I had damn near forgotten that Square Enix was making Kingdom Hearts 4. I was starting to wonder if Square Enix had also forgotten Square Enix was making Kingdom Hearts 4. It’s been total radio silence since the game’s initial 2022 announcement—four long years with nothing but a three-minute reveal trailer to sustain the gaggle of eager fans (hi, it’s me, I’m eager fans). Until now, that is.
The game made a very surprise appearance during today’s Nintendo Direct, offering a brand-new 90-second trailer that’ll hopefully keep me going for another four years. It’s pretty in keeping thematically with the 2022 reveal—a gigantic heartless manifesting among skyscrapers in Quadratum (the Kingdom Hearts version of Tokyo, more specifically here Shibuya) while protagonist Sora does some of his classic airborne flips and tricks while flourishing his keyblade.
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We get a wee glimpse of some of the cast, too—there’s Strelitzia from one of the mobile games, who we saw in the first trailer, along with Organization XIII member Luxord. The most interesting appearance by far is who appears to be a young Xehanort, holding a comically busted umbrella over Sora.
At least I’m going to assume it’s a young Xehanort, considering the art Tesutya Nomura drew earlier this year to commemorate the series’ 24th anniversary has him in the exact same getup (with an umbrella that hasn’t actively been mauled by a strong gust of wind).
I am still getting whiplash from seeing Sora in a more grounded setting compared to previous games—and I’m going to generously assume that the emptiness and slight crustiness of the setting is a Switch 2 thing, not a Kingdom Hearts 4 thing—but this tiny little glimpse of my clown-shoed boy spinning and flipping around enemies, and getting launched into the odd skyscraper here and there, has already gotten me incredibly giddy.
Unfortunately there’s still not even a vague release window for this thing. But it’s exciting to know that the game’ll at least be on PC and console at the same time—the trailer uploaded to the Kingdom Hearts YouTube specifies that it’ll be “multiplatform at launch” while listing Steam, Epic, and Xbox on PC alongside our console siblings.
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