@King Kindred I have no idea what a Hiruzen is. So, what is Xehanort's motives in this? Is it one of his various, incomprehensible plans from the games (Creating his own Kingdom Hearts with Blackjack and Hookers, Starting a new Keyblade war for shits and giggles, ETC.) or is it something more straight forward?

A Naruto reference. The Third Hokage who let the village's biggest villains get away with whatever because he cared for them like a child and brother. Same original flawed plan of the first game. That's where his story will end here.

I thought Xehanort's plan was pretty simple. He wants to use Kingdom Hearts to do a hard reset on the universe because there is too much darkness in the world, born from the hearts of people. And he believes, falsely so, that should he basically become a God, he could forge a universe where that wouldn't happen.

But he's also obsessed with destiny and fate so he's unwilling to force things.

@Sadu His plan changed from game to game.

KHBBS: I am Xehanort and my plan is to brainwash a bunch of kids to make a X-Blade that will let me restart an ancient war that i have no idea who it was between or what it was over... That failed, my new plan is to kill myself and let the next 2 of me figure things out.
KH1: I am Ansem, i want to use the power of Kingdom Hearts to take over the World
KH358: I am Xemnas and i want... You know what, nobody gave a fuck about this game.
KH2: I am Xemnas, i'm gonna make my own Kingdom Hearts with blackjack and hookers.
KHDDD: I am Xehanort and i'm gonna use time-travel and shit to revive the 13 guys you didn't give a shit about in the last game, because Nomura is literally just flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks.
KHREC: Nothing happens
KH3: I'm Xehanort and turns out every time that you defeated me before WAS ALWAYS PART OF THE GRAND DASTARDLY PLAN TO CLONE MYSELF 13 TIMES in order to restart that war that i still know nothing about, because... I still don't fucking know. Also, apparently i'm a tragic good guy now? Also, apparently the guy with the eye-patch was the REAL bad guy all along.

@mattmanganon

Now look here. I've accepted a lot, but what we will not stand for is the slander of 358/2. That gave brought us Xion and a beautiful friendship between her, Roxas, and Axel. We actually have some plans for that game here.

@Sadu His plan changed from game to game.

KHBBS: I am Xehanort and my plan is to brainwash a bunch of kids to make a X-Blade that will let me restart an ancient war that i have no idea who it was between or what it was over... That failed, my new plan is to kill myself and let the next 2 of me figure things out.
KH1: I am Ansem, i want to use the power of Kingdom Hearts to take over the World
KH358: I am Xemnas and i want... You know what, nobody gave a fuck about this game.
KH2: I am Xemnas, i'm gonna make my own Kingdom Hearts with blackjack and hookers.
KHDDD: I am Xehanort and i'm gonna use time-travel and shit to revive the 13 guys you didn't give a shit about in the last game, because Nomura is literally just flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks.
KHREC: Nothing happens
KH3: I'm Xehanort and turns out every time that you defeated me before WAS ALWAYS PART OF THE GRAND DASTARDLY PLAN TO CLONE MYSELF 13 TIMES in order to restart that war that i still know nothing about, because... I still don't fucking know. Also, apparently i'm a tragic good guy now? Also, apparently the guy with the eye-patch was the REAL bad guy all along.

I have a protest, and something that will either shed light, or make everything WAY more confusing.

One: I played Days and liked it. Though, his plan is the same as it is in 2, save the fact that he's trying to make his own keyblade wielders to do it.

Two: The Keyblade War was something in Union Cross. In a nutshell, during an age where Keyblade wielders were about as common as flies in a dumpster in August, this guy called the Master of Masters decided to kill primordial darkness. To do that, it had to possess someone, then you had to kill that someone. There were thirteen of 'em, too. So, he tried to make as many of the keyblade wielders as he could fall to darkness, then pit all of them against each other. He got himself sent to the Shadow realm doing this by breaking laws of reality like Sora did in Re:Mind to help orchestrate this. He had his best student, a guy called Luxu (Later Braig, even later Xigbar) take his Keyblade (No Name) and make sure it ended up in the hands of people who could complete his work if he failed. He only kinda succeeded, the war and it's aftermath either killing or trapping around eight of the thirteen darknesses.

(TL;DR - The war was something orchestrated to kill primordial darkness. Xehanort restarting the war is him trying to get himself and others possessed by primordial darkness, then killed. Xigbar is really a guy called Luxu, who technically is the real owner of No Name.)

TL;DR v2: It's all a really confusing knot that is addressed in games that are prequals to the prequal.

@Bacon Yeah, that is the one thing about Kingdom Hearts. Even the Mobile Games are important to the story. I personally haven't played them yet, but have seen and learned a little about them.

@King Kindred Honestly, i sat down and watched all of the cut-scenes on youtube... Maybe it's because i played 2 and DDD first, but i'm gonna be honest, i cannot bring myself to give a shit about Axle as a character. Like, i tried, i really tried, but i could not motivate myself to even slightly care about him. And i should specify, i don't hate him. Because hatred is a feeling and i don't get those for him. He is a non-entity that the game tells me i should be emotionally invested in, rather than giving me a reason to:

Game: "Hey, it's Axle!"
Me: "Oh."
Game: "Aren't you happy he's back!"
Me: "Not really."
Game: "Well you should be."
Me: "Why?"
Game: "... Because this big, epic, fanservicey moment doesn't work unless you care about him."
Me: "But i don't."
Game: "... Hey, it's Axle!"

@mattmanganon

Maybe it's DDD that did that for you, because 2 came out first so that was always meant to be played before 358 and I played both when they came out and honestly 358 was what made me care about Axel at all. Cause I loved Roxas. (I played 2 before 1) And what 358 really did was just build the characters more and gave us a reason to care about these Nobodies or who they might have been before they became one.

@mattmanganon Everyone's entitled to their own opinions. If you're one of the twenty people (myself and King Kindred included) who apparently played Days, you appreciate him. If you watched the cutscenes, you might or might not like him. Because he and Xion play as Roxas' Donald and Goody, in that they ACTUALLY HELP, on top of being pretty good at being the only two coworkers Roxas has who aren't intolerable as people in one way or another.

I'm not going to argue this point further, so if you want to bicker on with King Kindred, go nuts. I figured I'd just explain why he's mostly well-liked, with a few people who love him as a character.

I think it just shows he was imperfect, he didn't actually know what he was doing, and was grasping at straws with something that was never meant to be within his ability to comprehend, and because of that he made mistakes, constantly evolved his plan, and played it off like he knew what he was doing the whole time. Because that's a big part of his character, he's cocky, full of himself, and massively overestimates himself. So he has to play the part of knowing what he's doing, and pretend like everything is a part of the plan, or everything would fall apart and the Organization would lose faith in him.

Also strong disagree that "nobody gave a fuck about this game." on 358.

@King Kindred Honestly, i think it was DDD that did it for me, specifically because that was the game that took my feelings for the Organization from apathy to active hatred. Like, i didn't care about them in CoM and 2 and they were just on the cusp of outstaying their welcome, but didn't. Then DDD brought them all back in a "Hey, it's all your favourites!!!" kind of way that tipped me over the edge.

Reminds me of an old meme i made for a Simpsons group when i was playing through them.



@Sadu To be fair, that one was just a joke

@Bacon It's not bickering, i mean, i don't think anyone's wrong for liking him, i just don't and it's simple as that. I don't think he's a terrible character, just a harmlessly inoffensive character who simply outstayed his welcome with me personally. I do acknowledge that others have opinions and are entitled to them. The only hill i will die on in this franchise is the hill that everyone already conceded long ago "This series is a really great concept that was horrifically badly executed and was mostly saved by the Disney aspects and the absolutely top tier gameplay." Because even DDD when the story was at it's most confusingly convoluted, actually had just some really solid and fun gameplay and movement mechanics to fall back on. In fact, the only game i gave up on was Chain of Memories, which just became incredibly tedious to play.

I sympathize with Nomura. It's hard creating compelling villains and antagonists in a game. Especially one where people need or want more to the story like with Kingdom Hearts. So it's easier to reuse Xehanort, who's been a staple in the series since the beginning, rather than introducing someone else down the line as the true puppetmaster, especially without clear and obvious hints before. People would've hated that even more. To this day people still complain about how Kaguya and Zetsu usurped Madara as the villain at the end of Naruto.

@King Kindred Hmmm, i see what you mean, although i think people probably would have prefered the Maleficent angle to be played into more. I mean, the first game is the most coherent because it plays with familiar characters with a simple "Bad guy wants to get the maguffin and take over the world" story. The Organization, as Bacon said, are mostly intollerable as people, and yet the game still treats them as characters that you should like.

I think trying to expand the Disney villains roster would also have actually given you in-game reasons to be visiting the disney worlds. I mean, everyone agree's that one of the biggest problems with KHIII's story is that, despite a lot of the worlds being fun, almost none of them actually play into the wider story or have any lasting impact. Maybe even bringing in some of the other Final Fantasy villains would have also done some good. Would loved to see my mans Kefka serve a role in it.

And i think that that's the franchises biggest failing as a whole. It's whole premise only exists in that first game. "A crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy!" when that barely ever actually happens after the first game. I mean, Squall and his gang pretty much disappear after the first game, only showing up briefly every now and then. Vivi and Setzer show up in 2 in glorified cameo's. Zack has a glorified cameo in BBS. Cloud and Sephiroth keep showing up for cameo's across the games, but they only ever serve as window dressing to what's going on around them. The franchise is far more focused on its original characters. Now, wanting to focus on original characters isn't a problem in itself, but kinda is when we look back at that tag line and realized that a good number of the audience did not sign up for that.

Now, i think that it'll work in this, because, we don't have the problem of having to sell this story to a wider audience. The organization being made up of evil versions of the PC's will absolutely work. When i ran my campaign, my version of the Organization (Or at least, the team of bad guy Nobodies i had running around) were evil reimagnings of Disney heroes which is why my party kinda were able to get emotionally invested with them, even if that emotion was "FINALLY, WE SHUT THAT BASTARD UP!!!" But i could tell they were kinda digging fighting an evil Aladdin and evil Arial, because there was that inbuilt familiarity.

Anyway, i'm just rambling at this point. I'm gonna go to sleep and hopefully come up with a way to help make this work better than the games when i wake up.

But on that note, how would you all feel about Mickey Mouse's House of Villains being how the full story ends here? The Disney Worlds are on a time loop. Every time they're close to victory the heroic light shines through and they're defeated and their story starts over ready to be retold without their knowledge.(VHS Rewind/DVD starts over)

Maleficent discovers the truth on one of her rewinds and decides the only way to change her fate is to flood the universe with darkness. Her evil alone isn't enough and so she travels the worlds to find other villains and a true source of darkness, which leads to her discovering the Doors to Darkness, but she's not able to open them. So while Xehanort believes he's the one pulling the strings it's really Maleficent and the movie villains.

So KH4 is the House of Villains. We travel to worlds we've already been to as well as new ones to fix their stories and liberate them from the darkness. Each movie will have a distinct change. An example would be Ursula becoming Ariel's sister and seeing Prince Eric first while Triton is the Sea Warlock whose own dark feelings towards the surface world and the royal family created an almost dystopia Atlantica. No joy. No singing. Just despair. Kinda like Scar's Pride Rock.

@mattmanganon

I read the other day that they wanted to have Leon and the others in BBS, but once they got to Radiant Garden they realized they already had too many characters there for the rest to be shown without it being too clunky of a world and story. But I disagree about the original characters. The game was always about the original characters. The Disney and Final Fantasy aspect was really just to help expand the world of Kingdom Hearts and give us fun places and fun characters to interact with. But I do agree that it's pointless when your actions and presence have no effect on the story.

How would you all feel about Mickey Mouse's House of Villains being how the full story ends here?

In all seriousness, i LOVE House of Mouse and am pissed that Disney won't upload it to Disney+. Especially at this time of year, because Snowed In At The House of Mouse is one of the most underrated christmas specials. Plus, so long as we get that kick-ass musical number.

<Snipped quote by King Kindred>



In all seriousness, i LOVE House of Mouse and am pissed that Disney won't upload it to Disney+. Especially at this time of year, because Snowed In At The House of Mouse is one of the most underrated christmas specials. Plus, so long as we get that kick-ass musical number.

Disney stays making terrible decisions when it comes to what should be on that app, but doesn't. And it's Disney. They're definitely the musical number.

If we go this route you could have Am being an Agent of Maleficent and fudging Xehanort and Ansem's research so he goes through with his plan of opening the door so the Darkness can seep out of it like she wants.

I know nothing about House of Mouse. I had my own ideas for a story beyond KH3 involving Morgana but don't know if anyone would want to take part in it.