Kingdom Hearts 4 Trying To Find a ‘Good Balance’ For Final Fantasy Characters

One of the main selling points of the Kingdom Hearts games was the weird mashup of Disney and Final Fantasy characters. Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura recently sat down with Game Informer to discuss Kingdom Hearts 4 and addressed several questions, including concerns about Final Fantasy characters.

When asked about the relative lack of Final Fantasy characters in recent Kingdom Hearts entires, Nomura had this to say:

I understand there weren’t that many Final Fantasy characters in Kingdom Hearts III. One thing I want to clear up is that a lot of fans are saying that Kingdom Hearts is this collaboration between Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters. But I really feel like that’s not the basic concept of Kingdom Hearts; that’s not exactly what Kingdom Hearts is.

When we released the first title, we had only a few original Kingdom Hearts characters. When they were interacting with really well-known, beloved Disney characters, I felt nobody really knew these new characters, so it was harder for them to stand their ground just yet. And so, we had a lot of Final Fantasy characters involved to lend a hand for everyone to get to know these [original Kingdom Hearts] characters better.

Now, there are so many original characters from Kingdom Hearts that are so well-loved, and people want to see more of those characters. With Kingdom Hearts III, since we did have so many original Kingdom Hearts characters, it was hard to find room for including more Final Fantasy characters. We’re trying to find a good balance for that. I know that some fans were concerned about that and weren’t too happy and wanted to see more Final Fantasy characters. That’s something we definitely are thinking about. But just with the sheer number of original characters that we have now, it’s hard to say what the exact balance is going to be and how it will play out in Kingdom Hearts IV. We can’t really give you a firm reply on this just yet.