The Kingdom Hearts series is about to take a huge step forward as the Xehanort arc closes and the Ancient Masters arc begins, both in the mobile game and the most recent title in the series. However, while Melody of Memory sets up the future, development on next-gen consoles might give Square Enix a new chance to explore the series’ ancient past.
With the PS5 and Xbox Series X finally hitting store shelves and arriving in players’ homes, more and more people are getting first hand experience with the power and capability of next-gen technology. Seeing what these new consoles are capable of, as well as similarly designed gaming PCs with rapid-speed SSDs and powerful Nvidia 3090s, the next Kingdom Hearts, whenever it does release, coming to these new systems could make a huge leap.
It’s possible that the next Kingdom Hearts might make use of this new technology to build up on previously established mechanics and staples of the series, but themes explored in Union X could be a bold new move. With Square Enix wanting “drastic changes” in Kingdom Hearts then something established from before the Keyblade War could lead to a new unification that could fuse the series’ many worlds into one. This is a new theme that next-gen consoles could better explore by giving players the freedom to move from world to world in real-time, possibly altering the gummi ship’s function, either in a new prequel title or in the new future.
One of the opportunities that could be explored for the next era of Kingdom Hearts is to better establish everything that has taken place in the Union X storyline, following the Master of Masters and his Foretellers. While the story is currently all freely available through the mobile game, there are mysteries that it doesn’t look like the title really cares to focus on, leaning more towards having players’ questions answered in future games. To better explore some of what is still being hidden in Union X, Square Enix may want to explore a new game from the perspective of the Master of Masters, the man pulling the strings from the beginning.
What’s most interesting about an origin story for the Master of Masters is the fact that the familiar Disney and Final Fantasy themed worlds scattered across the Kingdom Hearts series used to be a single, infinite world. This could lead to players traveling through an open world that blends between tons of early versions of previously explored areas without the seems created by space exploration in the main series. However, even without going into the backstory of the new villain/secret hero/antihero, moving straight into Kingdom Hearts 4‘s story could still make great use of next-gen technology.
The gummi ship has easily become one of the most widely criticized feature of Kingdom Hearts, with some players supporting both the original and evolving mechanic in numbered titles, but most disliking it from the beginning. One way that Kingdom Hearts 3 made the gummi ship the most well received in the series was to give players free control through space and make both traversal and missions more optional than they had been in the past. It’s a great step forward, but next-gen consoles could push it a step further by blending gummi space more seamlessly with Kingdom Hearts‘ worlds.
Taking a feature from an unexpected source, Square Enix can look to No Man’s Sky for ways to let players blast off from the surface of a world and head out to space in real-time. The effect in No Man’s Sky is currently hidden behind a hyperspace looking loading screen, but with the PS5 and Xbox Series X’s impressive loading speeds, this could be stripped down to a much more realistic launch into Kingdom Hearts‘ Paths Between. This could be one of the best solutions for Kingdom Hearts‘ longest standing problem of forcing players out of the gameplay loop when travelling between worlds, keeping the experience cohesive from start to finish.
Another option for Square Enix to take with the future of Kingdom Hearts is to actually look back at the history within the series lore and bring it into the modern era. As mentioned before, in the time of the Master of Masters and the Foretellers, the world was all one giant land that seemingly stretched out forever before being ripped apart by the Keyblade War. While this doesn’t seem to have been reversed just yet, it is possible that future titles are setting up to pull the worlds back together into this shape.
This is where the next-gen technology comes into play again, being newly capable of making stunning open worlds that can be travelled across faster than ever, as shown by Square Enix’s own upcoming Project Athia. For a series known for fast-paced gameplay like Kingdom Hearts, making the transition from one world to the next happen even more quickly and fluidly could push Kingdom Hearts 4 well past its predecessors. It’s also possible that the developer is planning to test the waters of this type of gameplay mechanic and doing away with the current format of the worlds/space divide with the series’ next title.
The recent lore dump that came with the ending of Melody of Memory has opened up a bit of a can of worms for the series, as Square Enix sets up for a Riku helmed Kingdom Hearts in Quadratum. There are a number of theories already spreading among fans for what this could mean, with most players fixated on Quadratum’s name translating from Latin to mean “square” to imply that this will be the Final Fantasy world. However, regardless of what exactly this new Fictional World really is and what it all means, this new realm on the flip side of light and dark is completely unexplored and is left open for all new possibilities.
One key possibility is that since the Fictional World is so separate from the Realms of Light and Darkness, it may have been unaffected by the Keyblade War that tore the world apart into multiple, separate worlds. This could mean that while players are exploring the new world of Quadratum, there might not be a need to jump between worlds and will instead explore one expansive world. It’s still difficult to say what Square Enix has planned for Riku in the next Kingdom Hearts, but this could be a huge opportunity to test out the developer’s ability to craft a new open world, and fan’s reaction to an open world in the series.
Kingdom Hearts: Memory of Melody is available now for PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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