So I had to put my dog to sleep, and it got me thinking about Kingdom Hearts III. As it should.
He ended up going peacefully, though. The veterinary staff made sure of that; he even got some ice cream beforehand, which would have been unthinkable on any other day. In the time since? I’ve shed my tears and let my heart race; while it’s jarring to know that Henri won’t be there anymore to crawl out from the shadows of my bed or engorge himself on water (and repeatedly beg for the chance to do so), I’ve made my peace with it. I have no choice but to make peace with it. I’ve got other things to do than grieve.
As shameful as it is to admit, one of those things was “finish KHIII”. And I did just that.
I’m not going to say it was worse than losing a dog. But damned if it didn’t come close.
My final play time was around 28 hours -- probably more than the average, if I had to guess, because I progress at a slower rate than most. Cleared on Proud, naturally, because A) that’s my new standard, and B) there’s no chance in hell I’ll suffer through Critical in any KH game (even though it’s not even in KHIII by default, but whatever). 31 Lucky Emblems, meaning that I saw the secret ending and epilogue without jumping onto YouTube…even though YouTube tried its absolute hardest to spoil their contents and existence for me weeks in advance.
Going over every detail about the game is going to be an endeavor. As I am right now, though? Even if I wasn’t still sore over losing my dog, I’d still be in a horrifically bad mood vis a vis the state of this game. Pretty much everything past the completion of the Disney worlds is -- in my opinion -- so bad, so rushed, so awkward, so misguided, and so unfulfilling that I am in shock over what I experienced. And I’d already started turning against the game before that point, so you can imagine the scorn slowly magnifying over time -- and then magnifying exponentially for those final hours. I’m so annoyed, disappointed, and outright angry -- simmering and bubbling with cold, quiet rage -- that I almost feel bad about ever saying in earlier posts that the game was good, or even close to good. The scorched-earth developments make me want to swear off this entire franchise for the rest of my life.
It was inevitable for the game to sell well -- though whether or not it sold well enough to surpass Squeenix’s targets, or if it’s another of the dreaded “below expectations” failures, we’ll see. I think everyone who followed the game knew going in that it wouldn’t be the last, because A) big franchise, B) big sales numbers, and C) big ambitions from the devs. There are two points that are helping me find solace, though. First of all, more exposure of the game means that more people will be able to see every last bit of content Nomura and crew thought was good enough for consumption. Second? More people will be able to properly judge the game’s quality…meaning that we can all have meaningful analyses and debates on how “good” it is instead of blindly assuming it’s the best. I live for that.
For now, though? To quote Sora in-game, “I do know hurt.” Honestly, there’s a part of me that wishes this game is even worse than it is; the fact that there is/was stuff to like, and that there were moments where I was grinning from ear to ear makes the pain all the more real. Just like other KH games, I spent hours in search of the plot, and when it finally showed up? It was unequivocally the worst. The game and franchise alike have been torpedoed, and the only way it can possibly come back is if Nomura and crew stay far, far, FAR away from continuations -- be it sequels, DLC, or anything with even a tangential connection.
I’m going to (try to) hold off on spoilers until later. So for now? In order to begin establishing a point -- and showing why Nomura and crew have let their baby down -- let me say this to start: what is the thematic throughline of Kingdom Hearts? This game, or the franchise in general?
There’s a school of thought that says characters in a story have their own throughlines -- drives, desires, and motivations that push them forward and drag the plot along for the ride (which, imagery aside, is for the best). Fair enough. I won’t argue with that; in a recent post I took shots at KHIII for having villains with seemingly zero clear motivation. I’m…going to have to come back to the motivation problem another day, for sure. Author Chuck Wendig elaborates on the subject a bit more, saying (correctly) that there are multiple types of throughlines that cover themes, moods, language, and more. To generalize: it’s an invisible element of a story that carries through from start to finish -- something that offers support from the shadows, if you will.
Without a doubt, throughlines can be present in any type of story-based medium (and beyond). So don’t even think about saying video games are an exception; if you’re reading this blog, I’m 100% certain you can already think of a game or two that does properly have a defined throughline, and by extension a good story. Given that -- given your inherent, intrinsic knowledge of the threads that make up the things you love -- I’ll ask again. What is the thematic throughline of Kingdom Hearts?
There are two answers that come to mind. The first one deals specifically with KHIII -- because I think, legitimately, that the game does have one besides the usual spiel of friendship. Against all odds, KHIII is a game about death.
The problem is that the game is so incompetent that its throughline gets run through a wood chipper.
It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, at least since my completion of the Tangled-themed world. Like a lot of people, I’ve seen the movie well in advance of the game (and enjoyed it immensely, if you’re wondering), so I knew what was coming. Because that world is an unabashed rehash of the movie, Sora couldn’t say “Mission Complete!” without first bearing witness to Flynn Rider’s death. And he does, because he, Donald, and Goofy are all accessories/extras in the rehash-type worlds. In any case, I was actually interested in seeing what would come of it. It got me thinking: “Wait a minute. Has Sora ever witnessed an onscreen death that sticks? Does he even know what death is?”
Of course, Sora has witnessed death before; Ansem the Wise asploded back in KHII, and there was the extinction-level event that hit Destiny Islands in the first few hours of KHI. But the latter didn’t stick, and the former was with a guy he barely knew -- with a death that ended up getting run back, just like all the rest. (I think? More or less? Give or take?) But the narrative opportunities were there in KHIII; here it was, a chance to have Sora grow and evolve as a character by facing a challenge. Not a physical one. Not one that could be solved just by pointing his Keyblade at it and letting poorly-defined magic solve the problem. I wanted to know how Sora would handle death when it came down to it. I still want to know, if we’re being honest.
Because KH is part-Disney, it does the Disney thing and gives us the runback from movie to movie. Flynn dies, but Rapunzel brings him back. Anna effectively dies, but Elsa brings her back. Will turner dies, but the curse of the Flying Dutchman brings him back…ish. Sora may lose his agency each time, but the throughline had the potential to make that lack of agency into a valid point. He’s a happy-go-lucky idiot who’s managed to overcome everything thrown his way, with the power of the Keyblade and his trusted comrades, near and far. But what happens when he’s forced to face the inevitable? A fact of life?
When you have to engage with loss -- of a family member, of a friend, of a hero, of someone you barely knew, or even someone you’ve never even met -- it affects you. Makes you contemplative. Changes you. And of course, it hurts. The pain lingers, but the worst of it (ideally) is only temporary. If you’re not bound by it, you’ll come out the other side a little wiser and stronger, with a heart at ease. But to reiterate, the pain of loss and death really does make you think, before and after it happens. You’ve got no choice but to reflect as you experience a whirlwind of feelings.
To the game’s credit, Sora does at least feel the worst of that pain as it happens. Speaking personally? One of the things that gets me in fiction is when someone justifiably goes out of character because of a show-stopper of a moment; without going into spoilers, seeing Luffy from One Piece break down into hysterical tears -- not even from the source material, but a side product -- hit me so hard that I had to rush out of the room and bawl into a towel for a minute. So watching everyone’s favorite giant-footed protagonist reel as he spotted Flynn’s apparent corpse struck a nerve. Not enough to get the tears flowing, of course. But enough to make me think “This is going to hit Sora hard.”
Except…that didn’t happen. Not really.
Flynn gets revived, and Sora’s back to clowning around not long after -- doubly so, because he jets off to another dimension with no indication that he’ll even remember the kingdom of Corona within the next 20 minutes. (He does get split-second flashbacks to the Disney worlds near the end, but by that point I’d pretty much stopped caring, because the devs sure looked like they had.) He doesn’t discuss it with Donald or Goofy, or Riku or Mickey, or anyone. There’s no moment of introspection or reflection. No quiet, no calm. And ultimately, no weight.
I’ll give the game some leeway and say that Sora’s the type to bottle up his negative emotions; showing anything besides joy and innocence is unacceptable in his eyes, possibly because he thinks others have to see him as a flawless pillar of strength. Or simply because he’s trying to outrun the darkness inside him (and those repressed emotions burst out in toxic ways, given Anti/Rage Form). But I will only give it some leeway. If a key part of Sora’s character is that he’s unwilling to face his inner demons until he can’t hold them in anymore -- often literally -- then that struggle should have been made more obvious years ago. More defined. More clear. More integral to the story, so that it could be explored properly…and make Sora into a genuine three-dimensional character instead of someone who can sort of coast on charisma alone.
I realize (or hope) that part of that is by design. To play devil’s advocate for a bit, Sora can’t be too contemplative or multifaceted because he’s supposed to be a simple, straightforward character; his inherent, one-dimensional nature ends up being a strength, ensuring that the goodness in him provides a counterpoint to those around him who are so easily shaken, distraught, or led astray. I get it. But more and more, that seems like an excuse rather than a conscious design choice. Sora’s character ends up being anemic because he can only go so far so fast -- which is to say, “only a few inches” and “at a pace two steps short of a sea anemone”. He’s been deprived of his chance to become more than what we know or expect.
And as the main character, his deprivation is the story’s deprivation. He’s the molder of the narrative far more than the devs themselves, which means that his failures are the story’s failures. He barely evolves, so the story barely evolves. And yes, before you bring it up: I know that there are certain events in the endgame that seemingly provide some of that growth and thematic heft. But I wouldn’t be making this point, or this post, if I thought any of it was satisfactory. It isn’t. I’ll explain why another day.
All I can say for now without tacking on another 2000 words to this post is that, if there was a conscious attempt to try and work with the throughline of death, it just goes to show how incompetent Nomura, his team, and Squeenix as a whole really are. Much like KH at large, the rare attempts there are to infuse meaning into the story are shallow at best. And really, what else do you expect? Say what you will about Disney as a company and their output (current or archived, take your pick), but people smarter than me have picked apart their movies frame by frame, line by line, and drawn more meaning out of it than just “the toys can talk” or “she’s a pretty princess”. If the movies didn’t have anything going for them besides visuals, then there would be no clear difference between WALL-E and Shark Tale. Thankfully, that’s not the world we live in.
It might as well be, as far as Squeenix is concerned. I can strain to try and tie the game together thematically, but it’s borderline pointless; not only is it a stretch, but the endgame is such that any attempts at rationalizing and defending KHIII is objectively pointless. There was no attempt to do anything besides “wrap up the saga” and “set up the next one”, meaning that we’re right back to where we started years ago. And for what? Even if KHIII didn’t want to bumble with the subject of death (which, to be fair, I understand), they didn’t replace it with anything meaningful.
That brings me to the second answer I mentioned earlier. The thematic throughline of KH as a whole is friendship -- the ties that bind, and endure across space and time. It’s schmaltzy and sappy, but it’s enough. There’s a lot that can be done with the famous “power of friendship” angle. But because KH is KH, it’s bungled along with everything else. It’s blathered about endlessly in cutscene after cutscene. It’s banal when those displays of friendship include awkward dialogue and even more awkward moments of characters having prolonged laughing fits over an unfunny “joke”. It’s broken entirely when characters will turn on each other, withhold valuable information, or simply decide “they need to do this alone” on a whim.
But do you know what the worst part is? The worst part is that KH has been around for nearly 20 years. 20 years. The people who played it as children aren’t children anymore. Honestly, even the gap from 3D to KHIII is enough for tweens to become college-bound. With age comes experience, and experiences. Hardships have been borne. Tragedies have been endured. Death has made itself well-known. And while not every piece of fiction needs to engage in such heady, weighty topics every single time, those that do -- properly, skillfully, uniquely -- are the ones destined to leave a real impact on audiences.
But KH doesn’t. Not in my opinion (though as always, your mileage may vary and I can guess why). Not enough. Or, if that’s too severe a claim, then KHIII doesn’t. Here it was, the chance to remedy past mistakes and sins in the franchise -- an event in the gaming community, bolstered by the finest technology around and the budget to match, with countless eyes on the end of a major, decade-spanning story arc.
Here it was, the chance to show how much the franchise has grown and evolved; it could have stayed relevant, and powerful, and clutched all our hearts in its white-hot grip. It could have been more than what the jokes, memes, scorn, and criticisms have implied for years. It could have been more than just fluff. It could have been a game that, against all odds, grew up with gamers. With the medium. With the times. With us, one and all.
But it didn’t. It’s just the same old shit.
And right now, I’m not sure if I ever want to go back.
It’s fine if I don’t, though. I’ve got other stuff I should go back to.
See you next time.
And see you around, Henri. You were -- and are -- a good, good dog.
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