Kingdom Hearts III director Tetsuya Nomura explains why the Pirates of the Caribbean world returns in a VentureBeat interview

Interviews continue to surface on media platforms across the internet in the wake of E3 2018. And VentureBeat, a website devoted to news on tech and games, had a chance to speak with Tetsuya Nomura, director of the Kingdom Hearts series, to ask him a question that had puzzled some fans.

During the Sony conference, it was revealed that the Pirates of the Caribbean world from Kingdom Hearts II would be returning, making it the second confirmed returning world next to Hercules. However, while in Kingdom Hearts II the Pirates storyline followed the plot of the first film, Curse of the Black Pearl, the Pirates world in Kingdom Hearts III will be following the storyline of the third film, At World’s End; completely skipping over the second film.

When asked why they had chosen to include the Pirates world a second time, Nomura had this to say:

“It’s not that we’ve been avoiding the reappearance of worlds from our previous titles,” Nomura told VentureBeat. “They are reappearing as necessary. But for Kingdom Hearts III, one of our ideas or concepts was to try to have as many new worlds as possible. At the same time, I’ve always wanted to have at least one live-action world in Kingdom Hearts III. When we were looking at all these different live action titles, Pirates of Caribbean was one of the most interesting worlds, one that we thought we could create interesting gameplay around. There’s the underwater action and the ships. You can even be airborne. It covers land, sea, and air. I thought that would be a great opportunity, to use the Pirates of the Caribbean world.”

“Another reason was, because we wanted to have more realistic characters in the live action worlds — even more realistic than before — we thought that the Pirates of the Caribbean characters were unique enough in their details that we’d be able to re-create it as closely as possible with computer graphics.”

But why the decision to jump right into the third film?

“When you look at Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, one is the setup for the other,” Nomura continued. “If we went with the second movie, then the story kind of ends in the middle. It doesn’t really make sense for us, because we’d have to end it in the middle as well. With At World’s End, I felt like there’s more dynamic action to it. Just looking at it from that perspective, it’s a better fit. I also wanted to show the battle with Davey Jones and make it as dynamic as possible, and to do that it had to be the third movie. It was just an easier fit overall.”

With the knowledge of Kingdom Hearts III being the final chapter in this story arc, it makes sense why Nomura wouldn’t want to include the middle portion of a story without any proper way to tie it up in one game. Plus that Davey Jones battle sounds rather exciting!

Source: VentureBeat, KHInsider

Kingdom Hearts III is scheduled to release in Japan on January 25, 2019 and in North America and Europe on January 29, 2019 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.


About the Author

Raptorchan Raptorchan joined the Nova Crystallis team in 2017 after discovering her passion for writing and gaming journalism. She is not only an avid Square Enix fan, but also a cosplayer who loves collecting figurines, playing RPGs and making videos.

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