Kingdom Hearts: The World That Never Was (Good)

All right.  Let’s talk about Kingdom Hearts 2 some more.

The last level of the game, The World That Never Was, is…well, fairly interesting in its own right.  KH, for the most part, is a decidedly low-tech universe.  Judging by the way Sora bashes on the keyboard leading to Tron’s world, he’s never seen something like it in his life.  True, you’ll see gizmos and machines in places like Traverse Town and Twilight Town, but considering that Sora heads to ancient Greece, war-torn China, Agrabah, Neverland, and the friggin’ ocean, you can’t expect him to check his email or charge his mp3 player.

So in terms of aesthetics, I kind of like The World That Never Was.  It creates this “magic vs. technology” dichotomy (which I wish was played up and used more effectively in the game, but I digress), that separates the good guys from the bad guys, and the natural from the unnatural.  Tangentially, I also like the Nobodies; they’re shifting, boneless creatures that operate on a higher level than the Heartless, but are so alien in practice and design that they might as well be brainless.  So generally, KH2 has a lot of good ideas -- building blocks to use and arrange at the developers’ discretion.

A shame that Squeenix couldn’t be arsed to do anything with them.  So, let’s go right down the list.  That’s right, it’s time for a countdown showdown.  These are 10 Head-Scratching Events in the Final Level of Kingdom Hearts 2. 

Take it away, Ansem!

1) Hayner and friends’ insanity “helps you” get to the world.

To be fair, Hayner and the Useless Brigade don’t appear in the actual world, but they do play a small role in getting you there.  And by “play a small role” I mean “shoehorn them back into the plot in spite of being inactive for the past twenty hours.”

Seventeen of those hours went toward getting his hair just douchey enough right.

Okay.  So the portal to The World That Never Was (let’s call it “Waldo” from here on out) is connected to Twilight Town. Or rather, it’s connected to a data-version of Twilight Town, and you need to find a way to get from the real version to the data version.  Fair enough, if a bit complicated.

On the way -- while leaving a trail of Nobody corpses in your wake -- you come across Hayner and pals.  Based on the fact that A) there’s more than one crystal and trophy, and B) there’s a duplicate version of Olette’s hand-made pouch (which she never brought up until that moment), they come to the conclusion that there are two Twilight Towns.  Yes, that’s the correct conclusion…but how did you come to that conclusion based on the evidence at hand?  There are two of the same items, so therefore there’s a parallel universe?    

He's got TWO LEGS?  Time paradox!

Did they consider that maybe the Twilight Town committee uses the same type of trophy, crystal and all, from one tournament to the next?  Or maybe there’s a tournament just like it in the town over?  I’ll admit that there aren’t a lot of better explanations off the top of my head, and Olette’s cloned pouch is suspect (though you could suggest that there was someone who made a custom pouch strikingly similar to it), but for them to immediately and correctly assume that there’s another dimension?  Especially Pence, who WRONGLY assumed that the town’s seven wonders were all just mundane coincidences, even though he could have just ASKED Roxas what just happened?  And then Pence knows how to use a computer that’ll automatically help Sora and gang get to Waldo?  

Admittedly, Sora isn’t always the brightest bulb, so maybe he needed someone to point him in the right direction.  On the other hand, you’d think that even at his worst Sora (or Goofy, since he’s apparently gained some IQ points between games) would eventually think to go back and explore the mansion they spent the last year sleeping inside.  And all the while, the player has to sit there and take information they’ve known since the start of the game, as if this is some sort of revelation.  THIS IS SO FUN!

2) The fight with Roxas…wait, who is that again?

I’ve already spoken at length about Roxas and just how misappropriated he was.  It’s like the writers didn’t know what to do with him, so when Sora infiltrates Waldo, they take the only option that makes sense to them: have Sora and Roxas go at it in an Advent Children-style showdown.

Let’s talk about the pluses and minuses for an approach like that.  

On the minus side:

--Sora only barely knows who Roxas is, outside of a name and a face.

--It’s a moment that derails the plot so the two of them can go boosh-boosh-boosh at each other.

--It’s just a chance for them to fight without talking things through -- reconciling their differences and proving the strength and characteristics of their personas.  Imagine what the story could have gained if they talked things out instead of just trading blows and flying around!

--When it’s over, everything goes back to normal.  In other words, that scene could have been left out and it wouldn’t have had a single effect on the plot.

--It continues the distressing trend of separating Sora from Donald and Goofy…you know, the allies who have been with you since the beginning…so there can be more spiky-haired youths going at it.  I’m not 100% opposed to that; the problem is that it doesn’t belong in a Kingdom Hearts game.  And yet they keep.  On.  Doing it.

On the plus side:

--It’s the perfect cutscene to make AMVs out of set to Linkin Park.

3) Giving Kairi a Keyblade…for use in one scene

You know, I’m trying to keep this list in the same general order that events occur.  But make no mistake: if I was ranking these from least annoying to most, this one would rocket right to the top of the list.

I can sympathize with the writers trying to shift Kairi out of the damsel-in-distress role.  Really, I can; outside of emotional support and mystery, she wasn’t exactly a mover-and-shaker in the original game’s plot.  Unfortunately, she’s not a mover-and-shaker in THIS game, either.  She spends the first part of the game staring forlornly across the island and wondering where Sora went; in the second part she goes off looking for Sora and gets kidnapped (of course); in the third part she’s still kidnapped, and then…

And then, as if to make up for giving Kairi jack-all to do with the plot -- even LESS than the original game -- Riku steps in and hands her a Keyblade, allowing her to bash a few Heartless.

…What?  What?

That one event confused the hell out of me back when I first played the game in high school; that same event now irritates the hell out of me.  Keyblades are (or were) something special, nothing short of Excalibur and assorted mythical weapons.  They’re supposed to be given to a chosen wielder by virtue of emotional turmoil, destiny, and strength of heart.  And then out of nowhere, Riku just hands her some frilly, super-girly Keyblade to her?  She doesn’t even get it from her own materialized willpower?  No.  No.  NO.

But wait, there’s more!  Outside of one scene where she bashes a few Heartless (the lowest form of Heartless, hundreds of whom who smeared across the walls on the way to Waldo Castle), she never uses it again.  She just stands in the background, acting like the same passive damsel you’d expect from a JRPG.  What could have been a chance for Sora, Riku, and Kairi -- the game’s original and plot-centric trio -- to stand and fight together never comes to fruition.  Instead, you get Sora, Riku, and King Mickey pointing their Keyblades at Xemnas…with Kairi in the shot, standing around with a slightly-incensed look on her face.  “Go get him, guys!” her face practically says (since apparently she wasn’t quite important enough to have any lines).  “I’d help you out if I could, but…well, you know, it’s not like I have a magical weapon that cleaves evil in two.”

"Don't worry, Kairi.  There's always the kitchen."

Okay, you could argue that the back lines is where Kairi belonged at the moment; in the same sense that Sora wasn’t automatically an expert when he first got a weapon, neither was Kairi.  Fine.  I get that.  But if she absolutely had to have a Keyblade -- if she was going to take a more active role in the story, as per Tetsuya Nomura’s endgame strategy for the franchise -- then why not wait and give her a Keyblade in the next game, instead of making it look like an afterthought in this one?

…Hold on, I need to smoke the moon’s weight in cigarettes.

4) Oh shit, we still have three more villains to kill off!

While playing KH2, I decided to play a game.  See, when I played the game the first time around, I was as hyped-up as any high school boy would be.  By the time the game dropped into my hands, I knew all the worlds, all the Drive forms, the names of every new character, and most of all the names of the Organization XIII members.  So when this guy showed up in the story…

…I could point and say, “Oh, it’s Luxord!  Bet he’s up to no good!”  This time around, I paid more attention.  I wanted to see if, at any point in the game, the Organization members were actually named.  Because, you know, that’s kind of important.  My report?  Xaldin gets named, as does Axel, as does Saix, as does Xemnas.  Xigbar, Demyx, and Luxord do not.  (And of course, Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, Larxene, and Marluxia are all dead by the start of the game.)  They get as much screen time and characterization as you’d expect…which is to say six to fifteen minutes out of a thirty-plus hour game.

Over the course of the game, you do battle with and kill Xaldin and Demyx, and Axel sacrifices himself for…some reason.  That leaves you free to storm Waldo and take down Xemnas…at least it would if there weren’t still three “major” enemies that have faffed about for 90% of the game for you to kill because the game told you to.  It’s a way of tying up loose ends -- sprucing up so you can have a simple and clean ending.

Looks like Sora just found his report card...

Unfortunately, to reach said simple and clean ending you have to go through three -- count ‘em -- three separate, incredibly-cheap boss fights.  Pick your poison; you can have Xigbar shoot no less than five hundred bullets at you via his invincible attack (and no matter how much you spam Reflect, you’re still going to eat about a hundred shots).  You can go up against Luxord and play his out-of-the-blue minigame, and chase him down as he places himself inside cards only to lose by a pixel’s width of some bullshit time meter.  Or you could face off with Saix, who’s content with spending three-fourths of the fight invincible and slamming his mace across the field, making Donald and Goofy little more than punching bags.

Do their deaths add anything to the story?  Nope.   Did the developers think to pace out the battles, instead of just having you fight two of the back-to-back and open the door to another fight with Xemnas?  Nope.  Do they give any insights to their characters?  Engineer, you wanna take this one?

Yep, that’ll do it.

 5) Sora’s reunion with Riku, and -- okay, you can get up now, Sora

Sora, Riku, and Kairi.  If there’s any relationship that I’ll admit is more important than the one between Sora, Donald, and Goofy, it’s the one between the three original characters.  They’ve been friends for ages.  They have a certain equality and balance -- a sort of pecking order, if you will.  They have their divisions and clashes, but for the most part they all come together in the end.

Naturally, KH2 manages to screw it all up.

When Sora’s reunited with Kairi, there’s a simple yet poignant scene where the two embrace -- a gentle hug, a few words traded between them, and a nice little tune in the background.  It’s not much, but there doesn’t need to be; considering that they’re in the bad guys’ house, there’s not much time for catching up.  I still contend that the FIRST thing Sora should have done after waking up and getting the Gummi Ship is high-tail it back to Destiny Islands and seeing Kairi (and it’s such a missed opportunity that we don’t get to see the island in the game), but for what it’s worth, their reunion works...though I prefer not to think about what's going through the mind of someone who has more than a year's worth of post-pubescent hormones swirling inside him.  

We're fortunate that this is the only part of the scene captured in the screenshot.

Then Sora gets reunited with Riku -- who at the time looks like this:

Sora falls to his knees and breaks down in tears, clutching Riku’s hand and wailing about how hard he searched for his bro.  Ignoring the fact that Sora’s encountered Riku several times before in the game (albeit while he had his hood on), Sora should know that even if Riku is MIA, he’s capable enough to handle himself -- remember, this is the guy who stole Sora’s Keyblade and used it as his own.  And beyond that, he was able to survive being in the realm of darkness -- just like King Mickey -- and can use the power of darkness almost without consequence.  And beyond that, Sora and Riku’s relationship was semi-antagonistic; they were friends, but they were also rivals.  Why would Sora break down in tears now?  And why would he break down in tears for one friend that he’s seen regularly, but not one he hasn’t seen in a year AND had just managed to escape from kidnapping?

I’m going to take the high road and say it wasn’t because of the writers pandering to yaoi-adoring fangirls…but I’m still going to blame Tetsuya Nomura for this.

Go suck a zipper.

6) Farewell Christopher Lee, we hardly knew ye

A few years ago, I took a class on Japanese culture.  One of things we discussed at length is the “youth culture” that pervades Japan -- basically, that there’s an extreme emphasis on looking like, and appealing to, the young.  Looking and acting cute are well among them, as are wearing what’s popular and presenting an appearance accordingly.  It’s kind of a weird divide, considering how much emphasis there is on hierarchy and respect to elders, but from an American’s perspective it makes sense.

It would also help to explain why if you’re over thirty-five in a JRPG, you’re fucked.

Very popular across the pond.

Man, I thought Roxas had it bad. But DiZ (short for Darkness in Zero) doesn’t get to do anything.  You’d think that after hiring Lance Bass to voice Sephiroth in the last game just to grunt and say about three lines, the developers would have learned their lesson…so naturally, they turn around and nab Christopher Lee to play a character who barely appears except for the beginning and end of the game.  Riveting. 

A part of me wonders if the first three hours of the game were part of some first draft that had plot threads laid out, but never got addressed in the final version.  There was so much set-up for this character in trailers and art, and even in Chain of Memories.  And what does he do?  Vaguely dance around subjects and insinuate that everything’s part of his master plan…only to appear in the last three hours of the game (if that) to use his handy-dandy Fill-In-Plot-Holes 2000 while spewing generic remorse about how he failed at life.  

His only failure is in his ensemble.

You know what would have been great?  If he had been weaved into the narrative instead of suddenly dropped back in just before the game ends.  At the game’s start, he’s a callous bastard.  When we finally see him again, he’s all “Oh, what a fool I’ve been, I can never be forgiven, Sora’s the best.”  Why didn’t we get to see him transform over the course of the story?  He could have added so much!  He could have worked alongside Sora, like he wanted to, instead of just faffing about for the entire game.  He could have shifted the story perfectly into the mold the writers wanted!  He could have been THE villain!  He could have been awesome, because you got Christopher Lee to voice him and DIDN’T EVEN USE HIM.  Also, bonus points for spoiling that DiZ is really Ansem the Wise by having Christopher Lee voice him; that’s not a voice you can attribute to a lot of people, least of all in a video game.

So what’s DiZ/Ansem’s ultimate contribution to the plot?  He uses some machine to screw up the baddies’ makeshift Kingdom Hearts, blowing a hole in it and raining down the captured hearts (so the Heartless can get them…smooth).  In the process, the machine explodes as Ansem predicted, meaning he has to sacrifice himself to use it.  Or, you know, since all you had to do was set it up, you could have just bailed at the last second, survived, and lived on to give Sora and pals vital information.

I’m convinced that Waldo turns everyone into idiots.

7) Xemnas wants you to feel the hate…and he does an excellent job

Xemnas is a confusing villain.  For a while I was under the impression that his plan was to use the artificial Kingdom Hearts to give himself and Organization XIII hearts.  But apparently, his plan is to create a new world with Kingdom Hearts, and woe to everyone else.  Or…is his plan to create a new world and destroy the old one?  Or is it to become the world itself?  Or is it just to venture into the darkness, like Ansem’s Heartless?  Or --

Oh, the hell with it.  Xemnas is just another pretty-boy with delusions of grandeur and a knack for waxing philosophical.  The only difference is that he speaks a lot more slowly and makes lots of deliberate, theatrical motions.  He also wants to use the power of hate to succeed, in spite of not technically being able to hate.  So…what’s the point then?  Is he just trying to harness the hate inside the fake Kingdom Hearts?  Does it even work that way?  Do the hearts retain the basic hopes and desires of their hosts, in the same sense that Sora kept his desire to be with Kairi when he was a Heartless?  Is he --?

Forget it.  Just take this clip of Xemnas hamming it up and move on.

  

8) The Xemnas fight

Son of a bitch.

Remember what I said before about how hardware limitations only helped to bring out the best in Square?  And how, when they’re given unlimited resources they end up creating something less than or equal to shit?  Well…here we are.

In part 1, Sora goes up against Xemnas alone (again with the solo battles?) This fight is the least offensive of the bunch, if a bit reliant on over-the-top Reaction Commands.  You can still apply strategy against him -- like blow him to pieces with Thunder while he’s busy swiping his laser swords at thin air -- and there’s a light bit of tension to be had without things getting cheap or ridiculous.  It’s probably the best phase of the battle.

And then in the next phase, Sora -- out of nowhere -- can suddenly leap from one skyscraper to another, and from a skyscraper to the engines/laser thingies of Xemnas’ machine.

In the original KH, Heartless Ansem turned into a battleship as a dark parallel to Sora and the gang’s childish hopes of seeing the world.  In one phase of the fight, Xemnas turns into some kind of dragon jet thing because…because.  That wouldn’t be so bad if suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a hoverbike laying on the side of the tower that not only has a sidecar platform for Sora to ride on, but a megalaser to shoot down Xemnas.  Where did it come from?  Why is it there?   Why can it do exactly what the heroes (Sora and Riku, sans everyone else) need it to do?  Why are we suddenly playing Ikaruga?

I don’t have an issue with over-the-top things most of the time, but here it’s to the game’s detriment.  At the start of the final phase, Xemnas flings you into the air and forces you to dodge via Reaction Commands…which is to say that you have to mash the Triangle button until he decides to stop shooting magic barbed wire at you.  All the while, Sora, Riku, and Xemnas are zipping around like they’re suddenly DBZ characters, with all the repetition and speedlines you’d expect.  And near the end of the fight, the game completely stops so Xemnas can load the screen with lasers to shoot at you.  Your only defense?  Mashing Triangle again…except in my case even that didn’t seem to work, so I had to mash Triangle AND X at the same time so Sora could deflect all those lasers in a glorified cutscene.  (Doubly so because I was playing on the game's hard mode, and you might as well not have a health bar because Sora's as tough as Sixth Sense-era Haley Joel Osment.)  What was supposed to be awesome just became tedious and, yes, even painful.

Also, on a side note?  I like how when Xemnas tries to fuse with Kingdom Hearts, he leaves a door for Sora and the gang to follow him and try to kill him.  Riveting.  I guess that the same mastermind who sent his flunkies to fight on his behalf, let Sora do most of the legwork in gathering hearts, and resorted to kidnapping WOULD want to give the heroes a chance at a fair fight.

"Come on , I got this.  You see these lasers coming out of my hands?"

9) Sora and Riku on the beach…sadly, without a saxophone

Oh, right.  This scene.

You know, my brother and I both cleared the game -- and both times, we were in close proximity to each other.  He’s never been the type to embrace emotion or good feelings, so I’d guess that for him the scene was akin to repeatedly taking a jackhammer to the liver.  I watched it without a sound, feeling a bit of disappointment and discomfort at the…er, subtext therein.  When I eventually beat KH2 (to show off the game to a friend), he made a very tactful assessment: “This is so gay.”

Now?  Well, I won’t deny that the subtext is weaker than it was the first time.  But there are other problems at play here; Riku’s slide from cocky-yet-competent anti-hero to heavy-hearted, melancholic anti-hero seems to have grown increasingly certain.  Once more, Sora and Riku’s relationship outweighs the triangular bond between the two of them and Kairi.  Worse yet, Sora and Riku get a chance to reconcile and discuss things, while Kairi’s completely missing as the two talk it out on the Beach of Darkness.  Why couldn’t she come along?  Why doesn’t Kairi get the chance to reconcile with Sora, or call out Riku for all the things he’s done, or give him a chance at redemption, or give Sora a rundown of the island’s happenings to cheer all three up if they follow the assumption that they’ll never get home?

Maybe I’m putting too much thought into this.  Clearly, the Squeenix crew didn’t.

10) Hearts are the answer to everything

You know what I like about Tales of Graces f?  The main character, Asbel.

Otherwise known as "Mr. Tiger Festival."

(Spoilers for Tales of Graces f)

At the end of his journey, it seems like he’s got a tough decision to make.  He can either let Lambda, a wronged parasite from another planet, continue to use his best friend Richard to wreck the planet.  Or he can let his close friend Sophie, an artificial human created to suicide-bomb Lambda, do her job and sacrifice herself.  Unwilling to let his friends die, but knowing that no amount of sword skills will stop the creature, Asbel decides to invite Lambda into his own body.  Rather than let Lambda corrupt him like he did Richard, Asbel proposes a partnership -- a symbiotic relationship where both can coexist, Lambda has a free sanctuary, and both can continue learning about the wonders of the world.  It’s a surprisingly powerful moment; Asbel’s wisdom and idealism come full circle and allow him to take a measure well beyond straight violence or sacrifice.  As it stands, he’s one of my favorite characters in the Tales series. 

(End spoilers)

What’s important isn’t just Asbel’s deed, but what it symbolizes in terms of writing: one way or another, a character should bring about an ending or a victory through his/her own power, wit, and experience.  If that happens in a story, we get a satisfying ending -- not just to the tale, but to the character’s arc and journey.  If it doesn’t, it feels like a letdown; the writer’s making the ending possible, not the hero.

KH2 is…actually, not guilty of wrapping up the story by the writer’s hand.  It comes dangerously close, though, and makes me worry about the future of the series.  See, Sora and Riku are trapped on the Beach of Darkness, with what appears to be no way to ever return home (even though the existence of the Gummi Ship says otherwise).  Suddenly, Kairi’s bottled message drifts through the waters to the tow, Sora reads it, and then…then a door to Destiny Islands opens up.  The two crash into the water like meteors, and then….that’s it.  They’re back home, and Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are there to greet you.

These three make the series good -- which Squeenix seems to have not learned yet.

So...question time.  

How did they get back?  Was Kairi’s letter the trigger?  How did it get there?  Was the Beach of Darkness actually just a distant coast across from Destiny Islands?  Was it Sora suddenly remembering her that opened the door?  Given Riku’s later “explanation” -- that it was because of Sora’s heart -- the latter seems to be the case.  But that’s still not a satisfying conclusion.  The way they painted it, the door just kind of randomly opens because Sora thinks about his friends.  If Sora had consciously opened it, I would have bought that.  If Kairi had opened the door, I would have bought that (especially if she decided to use her Keyblade…ah, missed opportunities).  But just having a door open to give them a happy ending?  And just because of some vague mention of hearts?

Look, I know that hearts --or let’s face it, souls -- are an important part of the franchise mythos.  They’re vital, because there’s not a single character that can go one cutscene without mentioning them.  But for them to be able to get the characters out of a jam at any given moment just by shouting “HEARTS!” doesn’t sit right with me.  Yeah, you could argue that it goes in line with the whole “Disney magic” thing, but since Squeenix seems dedicated in under-cutting that part of the KH equation, it makes the western elements insincere and the eastern parts contradictory and lazy.   

Because boy howdy, we sure want more of this!

And that sums up Waldo as a whole: contradictory and lazy…and rushed.  Rather than organically allowing plot elements and characters to spread throughout the game -- more than thirty hours of play time, mind you -- we get only cursory attempts to wrap everything up.  The Organization, Ansem, gameplay, relationships, even the motivations of the villains is hardly clear by game’s end.  And the less said about the plot points still mucking about, the better; as you may know, those same elements feed into Birth By Sleep.  And seeing as how I’m on a strict “fuck that shit” policy with that game, I’d rather not talk about it anymore than I have to.

So that about does it for now.  Man, another long one…but it can’t be helped.  Like I said, there’s a lot to talk about, and still much more to add.  But for now, rest easy.  I’m not going anywhere…well, except to sleep.

Damn it all, Squeenix.  You sure know how to make me feel old and depressed...