Kingdom Hearts 3 Toy Story World Crucial to Game Being Made

In case you need a better idea of just how long the wait between Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III was, remember that Disney had just bought Pixar only months before Kingdom Hearts II was released. We had yet to see any sort of Pixar inclusion in the games since, but that’s all changing with Kingdom Hearts III. The highly-anticipated title brings worlds based on Toy Story and Monster’s, Inc., the first Pixar-based worlds in a Kingdom Hearts game. According to Tetsuya Nomura himself, these worlds were crucial in getting Kingdom Hearts III off the ground in the first place.

In a new interview with Edge, the director said he let Disney know upfront that Pixar needed to be featured in the game, or else the company would risk losing Kingdom Hearts III completely. “After we were done with Kingdom Hearts II and were starting to consider III, we started talks with Disney, I remember saying, ‘If we can’t use Pixar, then we can’t have a third game,'” Nomura told the outlet. “The whole world loves Toy Story–everybody feels the appeal of that story and those characters.”

With a new Toy Story land at Walt Disney World, and Toy Story 4 coming in 2019, this is perhaps the best time to feature Toy Story in a Kingdom Hearts game. Featuring a completely original storyline, the Kingdom Hearts III team even directly worked with Pixar to ensure complete faithfulness to the series. Speaking on the collaborative process, Nomura said, “It was somebody who had made this animation, and somebody who was making this game. We were communicating with each other, myself and these people, so that added an extra level of complexity because each creator has their own desires, ideas, and concepts.”

Outside of the previously-mentioned Pixar worlds, Kingdom Hearts III also features worlds based on Frozen, Tangled, and more. Just don’t expect anything outside of what we already know. According to Nomura’s co-director, Tai Yasue, we shouldn’t expect any “surprise” Disney worlds.

[Source: EDGE via GamingBolt]