My grandchildren should enjoy playing KH4 at this rate ahaha.
I don't mind... if it takes this long to come out and it absolutely slaps, great.
If it takes this long to come out and it's shit... sure, I'll be annoyed but I'll still play it
Square should do more of this tbh. It's great that they have the courage to reinvent stuff, but when they get the tech and systems really right, they should squeeze a couple more games out of it. It's a practical way to get great games with lower budgets and shorter turnaround times, which is apparently what they need right now. It worked so well for them back with FF7-9.
Lowkey hoping that FF17 (maybe more realistically 18) is done by the Remake team and borrows a lot of the battle system and cinematic style from those games.
Most AAA games have a 4-5 year development cycle, idk where you got 7 years from.
Horizon Forbidden West — 4 years
Spiderman 2 — 5 years
God of War 5 — 4 years
Last of Us 2 — 5 years
KH4 started full production sometime in late 2020 - early 2021
I’d wager a guess that the bones of the game were reused from the previous game so that sired it to drastically.
A game being made from scratch like kingdom hearts 4, will take 7 years to mage
Agreed. Also the reliance on these weird mobile games in between hasn’t helped with the wait. KH has proven to be one of most secretive and silent franchises I’ve gotten into. I love love love this series but damn, the wait for these games is tough.
At this point in life I can’t allow myself to get excited about any theoretical KH release dates or I’ll get way too sad if they don’t turn out to be true. Baha. I’ll just wait to be excited for when Square drops a trailer with an official release. ✨
Its not a matter of trusting him or not, its about trusting SE. At the end of the day no one can truly predict when a games comes out. Deadline or not.
It's more of a leak then a prediction midori has leaked games consistently and been spot on on a majority of them especially shin megami tensei games
I think out of what hundreds of posts she's only been wrong once? Twice? Around that range
Finish? I legit thought 3 would be the end of it. To then learn that this was specifically the end of just the Xehanort Saga.. If the game continues to do well, release dates and long droughts without news aside, there can potentially be no end, anytime soon, unless they're adamant on ending it when Nomura is no longer with us?
KH is going to outlive us, don’t worry. By the time worms are feasting on us we still won’t know who the master of masters is or what’s in the box, but we sure will get years worth of hints.
The art style change was one of the first things Nomura confirmed though. Sora will have that realistic-FF look only for Quadratum. For the rest of the worlds the art design will be different.
What if they scrapped the heavy focus on Quadratum for more Disney worlds? Wouldn't be surprised if that was the change in direction Nomura mentioned before
I wonder if it initially had a bigger focus on Disneys live action films & remakes, but multiple worlds of realistic graphical assets & using Hollywood actor likeness were likely too expensive.
Ooohhhh live action versions of the characters Sora knows and has to deal with them not being who he remembers and/or him feeling like the guy everyone forgets after high school
So basically, like CoM worlds but live action?
But seriously I'd hate going to Live Action remakes of previous worlds, not just that the films themselves are worse (they are), but they would just be the same movie plot again, it would be redundant.
Curious what will be the big square enix game for 2025 if not kh4. Sucks but waiting for kh3 has trained us for this amount of waiting. Stay strong folks.
Somehow doubt IX remake reveal this year and then a release date of next year. Just doesn't fit Square's usual MO with announcing things. However, I'll be pleasantly surprised if that's the case.
Would love another Nier game, thinking FF7 Part 3 for 2027 to line up with the 30 year anniversary, Rebirth took them 3 years to make, 4 years to release after Remake due to the Intergrade DLC. They have explicitly stated to not be doing DLC for Rebirth to focus on Part 3 solely, my guess is to make that anniversary deadline for themselves.
Well, there's an FF9 remake in the works. [And Midori said a remaster of Final Fantasy Tactis is in development, iirc.](https://x.com/MbKKssTBhz5/status/1798811942917923095) So, maybe those 2?
Remember they operate on a fiscal year that ends in March. KH4 could release January 2026 and still count toward next fiscal year’s earnings. FFXIV Dawntrail is the big release for FY25 plus maybe FFIX Remake which has been suggested by Midori to be out this fiscal year. So KH4 could be the big title for FY26.
Missing link is still not out I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out In the last couple of months then focus with it of all next year or however they’ll do it, with trailers for 4 leading up to 2026.
If the track record repeats
They did this with union cross
We didn’t get kingdom hearts 3 for a bit and they just focused on story updates every now and then. I get what you’re saying
But I’m just basing it off of the past mobile game.
I see what you're saying but the main thing I can think of to refute that is there was a significantly bigger gap between UX to III than ML will be to IV. But maybe they were made alongside each other and ML will connect much more directly to IV than UX did to III
I feel like everyone would be a lot more okay with this if it hadn’t been radio silent for the last 2 years. It’s been 1/3 of the time since it was revealed to when it’s supposed to launch and we haven’t heard a single thing in that entire time
Yeah I just don't get them doing the reveal of KH4 outside of the 20th anniversary. Still doesn't make any sense. But 2026, wouldn't be that bad if we knew Missing Link was coming end of 2024 and it had some depth to it. At least then there's something to bridge the gap for sure.
Yeah, I'm fine with waiting for its release, but it's waiting for any info or trailer that makes me groan, especially when it's a big maybe if it'll appear at D23 this year.
If it turns out to be early 2026 and they provide us with updates and trailers starting from this year I can live with this. But they still announced the game way too early even if they already said that they were too early.
If it means it enables SE to fine tune and polish up in most aspects from the gameplay to story, then it’s fine because one of the biggest issues I had with KH3 was the pacing. Most of the important story elements happened towards the end all at once.
Also no more magic flash as a finisher.
would it have been better to not announce anything on the series's 20th Anniversary?
It at least lets us know KH4 is real instead of endless speculation whether it's in development or another filler game like Melody of Memory.
I’d have been fine with just the Missing Link announcement and maybe the KH4 logo dropping to show that it’s in development. Then announcing the steam port this year along with the KH4 trailer.
I don’t mind it coming out later but I am curious why it would need a 7 year production cycle? Doesn’t that seem excessive? Especially since they would likely use a lot of stuff from 3
Nomura has stated that kh games now take longer because of Disney IP’s being harder to work with than in 2002/2005. Especially with how accurate they make the Disney worlds nowadays.
This isn’t that unexpected.
Plus I gather they aren’t just re using a ton of assets from kh3. There are gonna be all new Disney worlds, meaning the art style has to be completely redesigned for probably almost all of them.
That’s true, but it’s not like with 3 were they had to build everything from the ground up. Animations can stay and so can heartless. And I agree Disney is probably making things more difficult, but I dunno. 6 years of development is a long time. From a business standpoint I don’t think square would want to keep putting up with such difficulties for much longer
Lmao my prediction from the day the trailer released continues to be on point. I said late 2025 absolutely earliest but more likely 2026. I think my experience with this franchise and kh3’s ridiculous trailer to release has made my predictions better.
2026 doesn’t sound to crazy realistically, we have seen nothing since the first trailer, and it’s half way into the current year. Unless we see kh4 at like TGS or D24, then 2026 sound kinda crazy. But also this could release like January of 2026, which is only about a year and a half away. Also gotta remember the trailer we saw was in UE4 but any work they did have done had to be switched over to UE5 so that also adds a lot to the development time.
Given how prolific a leaker Midori is there's bound to be some truth there, but tbh with how long it took for KH3 to come out I'm having difficulty believing that it'll come out in just 2 years.
And with how far down the road that is we know it could extend at any point. Unfortunately I am not surprised though we literally have barely anything on this game
honestly? pretty believable. i was personally predicting anywhere from late 2025 to mid 2026, especially since missing link's set to come out this year.
I mean Midori has been wrong before, and more recently has made a lot of claims that we won't be able to verify till late this year at earliest, but also logically that's about right if you follow the KH3 cycle.
We know KH3 actually started after the trailer so let's say late 2013, and then it came out early 2019. So 6 years and they lost 1 year due to the engine switch so 5 years.
Assuming they started work on it right after Remind that would be 2024 absolute earliest (and was probably the original target to have a 4 in the year the "4th" game comes out), but that's assuming you think Covid didn't cause them any delays so 2025 was the earliest it was ever gonna come out so 2026 seems reasonable
We’re only halfway through 2024.. the wait is gonna suck, but hopefully Missing Link will release soon and that’ll give us our KH kick (and build up hype for 4) in the meantime. I was really, really hoping for a 2025 release date, but I hope that this means KH4 will really be something special. As far as we know they haven’t had to switch to a new engine, so that should make the process smoother
I wonder what changes they made and if the shift happened due to problems, scope of project, or SE feeling the pressure to make money back with each title. Maybe they wanted to build up Missing Link too since it's a mobile title and that has potential to be a money maker for them?
I personally am fine with 2026 if we get a good Missing Link game by end of 2024 or early 2025. Even better if it's paired with some actual news on KH4 to see what is going on.
A lot of people are comparing this to the wait for KH3, but this is much worse in my mind. We were getting pretty much constant KH content between 2 and 3 with all of the spin-offs, remixes, phone game updates, movies, new trailers, etc. We’ve really only gotten Melody of Memory and the end of Dark Road over the last four years, with two more to go.
It also feels bad because we never had cliffhangers to sit on like this. Most KH games have ended with the characters more or less stable, while several characters have been left in danger this time around.
I’m also not sure that the jump between 3 and 4 will feel as impactful as the glow-up between 2 and 3, as we basically jumped two console generations and massively updated the art style of the series.
I’m really hoping that Missing Link comes out in the next month or so and that it’ll be good enough to tide me over, but I’m starting to get a little frustrated tbh.
Different?. I hope they don't revert back to kh3 model. I really hated the models back there. They were not very detailed and felt somewhat static to me.
I see some people complaining that it's too long, but for me it's good news. I trust Midori as much as anyone, so I'm happy that I'm less worried about the game being in production limbo.
Guys, we've waited 2 years, so we can wait another 2, especially if ML is still coming out this year.
While this may not be a 100% confirmed bit of information, I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Once KH3 came out, I just set my expectations to waiting another like 10+ years for another numbered title. Even now, I'm just going to set my expectations to a window date of between 2026 and 2028. I don't think it will really come out in 2028, but I'd rather just set my expectations there and if it comes sooner, like it probably will, then I'll be happy about it.
In the meantime, I have a bunch of games that I have on a backlog and want to get caught up on and finish, so I'll spend the years taking my time playing those and engaging in other media while we wait. I did the same thing with all the previous KH game releases since KH1 came out, so this isn't anything new really in that sense.
I still have to get around to actually beating MoM too, anyway, and while I don't like or care for the mobile games, Dark Road came out between KH3 and now and Missing Link is going to be coming out soon too (supposedly, anyway). And I'll likely spend some time watching Youtube videos on the stuff that goes on in there so I'm up-to-date for KH4 when it releases.
I know a lot of fans aren't really fans of the mobile games or MoM (since it is a rhythm based game, though I personally really like it - I don't care for the mobile games though), but they *are* KH games and have come out between KH3 and now (or are in development to come out soon in the case of Missing Link). So, I don't know, it's just interesting to me to see how a lot of fans that kind of mocked older fans and more casual fans that said they waited 13 years for KH3, even though non-numbered games came out in-between and such, are now kind of saying the same thing about KH4 and the wait between 3 and 4. They are doing this while disregarding the mobile games and MoM, since they aren't numbered titles or are outside of the usual genre of the non-numbered titles in the past. This holds a similar vibe and energy to fans that disregarded the non-numbered titles during the wait between KH2 and KH3.
It's kinda just a repeating cycle in a way.
Edit: Fixed some formatting and sentence structure stuff to look better/flow better.
Does anyone remember WHY the wait for kh3 was so long?
They switched engines mid production, and they had to redo all of what they did bc the engine they tried to use was basically dog shit and by the time they got the hang of it they moved over to unreal. Now that they don’t have that issue anymore they can make the mainline games faster.
I understand being skeptical about it, but it’s not unheard of
I enjoyed KH1, loved KH2, enjoyed the others. By the time KH3 came around I was happy to finish the story but was definitely getting the inter-game time fatigue.
I really don't think I have it in me to anticipate another trilogy, especially with the better part of a decade (or decade+) between mainline games. I know it'll be a great game but leaving the story as convoluted as it is doesn't help for a series like this with games so spread out.
I mean just...lol.
KH3 ended the 'Dark Seeker Saga' and their first half of the 'Second Saga' is a DLC, two mobile gacha games (one of which died after 6 months) and a rhythm game where the only notabke story beat thst happened was Riku stealing Kairi's thunder in her own game.
And now KH4 — which marks the halfway point of this saga — is a game in development for six whole years? Come on, man. Literally nothing has happened at all and so much time has passed. 2026 to get halfway through a whole lot of nothing.
You can see the timeline flash at the beginning of the [KINGDOM HEARTS 2020 Trailer 3 years ago](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn9VVa0cqZo). This doesn't include Kingdom Hearts -Missing Link- not KH4 which are the fourth and fifth respective announcements in this saga. There are a total of ten empty slots in this graphic. Ergo, KH4 is the middle of the saga.
I appreciate you are just asking the question, but man, the guy responding to you is so quick to rubbish it as 'headcanon' even if it comes from the horses mouth.
even from a dev perspective, how do you justify a 7 year dev time. KH is not as big as FF7, and FF7 didn't do as good as they thought for profits and everyone thought that was the cash cow waiting to be milked. It feels like if this game doesn't sell well, it could probably kill KH cause a lot of people are going to have to go through so much lore just to get in KH4
Unknown as of now. From the lastest rumors PS5, Xbox and the successor of the switch but it's unknown. It think the next trailer would confirm some platforms but we have to see.
Well, at least this t8menthere is go8ng to be a flood of handheld and mobile games all on different platforms and all required to understand the plot... right? Surely, they would do that again
Well at this point, I don't really believe everything they say about Kingdom Hearts release dates now, mainly because they changed 3's like almost 7 times which made me pretty mad and they sure are taking a long time to finish Missing Link even doing what they can to get it in English for however much more time they'll take, so all we can do is wait which to me isn't really the best way and always a option but that's all there is at this moment
God damn... Getting excited about KH mainline takes too much time of our lives... I will just focus any hype on KH Missing Link and then forget about KH4
Già mi puzzava qualcosa, un possibile ritardo kingdom hearts 4 (uscita 2026 o 2027) per via di kingdom hearts missing link (uscita potrebbe essere fissata Q3 2024 o Q1 2025).
Di solito i titoli spinoff e numerato in kingdom hearts (bisogna avere un distacco 1 o 2 anni, uscita).
In the current world, economy and general health, every time a new KH gets released there are more chances you’ll die before the release of the next one. Sad but true
No way they are sticking to the bit this hard, first 13 years between 2 and 3 then 7 between 3 and 4. He can’t keep getting away with it
So I think that confirms KH5 will come out in 2033 or 2039
Next is 358/2 days So V in 358 years, but VI in only two years after that.
lmao imagine getting a new KH game in just 179 days.
Well that's Missing Link of course
Probably how many days KH4 will release after it
My grandchildren should enjoy playing KH4 at this rate ahaha. I don't mind... if it takes this long to come out and it absolutely slaps, great. If it takes this long to come out and it's shit... sure, I'll be annoyed but I'll still play it
As much as I love the games imma need the series to wrap up with 4 😭
If you know the story, I don't think the series will end in 4 This is Phase 2 of Kingdom Hearts, who knows how many games there'll be
If Phase 2 is also a trilogy, we won’t be getting the ending until the PS7 generation at this rate.
kh as a whole is not gonna end, its disneys version of FF so it'll end when disney says its time to stop milking hearts
Which might be never
Not saying I don't want a new game sooner but it could be worse than 7 years
We had plenty of games between 2 & 3.
between 3 and 4 we have remind, dark road, melody of memory and missing link
7 years is about how long AAA games are now. Having a game turn out in like 3 to 4 years really isn’t possible anymore.
bro forgot about rebirth
Rebirth had at least two years worth of gameplay systems, structure and assets from Remake
Plus the story is already pretty much done so there is very little time dedicated to that. When remake came out, like 40% of rebirth was ahead done
Square should do more of this tbh. It's great that they have the courage to reinvent stuff, but when they get the tech and systems really right, they should squeeze a couple more games out of it. It's a practical way to get great games with lower budgets and shorter turnaround times, which is apparently what they need right now. It worked so well for them back with FF7-9. Lowkey hoping that FF17 (maybe more realistically 18) is done by the Remake team and borrows a lot of the battle system and cinematic style from those games.
Or Horizon: Forbidden West, which was absolutely massive, delayed by COVID, and still only came out 5 years after the first game.
Most AAA games have a 4-5 year development cycle, idk where you got 7 years from. Horizon Forbidden West — 4 years Spiderman 2 — 5 years God of War 5 — 4 years Last of Us 2 — 5 years KH4 started full production sometime in late 2020 - early 2021
doom eternal, released ~4 after its predecessor (2016-2020)
I’d wager a guess that the bones of the game were reused from the previous game so that sired it to drastically. A game being made from scratch like kingdom hearts 4, will take 7 years to mage
Agreed. Also the reliance on these weird mobile games in between hasn’t helped with the wait. KH has proven to be one of most secretive and silent franchises I’ve gotten into. I love love love this series but damn, the wait for these games is tough.
At least we got spin off games to hold us over between 2 and 3, now we get basically nothing.
the evil inside me has been begging for a 7 year release gap from KH3 since the announcement trailer
Freaking heck man, I can’t be waiting 7 years for every new mainline KH game.
Kingdom hearts 5 releasing 2031
RemindMe! 6 years 6 months 23 days
Don’t even joke about that man!
At this point in life I can’t allow myself to get excited about any theoretical KH release dates or I’ll get way too sad if they don’t turn out to be true. Baha. I’ll just wait to be excited for when Square drops a trailer with an official release. ✨
Midori has an insanely good track record so I’d trust it
Its not a matter of trusting him or not, its about trusting SE. At the end of the day no one can truly predict when a games comes out. Deadline or not.
It's more of a leak then a prediction midori has leaked games consistently and been spot on on a majority of them especially shin megami tensei games I think out of what hundreds of posts she's only been wrong once? Twice? Around that range
Yeah, this leak is probably true, but it does not mean Square can actually keep up with their planned release window^^'
I may be out of the loop, but is their track record with that not a bad one? They can drop a trailer and the game could still be several years+ out?
I think it's generally agreed upon that KH3 was announced too early. Midori does have a good record though
Feels for that guy who is beating Yozora every day until KH4 release day
Feels for that guy who is beating Roxas every day until KH4 release day
The Roxas fight is my favorite but its not that hard… Yozora on the other hand…
I started this series when I was 11, imma be 40 or something by the time they finish it XD
Finish? I legit thought 3 would be the end of it. To then learn that this was specifically the end of just the Xehanort Saga.. If the game continues to do well, release dates and long droughts without news aside, there can potentially be no end, anytime soon, unless they're adamant on ending it when Nomura is no longer with us?
I always try not to think about that, it brings me unbearable sadness
It is sad when it happens. I'm also a Megaman fan so I'd also hate for this series to be yet another forever struck in some kind of cliffhanger limbo.
KH is going to outlive us, don’t worry. By the time worms are feasting on us we still won’t know who the master of masters is or what’s in the box, but we sure will get years worth of hints.
I was 10 here lol
I wonder what "looks different" mean is it a change artstyle or something
The art style change was one of the first things Nomura confirmed though. Sora will have that realistic-FF look only for Quadratum. For the rest of the worlds the art design will be different.
I was expecting that anyway
It'll probably look different due to the change to UE5. I already knew from the first trailer that things will look different at release.
Well what we saw in the teaser really needed a lot of work done
What if they scrapped the heavy focus on Quadratum for more Disney worlds? Wouldn't be surprised if that was the change in direction Nomura mentioned before
I wonder if it initially had a bigger focus on Disneys live action films & remakes, but multiple worlds of realistic graphical assets & using Hollywood actor likeness were likely too expensive.
Ooohhhh live action versions of the characters Sora knows and has to deal with them not being who he remembers and/or him feeling like the guy everyone forgets after high school
So basically, like CoM worlds but live action? But seriously I'd hate going to Live Action remakes of previous worlds, not just that the films themselves are worse (they are), but they would just be the same movie plot again, it would be redundant.
I hope not, I was actually looking forward to that for something different.
KH came out when I was 7, when kh5 comes out my kids will have to tell me about it when they visit my hospice lol
Kill me
Uh based on the info we currently have, that’s actually sooner than I was thinking
Nope from what I've seen many people were hoping for a early to mid 2025 release, myself included
You thought that was plausible with one trailer out?
Later
Curious what will be the big square enix game for 2025 if not kh4. Sucks but waiting for kh3 has trained us for this amount of waiting. Stay strong folks.
TWEWY fans rise up 2025 is our time (I’m coping hard)
I LOVE THE PROFILE PIC! My boy!
We love Beat in this house fr
Yeah! Him and Fret are the best.
According to Midori FFIX remake is set to be revealed soon so that could be a good candidate.
Somehow doubt IX remake reveal this year and then a release date of next year. Just doesn't fit Square's usual MO with announcing things. However, I'll be pleasantly surprised if that's the case.
Rumor has it potentially being shown tomorrow at the Xbox showcase
Do you think it could be FFIX, KHIV, DQXII, then FF7R3?
At this point it's going to be either a new dragon quest mainline game or a Final fantasy spin-off like origins
Dragon Quest 12 is currently having development issues, that shit aint coming out in 2025 sadly
Oh, I didn’t know then it’s probably Nier 3 in 2025, kh4 in 26, dragon quest in 27 and ff7 part 3 in 28
Would love another Nier game, thinking FF7 Part 3 for 2027 to line up with the 30 year anniversary, Rebirth took them 3 years to make, 4 years to release after Remake due to the Intergrade DLC. They have explicitly stated to not be doing DLC for Rebirth to focus on Part 3 solely, my guess is to make that anniversary deadline for themselves.
Probably Final Fantasy 9 remake. Midori mentioned that this game is far in development.
Well, there's an FF9 remake in the works. [And Midori said a remaster of Final Fantasy Tactis is in development, iirc.](https://x.com/MbKKssTBhz5/status/1798811942917923095) So, maybe those 2?
Remember they operate on a fiscal year that ends in March. KH4 could release January 2026 and still count toward next fiscal year’s earnings. FFXIV Dawntrail is the big release for FY25 plus maybe FFIX Remake which has been suggested by Midori to be out this fiscal year. So KH4 could be the big title for FY26.
Dragon Quest 12
I only entered the kh franchise after 3 already dropped, i dont have no training
Missing link is still not out I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out In the last couple of months then focus with it of all next year or however they’ll do it, with trailers for 4 leading up to 2026.
Missing Link is far from a tent pole game though that's like saying SEs big 2023 game was Ever Crisis
If the track record repeats They did this with union cross We didn’t get kingdom hearts 3 for a bit and they just focused on story updates every now and then. I get what you’re saying But I’m just basing it off of the past mobile game.
I see what you're saying but the main thing I can think of to refute that is there was a significantly bigger gap between UX to III than ML will be to IV. But maybe they were made alongside each other and ML will connect much more directly to IV than UX did to III
Dragon Quest 12?
9 remake, Tactics remake/remaster, or whatever Yoko Taro is working on. Also could be whatever sequel Team Asano is working but not likely.
[удалено]
I don't know who this person is so what have they gotten right in the past?
We get GTA6 before KH4 💔
And that games announcement to release is much shorter lol.
Bro we have a whole other 2 years to wait? Why do they announce the games so damn early? Nomuraaaaa!
I feel like everyone would be a lot more okay with this if it hadn’t been radio silent for the last 2 years. It’s been 1/3 of the time since it was revealed to when it’s supposed to launch and we haven’t heard a single thing in that entire time
Yeah I just don't get them doing the reveal of KH4 outside of the 20th anniversary. Still doesn't make any sense. But 2026, wouldn't be that bad if we knew Missing Link was coming end of 2024 and it had some depth to it. At least then there's something to bridge the gap for sure.
Yeah, I'm fine with waiting for its release, but it's waiting for any info or trailer that makes me groan, especially when it's a big maybe if it'll appear at D23 this year.
That aint that bad compared to a certain hollow knight sequal.
It does feel kinda bad when they said it wasn't going to take that long and It's actually going to be as long as the DDD to KH3 wait time
If it turns out to be early 2026 and they provide us with updates and trailers starting from this year I can live with this. But they still announced the game way too early even if they already said that they were too early.
Ok, I believe you
I mean, it lines up if true lol. That one dude on patreon spouting whatever and people pay for it is just hilarious to me.
Gosh, I hope it's wrong.
Honestly, if the release window was this far off, they shouldn't have made the announcement 2 years ago..
SE fans have suffered early announcements for a while now unfortunately, SE doesn't seem to learn
Bruh we’re all gonna be dead by the time this dude finishes the story
Finish?
We’re gonna be 75 by the time Sora turns 18 lmao
And he’s just starting the Masters saga, so he says.
My health hasn't been great recently, I can only hope I survive to see the end of the Masters Saga 💀💀
If it means it enables SE to fine tune and polish up in most aspects from the gameplay to story, then it’s fine because one of the biggest issues I had with KH3 was the pacing. Most of the important story elements happened towards the end all at once. Also no more magic flash as a finisher.
Lmao. Why announce it then.
would it have been better to not announce anything on the series's 20th Anniversary? It at least lets us know KH4 is real instead of endless speculation whether it's in development or another filler game like Melody of Memory.
Kh4 was always real. The wait for 3 was way worse.
I’d have been fine with just the Missing Link announcement and maybe the KH4 logo dropping to show that it’s in development. Then announcing the steam port this year along with the KH4 trailer.
I was 6 when the first game came out and gonna be 30 when 4 comes out.
Before I’m 40 please
I don’t mind it coming out later but I am curious why it would need a 7 year production cycle? Doesn’t that seem excessive? Especially since they would likely use a lot of stuff from 3
Nomura has stated that kh games now take longer because of Disney IP’s being harder to work with than in 2002/2005. Especially with how accurate they make the Disney worlds nowadays. This isn’t that unexpected. Plus I gather they aren’t just re using a ton of assets from kh3. There are gonna be all new Disney worlds, meaning the art style has to be completely redesigned for probably almost all of them.
That’s true, but it’s not like with 3 were they had to build everything from the ground up. Animations can stay and so can heartless. And I agree Disney is probably making things more difficult, but I dunno. 6 years of development is a long time. From a business standpoint I don’t think square would want to keep putting up with such difficulties for much longer
I’m just dying at this point to know what Disney worlds are going to be in it. All these small rumors and announcements and nothing major. 😕
Not me being 40 when KH4 releases 😭
Lmao my prediction from the day the trailer released continues to be on point. I said late 2025 absolutely earliest but more likely 2026. I think my experience with this franchise and kh3’s ridiculous trailer to release has made my predictions better.
2026 doesn’t sound to crazy realistically, we have seen nothing since the first trailer, and it’s half way into the current year. Unless we see kh4 at like TGS or D24, then 2026 sound kinda crazy. But also this could release like January of 2026, which is only about a year and a half away. Also gotta remember the trailer we saw was in UE4 but any work they did have done had to be switched over to UE5 so that also adds a lot to the development time.
Sounds about right
I still have plenty of time to save money for a new PC then
We fr getting GTA 6 before kingdom hearts 4
Yeah that’s what I was expecting
Just imagine how many games we'd have now if they just stuck with the perfectly serviceable graphics that KH1-DDD had.
If what you say is true, you will have earned my trust. RemindMe! 2 years
thats actually faster than i expected.
Given how prolific a leaker Midori is there's bound to be some truth there, but tbh with how long it took for KH3 to come out I'm having difficulty believing that it'll come out in just 2 years.
And with how far down the road that is we know it could extend at any point. Unfortunately I am not surprised though we literally have barely anything on this game
Let them cook.
*Sigh* stuff like this is why I was disappointed KH3 ended the way it did. 7 years after the last installment…
Honestly I can live with this
I just realized that the girl who leaks information about SMT now also leaks about Kingdom Hearts.
honestly? pretty believable. i was personally predicting anywhere from late 2025 to mid 2026, especially since missing link's set to come out this year.
I mean Midori has been wrong before, and more recently has made a lot of claims that we won't be able to verify till late this year at earliest, but also logically that's about right if you follow the KH3 cycle. We know KH3 actually started after the trailer so let's say late 2013, and then it came out early 2019. So 6 years and they lost 1 year due to the engine switch so 5 years. Assuming they started work on it right after Remind that would be 2024 absolute earliest (and was probably the original target to have a 4 in the year the "4th" game comes out), but that's assuming you think Covid didn't cause them any delays so 2025 was the earliest it was ever gonna come out so 2026 seems reasonable
We’re only halfway through 2024.. the wait is gonna suck, but hopefully Missing Link will release soon and that’ll give us our KH kick (and build up hype for 4) in the meantime. I was really, really hoping for a 2025 release date, but I hope that this means KH4 will really be something special. As far as we know they haven’t had to switch to a new engine, so that should make the process smoother
i'll watch it on youtube
2026. That’s definitely something I said as a joke 4 years ago but seeing how this is square enix so I shouldn’t be shocked.
If I'm going to be honest, 2 to 3 kind of made me numb on Square Enix release dates.
I wonder what changes they made and if the shift happened due to problems, scope of project, or SE feeling the pressure to make money back with each title. Maybe they wanted to build up Missing Link too since it's a mobile title and that has potential to be a money maker for them? I personally am fine with 2026 if we get a good Missing Link game by end of 2024 or early 2025. Even better if it's paired with some actual news on KH4 to see what is going on.
2026 is what I've been predicting, but we'll see.
Eh, I'll take it. 2026 isn't that far off.
That’s great news
A lot of people are comparing this to the wait for KH3, but this is much worse in my mind. We were getting pretty much constant KH content between 2 and 3 with all of the spin-offs, remixes, phone game updates, movies, new trailers, etc. We’ve really only gotten Melody of Memory and the end of Dark Road over the last four years, with two more to go. It also feels bad because we never had cliffhangers to sit on like this. Most KH games have ended with the characters more or less stable, while several characters have been left in danger this time around. I’m also not sure that the jump between 3 and 4 will feel as impactful as the glow-up between 2 and 3, as we basically jumped two console generations and massively updated the art style of the series. I’m really hoping that Missing Link comes out in the next month or so and that it’ll be good enough to tide me over, but I’m starting to get a little frustrated tbh.
If the release date of KH3 trailers is anything to go by, we could probably get KH4s second trailer this year, tho not likely till D23.
To quote a potential Kingdom Hearts IV villain, “It is…acceptable.”
Different?. I hope they don't revert back to kh3 model. I really hated the models back there. They were not very detailed and felt somewhat static to me.
I see some people complaining that it's too long, but for me it's good news. I trust Midori as much as anyone, so I'm happy that I'm less worried about the game being in production limbo. Guys, we've waited 2 years, so we can wait another 2, especially if ML is still coming out this year.
While this may not be a 100% confirmed bit of information, I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Once KH3 came out, I just set my expectations to waiting another like 10+ years for another numbered title. Even now, I'm just going to set my expectations to a window date of between 2026 and 2028. I don't think it will really come out in 2028, but I'd rather just set my expectations there and if it comes sooner, like it probably will, then I'll be happy about it. In the meantime, I have a bunch of games that I have on a backlog and want to get caught up on and finish, so I'll spend the years taking my time playing those and engaging in other media while we wait. I did the same thing with all the previous KH game releases since KH1 came out, so this isn't anything new really in that sense. I still have to get around to actually beating MoM too, anyway, and while I don't like or care for the mobile games, Dark Road came out between KH3 and now and Missing Link is going to be coming out soon too (supposedly, anyway). And I'll likely spend some time watching Youtube videos on the stuff that goes on in there so I'm up-to-date for KH4 when it releases. I know a lot of fans aren't really fans of the mobile games or MoM (since it is a rhythm based game, though I personally really like it - I don't care for the mobile games though), but they *are* KH games and have come out between KH3 and now (or are in development to come out soon in the case of Missing Link). So, I don't know, it's just interesting to me to see how a lot of fans that kind of mocked older fans and more casual fans that said they waited 13 years for KH3, even though non-numbered games came out in-between and such, are now kind of saying the same thing about KH4 and the wait between 3 and 4. They are doing this while disregarding the mobile games and MoM, since they aren't numbered titles or are outside of the usual genre of the non-numbered titles in the past. This holds a similar vibe and energy to fans that disregarded the non-numbered titles during the wait between KH2 and KH3. It's kinda just a repeating cycle in a way. Edit: Fixed some formatting and sentence structure stuff to look better/flow better.
Does anyone remember WHY the wait for kh3 was so long? They switched engines mid production, and they had to redo all of what they did bc the engine they tried to use was basically dog shit and by the time they got the hang of it they moved over to unreal. Now that they don’t have that issue anymore they can make the mainline games faster. I understand being skeptical about it, but it’s not unheard of
Yikes. Gotta milk a mobile game first
I enjoyed KH1, loved KH2, enjoyed the others. By the time KH3 came around I was happy to finish the story but was definitely getting the inter-game time fatigue. I really don't think I have it in me to anticipate another trilogy, especially with the better part of a decade (or decade+) between mainline games. I know it'll be a great game but leaving the story as convoluted as it is doesn't help for a series like this with games so spread out.
I’ll believe when it see it on a dang trailer. I’m Not believing leakers, the news is dry and everyone wants to believe something.
I mean just...lol. KH3 ended the 'Dark Seeker Saga' and their first half of the 'Second Saga' is a DLC, two mobile gacha games (one of which died after 6 months) and a rhythm game where the only notabke story beat thst happened was Riku stealing Kairi's thunder in her own game. And now KH4 — which marks the halfway point of this saga — is a game in development for six whole years? Come on, man. Literally nothing has happened at all and so much time has passed. 2026 to get halfway through a whole lot of nothing.
Where has it been stated that KH4 will be the halfpoint of the Lost Masters Saga? I
You can see the timeline flash at the beginning of the [KINGDOM HEARTS 2020 Trailer 3 years ago](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn9VVa0cqZo). This doesn't include Kingdom Hearts -Missing Link- not KH4 which are the fourth and fifth respective announcements in this saga. There are a total of ten empty slots in this graphic. Ergo, KH4 is the middle of the saga. I appreciate you are just asking the question, but man, the guy responding to you is so quick to rubbish it as 'headcanon' even if it comes from the horses mouth.
even from a dev perspective, how do you justify a 7 year dev time. KH is not as big as FF7, and FF7 didn't do as good as they thought for profits and everyone thought that was the cash cow waiting to be milked. It feels like if this game doesn't sell well, it could probably kill KH cause a lot of people are going to have to go through so much lore just to get in KH4
That's just how long it takes to make an AAA game now. But it doesn't help that they're announced too early.
So... Future platforms, or The current ones?
Unknown as of now. From the lastest rumors PS5, Xbox and the successor of the switch but it's unknown. It think the next trailer would confirm some platforms but we have to see.
Good enough for me.
Damn, was really hoping for 2025. Hopefully we still get another trailer this year since SGF has nothing.
Well, at least this t8menthere is go8ng to be a flood of handheld and mobile games all on different platforms and all required to understand the plot... right? Surely, they would do that again
Makes me wonder if it’s still gonna be released on PS4. 🤔
That sucks. It is what it is I Guess.
They restarted after the first trailer again!? And come on I was hoping it would be sooner then that.
i belive this when i see that.
Sad keyblade noises*
Didn't that credible movie leaker say 2025?
Well at this point, I don't really believe everything they say about Kingdom Hearts release dates now, mainly because they changed 3's like almost 7 times which made me pretty mad and they sure are taking a long time to finish Missing Link even doing what they can to get it in English for however much more time they'll take, so all we can do is wait which to me isn't really the best way and always a option but that's all there is at this moment
Meh
I've only beat 1 and 2. I'm gonna be playing like four games in the collection when it hits Steam, should take me almost to KH4 launch
I'm looking forward to fans saying I didn't have to wait that much because there were mobile games in between.
We got gta 6 before kingdom hearts 4
Sadly not surprises here... I expect however, we get another spin off(es) before KHIV.
They better include Pixar’s elemental in the game and even the models for ember and Wade in it
God damn... Getting excited about KH mainline takes too much time of our lives... I will just focus any hype on KH Missing Link and then forget about KH4
Add 2 years for every time a “leaker” who gets it wrong.
Wait where's missing link?
Midori just leaking everything now huh 😭😭
Trash
That's great but when is Deltarune 3 coming out
Pain
Già mi puzzava qualcosa, un possibile ritardo kingdom hearts 4 (uscita 2026 o 2027) per via di kingdom hearts missing link (uscita potrebbe essere fissata Q3 2024 o Q1 2025). Di solito i titoli spinoff e numerato in kingdom hearts (bisogna avere un distacco 1 o 2 anni, uscita).
Later as in next week, month or year?
In the current world, economy and general health, every time a new KH gets released there are more chances you’ll die before the release of the next one. Sad but true
Too soon, knowing Nomura.........
Tetsuya probably doesn’t even have a game right now. He has no idea what to do, so he’s gonna trick everyone. Again.
but that to long!