--Please tell us where you began with the conception of this title, ‘Dream Drop Distance’.
Nomura: With KH3D, first of all, I was getting colour imagery. I thought, black and pink.
--It’s surprising that colours were what you imagined first.
Nomura: We do decide on a thematic colour every time, but it was quite rare for it to have happened the way it did this time.
--How did things develop from there?
Nomura: We revealed that we were going to depict the Mark of Mastery Exam in ‘Re:Coded’, and we had decided roughly on the contents of the story, but at that point we were worrying over where to set it. We thought about what Sora would have to do now, and about how ‘sleep’ was a key word in the second last title in the series, KH Birth by Sleep. ‘Sleep’ and the ‘dreams’ that follow replaced ‘black and pink’ as our inspiration broadened, and then we thought of the keyword ‘drop’, as in how you ‘fall into dreams’. (Translator note: Or 'drop off to sleep'.)
--In this title, the way we see flashback scenes (regarding things like the journey and the residents of those worlds) when alternating playing as Sora and Riku is incorporating a directing style we haven’t had up until now, isn’t it.
Nomura: People who want to forge into the game can choose to skip those and watch them later. That’s an influence from the drastic change to non-interactive cutscenes we are including in ‘FF Verses XIII’, which we’ve been developing side by side. It’s a result of us keeping tempo in mind, and trying to make as much as we can interactive. Although, in the end the game finishes with the longest cutscene in the series (dry laugh).
--It would need to be that long, to explain so many mysteries (laughs). With things such as the introduction to the story beginning with a sudden battle, the plot felt like it moved pretty fast.
Nomura: As for that introduction section, I thought it would be best to enter the exam from the start. It would have been tiresome to make Yen Sid give a long explanation summing everything up right at the start, so we wanted to try breaking it up into flashbacks (laughs).
--The ‘memoirs’ feature, where we can check flashback scenes and the series summary, is so thoughtful.
Nomura: It’s a feature we wanted to have for a long time, but couldn’t do for various reasons, and it’s not much, but we finally introduced it. The number of titles in the series has increased too, and there are parts that new players wouldn’t really understand. I’m sure this will help the understanding of anyone who is worried whether they can play the newest game without playing all the others up until now.
— Please tell us the reason for implementing the “drop” mechanism which causes the character you are playing as to switch out suddenly.
Nomura: It’s difficult to balance, but it’d have been uninteresting for the players if the game was too generalized. For example, in the job system of FFV, you could only choose one ability set. You were restricted to make choices where you would toss out something in order to gain something, how you made these decisions was an important factor. Above all else, what sort of game will I make? That’s always on my mind. In Chain of Memories and Birth by Sleep the playable characters were switched up as well, however people said that having the character’s scenarios split made the games feel like short stories and they wanted to play one whole story in one game. So I made the system where you can switch between Sora and Riku’s story in one work, where the only thing restricting your play is the “drop” device.
— Now the concept for KH3D was “bold action”, can you tell us about the process for this?
Nomura: If from here on out, I were to leave the operation systems of the series titles as is, then I wanted to make a distinction from FF Versus XIII which I am currently developing. I think we spoke about it previously, but from the very beginning Final Fantasy Reishiki Type-0, Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Kingdom Hearts are each action based RPGs, and working on them simultaneously, I wanted each of their differences to be clear. To indicate in what way KH was different, I came up with the “bold action” concept.
