There have been many big titles shown off at this year’s E3. Some new sequels and remakes for familiar games were announced, and a few new IP’s altogether were revealed. However one big game that actually drew a lot of attention over the weekend did not make an appearance. Kingdom Hearts III, the popular action RPG mash up of Final Fantasy and Disney characters received a trailer on June 10 during one of the series World Orchestra Tour that was also taking place in Los Angeles. The series game director Tetsuya Nomura and game producer Shinji Hashimoto both made an appearance at the concert. This came as a surprise to the attendees and what they had in store for them was an even bigger surprise, a brand new trailer.
Kingdom Hearts III was first announced back at E3 2013. Since then a substantial amount of he game has not been shown. The anticipated sequel went through early development difficulties and Square Enix had to end up switching engines to continue to develop the game. Since then the last big showcase of the game on it’s new engine didn’t happen until 2015. The game surprisingly skipped E3 last year in order to focus on another installment in the series Kingdom Hearts 2.8, and besides for a couple of screenshots there was little to no news of Kingdom Hearts III last year.
Even though quite a bit of time has passed since new gameplay was shown, the game made a return in a big way showing off Sora and his friends using flashy combos while fighting new heartless in new clothes and in a new environment. Brand new and familiar fighting moves were also displayed as well as a look as some new drive forms. There were cutscenes shown featuring returning villains that gave a little information on what might be going on during the story. At the end of the trailer there was also a message stating that there will be another trailer shown at Disney’s D23 expo which takes place in Anaheim, CA on July 15. Tetsuya Nomura also explained that he will be in attendance at D23 as well and will give some “Final Announcements” about the game although he did not go into detail on what these announcements might be. We will have to just wait to see what he has in store next month. Kingdom Hearts III currently does not have a release date.