Kingdom Hearts director aiming to finally conclude 20-year story in next game

Many fans were disappointed when Kingdom Hearts 3 came to an end and failed to wrap up all of the plot threads that sprang to life two decades ago. Fortunately, it looks like Kingdom Hearts 4 will aim to fix that, with the intention of delivering “a story that will be completed”.

As part of the Kingdom Hearts 20th Anniversary celebrations, series director, Tetsuya Nomura, has been speaking with Japanese press about the series as a whole, as well as plans for Kingdom Hearts 4. Speaking with YoungJump, an offshoot of the famous Shonen Jump magazine, Nomura explained that with Kingdom Hearts 4, he's looking to finally wrap up the story so he can retire.

While some of the broad stroke events from the Kingdom Hearts franchise were planned all the way back in 2002, Nomura has admitted to needing to improvise in more recent titles. During the development of Kingdom Hearts 3, Nomura says he was already thinking about Kingdom Hearts 4, as well as potential future games.

However, with retirement now on the horizon for Nomura, he wants to ‘complete' the story in Kingdom Hearts 4. That doesn't mean there won't be more games in the future, but Nomura is going to wrap things up in the way he sees fit with this next release. As Kingdom Hearts uses a good number of Disney licenses, there is a lot of profit-sharing involved with sales of the game and merchandise. As a result, Square Enix may elect to not continue the series after Nomura is finished, in order to focus more resources on wholly owned IP.

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KitGuru Says: The Kingdom Hearts story is incredibly convoluted, in part due to the fact that major events are split between the main games and numerous spin-offs. With that in mind, it may even be a relief to some fans to see the series finally come to a conclusion.

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