Playstation 4 in 2018, the way the gentle ebb and flow are rendered serve as a quaint reminder of the hardware that served the original entry -- it’s something of a momento mori for the videogame age.

The cave/secluded room on Destiny Islands has a bunch of really cool chalk drawings that I recommend you check out. Some of them seem to be of elements to come in the series, like the royal castle, starry adventures, and what even appears to be a Donald and Goofy. Weather intentional markers of the series’ now apparent time traveling and mysticism shenanigans or just fun little easter eggs for attentive players using the first person view function, it’s still a nice touch.

After some tedious gathering missions meant to familiarize you with the controls, Sora’s weighty movement, and some minor characters, the meat of the story begins to reveal itself. The introduction of the trio of Kairi, Sora, and Riku is mostly to the point -- Sora is excitable, smiley, and kind of a bag of rocks; Riku is intent on accompishing his goal of leaving the islands, seemingly in spite of the costs; and Kairi is kind if somewhat mischievous. There’s something of a love triangle painted between the three which serves to further drive their division in the coming cataclysm.

This is (to my knowledge) the only time the parents of Sora, Kairi, and Riku are even briefly acknowledged in the series. There’s a quick and disembodied line about dinner being ready at Sora’s house, and Kairi only briefly mentions family as the island is being torn apart from within. It’s kind of weird and maybe telling that Nomura and company weren’t sure how the game was going to do and what kind of future it may or may not have had coming. It’s a weird appendage to the series that seems impossible not to acknowledge.

And with that, the trio are sucked into the abyss, we get a glimpse of King Mickey’s castle, Riku in what we’ll later discover is Hollow Bastion, and Donald and Goofy are introduced. The story is told from and omniscient, cross-cutting point of view and I think it works for the most part. There are a lot of threads to keep track of, with characters we’re given lots of reasons to care about. In a game where the player character is one of a group of protagonists, each thematically and literally lost and in search of something, it creates a bigger payoff in dramatic tension to see them criss cross and near miss in pursuit of one another.

Next time, we’ll visit Traverse Town and discuss it’s soothing, soft-porn sax track at the crossroads of every world.

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Run It Back: Kingdom Heartroidvania in Traverse Town

Traverse Town is the first real stop in Sora’s journey and sets the template for what the visits to each world in the game would look like.

The town itself is meant to be a crossroads for travelers and nomads from other worlds. It’s set up with a Disney Parks-esque aesthetic, with major buildings conveying something about their works or purpose with popping features. The signage is all beautiful, with bright neon providing a warm glow against a perpetually dark and starry skybox.

A major issue with story progression comes up here where it can feel pretty aimless and undirected. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that gameplay advances along with the narrative -- shops open and close, abilities are handed over, and even enemy spawn rates are in cadence with the current goings on with the story. While this early combat is easy enough to avoid if you don’t want to, it can be be a chore to wander in and out of buildings, rooms, and areas hoping to trigger the next story event. There is no map (on screen or otherwise) or marker to indicate where a player should go next, and while non-player characters (NPCs)  can provide hints about your next goal they aren’t differentiated from the NPCs who just want to say something about the weather. Once in a while the camera work in a cutscene will hint toward the next objective by panning toward a particular exit or feature in the same area. It’s not very subtle but it gets the job done and I wish the game would lean on it more often.

One can argue that leaving the player to figure out the way ahead for themselves encourages exploration and that elements of the game would be hurt by a more linear, hand-holdy trek. And actually, I would agree to an extent with regard to the first Kingdom Hearts. This game adopts a Metroidvania-esque progression system, where certain areas are locked behind ability upgrades the player receives throughout the game. It’s usually hinted at by having a ledge with a chest just out of reach, or by placing some mysterious but obviously important object in plain view that the player is unable to interact with when they first encounter it. It’s a progression system that I actually really like. When done well it allows areas to transform and reveal themselves to the player at regular intervals, and tends to breath new life into places that would be otherwise tiresome and tedious to revisit. With the game being in the sort of sophomore class of Playstation 2 titles I think developers would still be worried about the economy of space with older titles, and with Traverse Town being one of the early hubs for story advancement it would make sense for them to get the most that they could out of it.

I think that the trouble is that the two systems are somehow intertwined but exist parallel to one another, crossing over but rarely intersecting in fun and interesting ways. The narrative is urgent and wants you to find your friends and the king and save the world. The gameplay tells you that you can also collect hidden chests, rescue all 101 dalmation pups, grind Heartless encounters for items money and experience points, or any number of other quests -- but it doesn’t quite tell you which you’ll be doing at any given time.

All in all, it takes a minute to get Donald and Goofy as companions, you have a pretty barebones fight with a boss, and get your first magic spell! Then it’s off to either the Olympus Colleseum or Alice’s Wonderland -- though to get to either, you’ll have to play a mandatory Gummi Ship mission, which I just typo’d as SHit and considering leaving as is. A bit too on the nose, huh?

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Run It Back: Kingdom Hearts 1.5 ReMIX, 16 years later

I remember when I bought Kingdom Hearts for the first time. I’d been tracking the game through the number of magazine previews and features I read about it. It seemed unreal -- Square, the house that built Final Fantasy, was going to mash up with Disney to create the wildest crossover you could think of. You’d be able to visit various Disney Worlds and do Final Fantasy stuff in and around them -- cast Firaga on an Ice Titan, summon Simba instead of Ifrit, theme your weapon with a charm gifted by Jack Skellington! To be frank, it was all a bit much to take in.

I went with my dad to Target the day it came out. I picked out the game, and when my dad saw the DIsney logo he asked “Are you sure?” with awkward hesitation. We went to the tall glass case, called the dude with the key, went to the Electronics register and paid the man. I remember holding on to it as we walked toward the exit, studying the metallic foiled cover. I remember how the adhesive from the sticker on top of the DVD case lifted a small but visible white line from the cover art.

Kingdom Hearts III is on the horizon now, nearly 17 years after the launch of the first game. Since then, there have been gaps and side games and mobile games and manga and re-releases and re-re-releases. A lot has changed -- the lore has gotten more complicated, the series signature gameplay has been experimented with and ultimately refined, and Haley Joel Osment has grown a beard.

In anticipation of the new title, and aided by the convenience of most of the titles being available on the Playstation 4 through the dizzyingly titled Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, I decided to play through the games in order of their original releases. I haven’t played through the original since it first came out, so nearly 16 years later it’ll be a fun little exercise to see what I remember (not much it turns out!), how the old gameplay stacks up, and what changes were and weren’t made to the game on modern hardware.

This will be a series of blogs, completed as I make my way through the game in one to two hours sessions. I’ll try to gather my thoughts into something cohesive, but I would like to be able to wander a bit so do try to keep up and if nothing else, enjoy it as the KH series was intended to be enjoyed -- not as an intricate but tightly woven series of threads, but for it’s pure and genuine moments.

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No-Kill Run: The Dream Nail

The dominant verbs in videogames seem to boil down to attack and kill, often in tandem In the series No-Kill Run we’ll be looking at mechanics in games that provide meaningful interaction with NPCs and the scenery without being overtly destructive.

Hollow Knight came out in February of 2017. I happened upon it by chance months after it’s successful Kickstarter and later release, and went into it mostly blind. What I found easily became one of my favorite games of all time, with its wide and expansive world, satisfying combat, fluid movement controls, and loveable cast of characters. The bugs of Hollow Knight inhabit the Hallownest, a melancholy husk of a once great kingdom.

Part way through the game the player gains an interesting ability called the Dream Nail -- a secondary weapon that “cuts through the veil between dreams and waking.” In practice the Dream Nail is meant to collect Essence (a mostly optional resource/collectable that is essential for obtaining two of the game’s three endings), though it also creates an interesting way to interact with the denizens of Hollownest. Charging the Dream Nail and striking another bug with it allows the character to listen to their thoughts. Since the kingdom has fallen to a strange and ravenous infection, the Dream Nail invites the player into a unique if disturbing and grotesque view of the state of things. Sometimes bugs issue sharp calls for destructive violence; other times they hold regrets, doubts, and anxieties; and still others, shockingly deft observations by minds one would think degenerated and lost to the kingdom’s infection.

In effect the Dream Nail functions as a sort of environmental storytelling tool. The most surprising example of the Dream Nail’s use is that some of the dead bugs littering the kingdom can be struck to reveal their thoughts at around their final fate, usually hinted at by something in the environment. My favorite example involves a living bug named Willoh who you meet relatively early on in your adventure. She seems to be fixated on snacking on a fungus that her giraffe-llke neck reaches for to just out of frame. When the player revisits the area much later with the Dream Nail and a few traversal upgrades, you find Willoh snacking on what appears to be a fungus similar to one that shoots deadly explosives in a previous area as well as the corpse of a bug whose final thoughts were “Not..food…” huddled in the opposite corner. Striking Willoh with the Dream Nail from this vantage point reveals that she’s also considering eating the Knight, musing to herself “This little creature looks tasty. I wonder, should I eat it? The others around here were awfully bland.” It’s a mechanic that takes an otherwise unremarkable, inoffensive NPC and creates a delightfully macabre scene for curious players.