Nintendo’s June showcase. Big stage. Lots of announcements.
But the loudest gasp? Not a First-Party title. Kingdom Hearts 4.
Square Enix slid the teaser in during the stream. A teaser that didn’t exactly spill the beans, obviously. A shadowed figure whispers at the start. Then chaos. Sora fights. Snippets of action flash by, fast and confusing, before settling on Donald Duck and Goofy looking confused. Again.
No Disney parade this time. Just the classics. That feels weird, considering the brand is built on licensing deals that turn the series into a theme park ride. 🏰
“Sora heads to Quadratrum.”
That’s it. A mysterious city. New powers. New friends. Standard lore fuel for a franchise that has been burning the same firewood for two decades.
When does it come out? No one says. The trailer screams Switch 2. But let’s be real. It’s going on everywhere else eventually. Square Enix loves money, after all.
Why the silence? 🤷
Look back. Kingdom Hearts III was announced. Six years passed. Tetsuya Nomura admitted they got cocky. Reveal too early. Development stalled. Delays stacked up like plates. Then… Kingdom Hearts III. Finally. In 2019.
Now we wait for 4. Again.
At least the old stuff is playable without sweating. The previous Kingdom Hearts Collection on the original Switch ran via the cloud, because the hardware was too weak to lift the polygons. Now, Switch 2 handles it locally. Native. No buffering wheel of doom.
So, are you hyped?
The screen goes dark. The credits roll on the direct. Sora is walking into the dark city. We know nothing else.
