D23 kicked off with a great Entertainment Showcase, giving us a glimpse at all that’s to come in the coming years across most of Disney’s subsidiaries. Yet during the Pixar section, a new trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4 was shown.
In the sequel to Square Enix and Disney & Pixar Games’ collaboration action RPG, we’re off to the Land of the Dead. Not just the underworld from Hercules, but the afterlife as depicted in Pixar’s 2017 smash hit, Coco. Yet the trailer showed off much more than many may realize. Let’s break it down.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
First, let’s talk about Sora’s new world-specific look. As many of the worlds Sora and his friends visited in the past, Sora’s appearance has changed to “maintain the world order.”
Yet what is odd is just how minimal the change is. His look is basically the exact same as his form in Quadratum, the more HD-ified model that was originally said to only be a Quadratum-specific look. The only real change is that Sora has painted his face and body to look like a skeleton, just like Miguel did in the film.
D23 gave us a first look at a calavera keyblade.
Next, the keyblade. The Coco-inspired keyblade looks fantastic. It has a guitar built into its shaft just above the hilt and is surrounded by cempasúchil petals. The greatest touch is the hilt looking like a skull. Overall, a great keyblade design.
Yet what the trailer shows is that this keyblade is summoned as part of the world’s story. Keyblades are normally given as a reward for clearing a world, completing a specific challenge, or beating a hard boss. Only really in Kingdom Hearts 1 and sometimes for specific story beats do characters get a new keyblade form, and even more rarely does that happen in the Disney worlds.
But at what appears to be the shack where Chicharrón has his “final death”, Sora will get his new keyblade form. Could this, paired with Sora’s slightly changed look, be giving us a hint that the Disney worlds will play a much bigger part of the overall story? As in, we’re not just re-experiencing the movie’s story beats with some Kingdom Hearts characters in the mix. The Disney/Pixar worlds are actually going to play an integral role in the story playing out.
Speaking of how the story plays out, the voice acting. Benjamin Bratt, voice actor of Ernesto de la Cruz, introduced the Kingdom Hearts trailer and announced that he will be returning to voice Ernesto in the game. So unlike the first two Pixar worlds in Kingdom Hearts 3, original voice actors for Pixar movies are returning to reprise their roles.
Granted, it could just be for Coco since they are getting ready for Coco 2. But also, could we see a return of Disney characters being boss battles? I’d love to whack around Ernesto to get revenge for Hector instead of some heartless variant.
Coco was a perfect fit for Kingdom Hearts.
But what I’m curious about is how Miguel will be handled. When singing Un Poco Loco in the trailer, Miguel sounds exactly like how he did in the movie. But if they’re reprising their parts, Anthony Gonzalez has grown up. He was only 12 when he got the part of Miguel.
That was almost 10 years ago. That leaves us two options. The speaking part of Miguel will be using a different voice actor while keeping Anthony’s original singing for parts of the world. Or they will only use recorded lines from the movie for consistency.
Particularly with Miguel and Hector being party members, they’re going to need effort noises (like grunts, sounds of pain, etc.) and maybe some extra lines for team-up attacks, discoveries, and random banter while walking around. But also, why is Miguel a team member?! He’s a little kid, and may be the youngest party member we’ve ever had in the series. It’s going to be odd seeing him get smacked around by the darkness, to say the least.
Yet that was also the shocking part of the trailer. English voice acting has already begun. The entire trailer was voiced in English, unlike the first two, which were only in Japanese.
Usually, English recording is one of the last steps for these types of international games, unless it’s done as part of the development process to ensure more accurate lip-syncing of the characters. But ultimately, if they’re already at that point, Kingdom Hearts 4 may be much further along than we think, even with the announced release window of Late 2027.
Kingdom Hearts 4’s take on Coco already looks fantastic.
The Coco world looks fantastic in what they’ve shown off so far. Even better than the Toy Story and Monsters Inc worlds of Kingdom Hearts 3. Whatever efforts the animation and art teams have made as part of 4‘s development, it’s paid off immensely.
Glancing at the trailer at first when it popped online, I thought they were just announcing Coco by showing off a pivotal scene from the movie. Maybe it’s just a part of Unreal Engine 5’s lighting that just makes the worlds inherently look better and more movie-like.
Let’s move on to the more technical side of the trailer. We got a glimpse of several parts of the UI and some of it has been updated from past games. For the most part, the UI is quite similar to Kingdom Hearts 3. The biggest change of it all is a slight tweak to the minimap.
The map looks way more detailed and is now diamond-shaped, with a more circular minimap inside. It also does a much better job of telegraphing elevation changes and layers, too. Also, if you look closely at about the 50-second mark, a little Moogle icon is on the minimap. So the Moogle Shop (and maybe synthesis) is returning!
Now, much further in the trailer, the Quadratum-specific stuff. For how much it’s being shown, Quadratum and its residents may be playing a much bigger part than you may expect.
But it does give us a good look at the pure-form Heartless we’d be facing. If these are even pure-form Heartless, and not a special new enemy type only available in Quadratum. Like the Neoshadow and Darkside variants look like they could be from a Kingdom Hearts horror movie. And the new bird form? Absolutely terrifying.
Sigurd is here, ready for Kingdom Hearts 4.
The trailer also confirms that not only are we dealing with Strelitzia, a character heavily featured in Union X who was murdered by Ventus when he was possessed by darkness (yes, really), but the suave-looking keyblade wielder, Sigurd.
Not knowing who Sigurd is isn’t surprising at all. He was featured at the end of Union X when Brain, a new Union Leader designed by Master Ava, appeared in Scala Ad Caelum and was greeted by Sigurd. Sigurd was also expected to be a major focus of the now-canceled mobile game Missing Link.
We’ve also seen glimpses of the mask-wearing Vali, an upper-classman classmate of Xehanort featured in Dark Road. So, all the mobile games, even the canceled one, will play a major role in the story. What is concerning about all this is that the lore of those games is impossible to experience on your own.
You need to watch a summary video or cutscene compilation on YouTube to watch the story of Union X and Dark Road play out. And Missing Link is never coming out. At least in game form. So Square definitely needs to make sure that those who will be playing Kingdom Hearts 4 are at least familiar with these critical characters’ pasts.
Finally, Sigurd and his keyblade also show off a similar keychain and core to the one Sora was wielding in the Nintendo Direct trailer that showed off the new “Build” mechanic. So, whatever technology that is is almost certainly tied to Quadratum and their innovations, and not an Atlantis world (sadly).
But with Sora looking very similar in both Quadratum and Coco worlds, this could imply that we are going to be dealing with a lot of themes about death and its inevitability. And maybe the more death-specific worlds, like Coco, could be extensions of Quadratum rather than being completely separate worlds altogether like they’ve been in past games.
2027 is a long way to wait, but we’ve already learned so much.
What is weird is that these characters from the mobile games are being much more heavily featured than ones we’ve seen in mainline entries. Like Yozora or Luxord’s true form. I hope we see more of both of them in future trailers. Yozora especially shot up in my favorite characters after his secret boss fight in the Re:Mind DLC.
To summarize everything, this new Coco D23 Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer showed off a LOT. Many fans may pick up on something new with each rewatch of it. For now, the trailer suggests that Sora’s new look isn’t Quadratum-specific, but tied to the realm of fiction and death.
We got confirmation that Square is aiming for a Late 2027 release of the game. The lore of the mobile games is more important now than ever, and we need some Missing Link bits to connect the dots.
Finally, maybe Keyblades and the Disney worlds are going to be playing a more integral role in the storytelling of the game. Regardless, you may have heard me screaming right when this news got announced. Next we have the Kingdom Hearts panel on Saturday, which may show even more news! What a time to be a Kingdom Hearts fan.
Kingdom Hearts 4 is coming out Late 2027 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2.
