Following the new Toy Story trailer unveiled at Disney’s D23 event, Kingdom Hearts 3 director Tetsuya Nomura has revealed more details of the new game in interviews with IGN and GameInformer, such as the possibility of controlling a second character apart from Sora, Nomura’s own passion for Toy Story, and the likeness to see the game released on Nintendo Switch.
The reveal that more characters could be controllable at some point during the adventure is definitely the fact that has attracted most of the attention from the fans. Nomura says that it would be difficult to make many characters controllable, but he can at least confirm that there will be one apart from Sora, although he can’t disclose his or her identity yet. The safest bets would be fan-favourite Aqua or Riku, but maybe the team will surprise the fans making King Mickey controllable for the first time.
The segment occurs some time after Toy Story 2
Additionally, Nomura confirmed that the main party will now be formed by more than the traditional three members from previous main entries, with the groups now being able to fit up to five heroes. The Gummi Ship minigame is also confirmed to return, with some tweaks and changes to make it unique to Kingdom Hearts 3.
As for the introduction of the Toy Story universe in the Kingdom Hearts lore, Nomura says it’s a moment he’s been hoping to see for a long time. His team has been working very closely with Pixar in order to get their approval for their portrayal on the game, which included Pixar’s request for Nomura to create a brand new story instead of adapting one of the existing movies like it’s been the case with other Disney worlds. The segment occurs some time after Toy Story 2 and before Toy Story 3 and the upcoming Toy Story 4. During this chapter, Sora and his friends will have to look for Andy in a large area called Galaxy Toys.
Talking about any additional platforms, Nomura considers the PS4 and Xbox One versions the main priorities in order to not delay the development. The team will only “start thinking about other possibilities” like a Nintendo Switch version after the game has been released. This also affects the 1.5+2.5 and 2.8 compilations coming to Xbox One, although in that case Nomura feels like the Japanese audience would not be interested in them, and that the upcoming Xbox One X release might be a sign that it is too late for a port.
