Great Games: Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts is a Disney fan’s dream come true, indeed, it is the ultimate exploration of the fantasies that Disney has brought to the medium of animation. Imagine a game where, alongside Donald and Goofy, you can swing through the jungles with Tarzan, duel Cerberus in the Coliseum, best Jafar in Agrabah, change sizes in Wonderland, change costumes in Halloween Town, and fly alongside Peter Pan in Neverland. You have seen these films before as observers, but you can now be a part of them as actors. While Kingdom Hearts is able to enrich the Disney worlds of which we’re all so familiar, it is simultaneously able to create its own mythos that can stand independent of the films from which it draws.
It all began in an elevator, or so the story goes.
Tetsuya Nomura told the Tokyo Game Show that, “The producer, Mr. Hashimoto, met one of the executives of Disney in the elevators — we used to work in the same building.” Mr. Hashimoto being Shinji Hashimoto, the producer of Final Fantasy VIII and IX. Nomura expounded upon this encounter in an interview with the late Satoru Iwata of Nintendo. He was called into a meeting with the aforementioned Hashimoto and Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator Final Fantasy. Nomura had long desired to make a three-dimensional, open world game like Mario 64. The problem was that Mario, by that point, was rock star, and any game Square could produce wouldn’t compete. A colleague even told him, “The only way you could do it is with characters that are as well known as Disney’s.” Nomura remembered those words during the meeting with Hashimoto and Sakaguchi. They had gotten out of a recent discussion with Disney executives and lamented not being able to use Mickey Mouse. It was here that Nomura took his chance, he signed onto the budding project and spoke with Disney executives. At the time, his vision was of all-new characters exploring the worlds of Disney characters. Though the concept had the change quite a bit before the final product, as Sora was to originally carry a chainsaw.
On paper, this idea sounds stupid, really stupid. Of all the video game franchises to crossover with Disney, one would think Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man, or even Zelda to be among the first to hit the list, but Final Fantasy? How could Japan’s Dungeons and Dragons hope to blend with the same studio that brought us Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? It goes without saying that the Kingdom Hearts project was a risk, and to outsiders, looks like a cheap way for Square to capitalize on the Disney brand. It was a venture that shouldn’t have worked, it should have fallen flat on its face. Yet like Lego Star Wars, the crossover celebrated the best of both titles.
Disney is a brand sensitive to its family-friendly image, so much so that they won’t release Song of the South and have excised the racism from Fantasia. You would think that Disney would put greater restrictions on Nomura’s creative freedom. You would think. Yet Kingdom Hearts takes bold risks, pushing the envelope of what can be done with the “Disney” name. Our heroes aren’t even Disney or Final Fantasy characters, but Sora, Kairi, and Riku. Wholly new characters who dream of leaving their island to explore other worlds. It would’ve been easy for Nomura to select established or familiar characters to open the game, but instead took a gamble on starting the mythos from scratch. The envelope is further pushed with the opening “dream” sequence, which delves into a surrealism akin to Salvador Dali’s piece for Disney, “Destino”. Sora chases Riku into the ocean, but is unable to grasp his hand. Likewise, he also fails to grab Kairi’s hand and falls into the sky. It’s a weird and effective scene, hyped up to the tune of Utada Hikaru’s “Simple and Clean.” The opening gives gamers a peek into the fractured relationships between the three, and serves as a premonition for the ending. We should tip our hats to Disney for allowing Nomura to be so free with their stories. Tip your hat again to Nomura, who was able to balance being respectful to Disney, while taking an old brand into unexplored areas. Had he lost sight of this, Disney almost certainly would’ve cut him off from making future games.
I don’t think the animated films of Disney have ever been so artistically realized in video games before. Of course, there have been Disney video games before Kingdom Hearts, but they were often pale imitations of the movies they copied. Only in Kingdom Hearts can we get in three dimensions the labyrinthine jungles of Tarzan, or the cavernous riches that edge into Aladdin’s Cave Of Wonders. The key word here is color, as no two worlds look the same, and each one has its own color scheme that brightens up the multicolored interiors of Monstro’s belly, or adds an eerie glow to Halloween Town’s graves and hills. Each world also has unique attributes, in Neverland, you soar around Hook’s ship, in Atlantica, you swim past currents in the ocean depths, and Hundred Acre Wood has you playing minigames with Winnie the Pooh. Olympus Coliseum, where Hercules resides, features a challenging series of tournaments where you can test you skills against Hades, Rock Titan, Ice Titan, and even Sephiroth. Familiarity is much to the advantage of Kingdom Hearts, as most gamers have probably seen the films these worlds were based on. Thus, for many of us, Kingdom Hearts is the exploration of our childhood memories. We not only watch, but we get to interact with the stories and characters that entertained us before we learned to read. Accuracy to the characters and plotlines is made to the very last letter. For instance, in the film Tarzan, a famous Easter egg is that Chip and Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast can be seen on the table in the camp. Sure enough, this Easter egg has been kept in the exact same spot.The Disney worlds aren’t mere retreads of the film plots, but add in Kingdom Hearts concepts like the Heartless and the Keyhole. This keeps things fresh. Indeed, the Heartless themselves are among the most diverse enemies in video gaming, from the elegant, foot scratching Wyverns to the hourglass figures of the glowing Angel Hearts.
My favorite of the Kingdom Hearts worlds, Hollow Bastion, isn’t exactly a Disney one, but which draws upon Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and it’s own flavor of steampunk. Set at eternal sunrise, where the skies are painted hues of pink, orange, and purple, lies a decaying castle crudely maintained by rusty steam pipes. Hollow Bastion is the center of the Kingdom Hearts mythos, a once vibrant place where Ansem began his experiments with the Heartless — before being corrupted by them. It is here that we do battle with Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent, an arch-villain of the series, and face-off against Riku, now twisted by the dark that seduced Ansem.
The Final Fantasy characters, though less well-known than Disney, blend in surprisingly well. Leon (Squall), Yuffie, and Aerith serve as guides for your journey. Cid Highwind fixes your ship. Cloud is a fallen hero seduced by Hades. Though the Final Fantasy aspect is more present, in spirit, through the game’s RPG elements. On its surface, Kingdom Hearts has all the general trappings of an RPG: leveling up, acquiring new equipment, and the usage of spells and items. Each character on your party brings something unique to the fight. Donald Duck excels in advanced spellcasting, but has low health and attack power. Goofy is weak when it comes to spells, but his shield provides him with a spectacularly high defense, and powerful attacks like Rocket and Tornado. The battle system is by far among the finest in any RPG. It’s fast-paced, and encourages players to use a rapid number of strikes and swings. These are helped by special MP moves like Sonic Blade, Strike Raid, Ars Arcanum, and Ragnarok. Though strategy shouldn’t be discounted, either. On my second playthrough, I grew quite fond of the Aero spell, which I liken to Protect or Shell from Final Fantasy. In addition to reducing damage to the self, the higher forms of Aero can do damage to enemies. You don’t have eternal supply of Ethers and Elixirs, so it’s important to know how to manage your MP. Indeed, knowing when to guard, dodge roll, or run away, are just as vital as knowing when to strike. Another place where the two series align is in the soundtracks. Composer Yoko Shimomura penned brilliant scores inspired by Disney’s most iconic songs, as well as crafting epic originals like “Destati.” I should add that Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, gave Kingdom Hearts his blessing as executive producer. Perhaps he was passing the torch before leaving Square, a recognition, I’d venture, that this was the future of Japanese RPGs.
Seeing that Disney can acquire all-star vocal casts for their Miyazaki translations, they did no less for Kingdom Hearts. The Sixth Sense’s Hayley Joel Osment as Sora, Seventh Heaven’s David Gallagher as Riku, Hayden Panettiere, who would later play Claire in Heroes, as Kairi, and Titanic’s Billy Zane as Ansem. Veteran Disney actors Wayne Allwine, Bill Farmer, Scott Weinger, James Woods, Tony Anselmo, and Dan Castellaneta reprise their roles. Some Final Fantasy characters were voiced for the very first time. American Beauty’s Mena Suvari voiced Aerith, with Steve Burton and Christy Carlson Romano to reprise their roles as Cloud and Yuffie in Advent Children. Cameo celebrity voices include Sean Astin as Hercules and Lance Bass as Sephiroth.
Our main trio of Sora, Riku, and Kairi, archetypal though they are, endear themselves to the players. We get a strong sense of their “friendship” before matters are torn asunder. Their journey is very much the stuff of Disney canon. Kairi, one of the Seven Princesses of Heart who can unlock “Kingdom Hearts”, the door to all worlds, is captured. Sora, who wears bright red Mickey Mouse pants, is the only one righteous enough to save her. These types of stories come right out of the Disney playbook. Indeed, while the idea of Disney mixing with a Japanese game company sounds odd on paper, the brand has had a fruitful history with the Japanese. Donald Duck comics were an inspiration for anime’s godfather, Osamu Tezuka, who met Walt Disney himself at the 1964 World’s Fair. The ingenious creator praised Tezuka’s Astro Boy, an ardent fan. Disney is also responsible for bringing the Studio Ghibli films over to English speaking audiences in high quality. (We all remember Warriors of the Wind). Disney also has a theme park in Japan, one of the three foreign countries that does.
Akin to Ursula Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea, Kingdom Hearts is about understanding the darkness of the self. The Heartless are merely people, no different than you or I, whose hearts have been consumed by their internal shadows. As Leon says early in the game, “There is darkness in every heart.” Even whole worlds have hearts, which are destroyed when overcome with darkness. This is why the Keyblade exists, to seal the hearts of all worlds to prevent them from being swallowed. Considering that Disney usually puts good and evil on such simple binaries, for it produce a narrative about how easily we too can become villains, is a bold step. No one is immune. Sora’s rival, Riku, slowly gets eaten away by the darkness due to his ambition to see other worlds and save Kairi at any cost. Sora also wants to save Kairi, but not at the compromises Riku takes. He is only able to awake the comatose princess through an act of self-sacrifice, from which he is only able to come back through the light of his close friends. A resonant theme of Kingdom Hearts is the interdependence of friends, and how we draw our most inner strengths from them. This idea is reinforced through the gameplay, where you have to learn to work with Donald and Goofy’s unique attributes by customizing their equipment and abilities. Case in point, Riku fell into darkness because he tried to succeed by himself.
The End Of The World manages to maintain an air of creep and enigma without seeming out of place in the game. They get one of Disney’s most infamous villains, the black devil himself, Fantasia’s Chernabog, to act as a fearsome boss. Ansem is also quite intimidating with the strangleholds of his Guardian Heartless, and his transmutation into a bizarre fortress ship reminiscent of the final forms that Exdeath, Kefka, and Sephiroth take in the Final Fantasy games. Why is “Kingdom Hearts”, the heart of all worlds, light, and not pure darkness as Ansem had assumed? All throughout the game, we are told that within the deepest darkness there remains a light. So while Kingdom Hearts has darkness, it carries light as well. A balance that Ansem did not understand. I don’t think that Kingdom Hearts is trying to say that the darkness will go away, but that there will always be a light to challenge it. The ending cinematic is nothing short of emotional, with Sora, who having spent much of this game searching for Kairi, must separate from her again. A bittersweet twist on the “save the princess” meme. We are held in awe of the Destiny Islands reforming around Kairi, as a slower version of “Simple and Clean” narrates her feelings.
The secret ending of Kingdom Hearts, both the original and Final Mix versions, left gamers speechless. Of course, now, we know exactly where it fits into the Kingdom Hearts universe, but at the time, it hit us like a brick wall. The unlockable cinematic looks alien, like something from a different game. Were it not for the Keyblade, the Heartless, a blindfolded Riku, and a hooded Mickey, it doesn’t look like something appropriate to Kingdom Hearts. It’s set in a rainy, noir city, where people in black robes who speak cryptically of Sora. The original secret ending was unnerving and all too brief, but gave us a lot to chew on. The Final Mix secret ending was far better, with a Matrix-like fight enfolding with various clips spliced in. Few things are as impressive as the Riku and cloaked Keyblade wielder passing one another in silence. This short cinematic revealed that Square Enix could create reality-bending fights, which would be the partial inspiration for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
Some areas of the game haven’t aged well. The camera can get irritating, and make movements in crucial places rather trying. The constant invocations of light, darkness and heart can be banal, and some of the early dialogue between Sora and Kairi can be awkward, if not outright laughable. To be fair, Final Fantasy has also had its share of bad dialogue, too. The Gummi Ship is by far the most bland and draining aspect of the game, though it gets a bit better in the sequel.
Kingdom Hearts first made me realize that video games could be more then just expensive toys, but also unique mediums of visual memory, artful storytelling, and musical brilliance. It is a game that draws upon the best in animated cinema and Japanese role-play. It reminds us that video games must be experienced, not simply watched or read about, but experienced through play.
