Run It Back: Kingdom Hearts 1.5 -- The Introduction and Destiny Islands
The title screen of Kingdom Hearts remains to be my favorite intros in all of games. Dearly Beloved is a theme which by now has been arranged, reprised, and remixed into about a dozen official versions. Itās a theme so iconic that rather than start fresh with an entirely new track for each new series entry, itās been repurposed as an overture of sorts -- every reimagining of the track can tell you something about tone, beats, and themes present in the game ahead. In this instance, the theme has a somewhat melancholy bass line married to a flittering melody. The rhythm goes in an unhurried circle arriving back unto itself, accompanied by the sounds of waves gently crashing onto the shore. Sora stands in a beautiful watercolor illustration, alone and looking out at the sea. Like most of the other parts of the game that I remember fondly, the elements come together in a way that just feels right. Sora is alone, and though his expression is relaxed you get the feeling that he isnāt quite happy either. Thereās a touch of mourning to the scene, which stands as a somewhat abrupt contrast to the expectations one would bring to a licensed Disney game in the early 2000ās -- something was different this time, and it was exciting!
The menu options are unfussy. You can start a new game or load a save (and in the case of the ReMIX versions, back out to the game select screen), and upon starting a new file youāre greeted with an intro cinematic. The cinematic starts with a beautifully rendered cloudscape that flashes the title in an unstylized, spartan, and serifād font, and fades into a scene with Sora voiced by Haley Joel Osmant narrating his thoughts. It feels a little surreal, with him floating in space eyes half closed, wondering aloud to himself if he can trust his grasp of reality anymore. It sets the tone for the series, and places its production values front and center with a flashy cinematic delivering visuals well beyond what the hardware could deliver and professional Hollywood voice acting on par with what weād expect from a Disney production yet surpassing performances weād heard from up to that point. It also captures a certain angst that just resonated really well with 14 year old me. My stresses were piled high though I wouldnāt know to call them that at the time. I was just beginning to process some intense personal trauma that had occured very recently; national tragedy had struck the year before, with 9/11 and the G.W Bush Administration altering the course of American politics; and of course I was just entering high school, and all the baggage that brings along. Something about the way Sora saw himself falling from the sky, eyes closed and unable or unwilling to take control of his descent, resonated close and hard with me.
This is also the first time we hear the iconic Simple and Clean track, here as the -PlanitB Mix- with clubby vibe that marks the dramatic sweeps of the chorus have just a little more flair. The soundtrack to Kingdom Hearts was so good that it led to me hunting down a copy of the soundtrack at Tower Records. The craziest thing to me was that it had a domestic release (!) complete with the english (!!) versions of the Utada tracks and an unabridged, two-disc version of the soundtrack. Yoko Shimomura has since become a favorite composer of mine, to the point where Iād instantly recognized her work when I saw the first Final Fantasy XV trailer.
As a somewhat technical aside, The PS4 remaster runs at 60 frames per second, while the original ran at about 30. While the gameplay with look and act much smoother as a result, it is worth noting that the animation in the cutscenes has been keyed to 30fps resulting in a visual discontinuity when moving to and from cutscenes to live gameplay. Itās understandable, but it also shows the beginnings of what will be a recurring question with the remastered version of the game running on modern hardware: should the game be presented as the original was in 2002, and what should be modernized to make the game more akin to something of a remaster (or ReMIX in KH parlance) in 2013 then again in 2017. Although I recognize the sheer amount of work hours it would have taken to go back and essentially reanimate every cutscene in the game would border on absurd, it does give the impression that there was some work the developers and management at Square Enix were seemingly willing and unwilling to do in a re-presentation of the game -- this is not a no-holds-barred recreation of the original, nor is it quick and dirty supplanting of the original. Rather, itās something that lands in the world between, and Iāll be noting such seems as they occur to me.
The opening with the stained glass figures is still striking as ever, and the constant moody, cryptic narration sets the mysterious vibe well. Thereās a short sequence of actual gameplay that gives a brief tutorial of basic movement and attacking controls, then asks you with somewhat cryptic messages to essentially choose a build for your playthrough. I chose defense as my boosted stat in my original playthrough because of the way itās worded. āThe power of the guardian. Kindness to aid friends. A shield to repel all.ā Of course these were values that I was All Aboutā¢ but to be frank in later years when I discovered speedrunners and disgustingly destructive magic builds I became all about them, and would probably have never chosen Defense as a buffed stat in any of my playthroughs to begin with. Itās telling how effective the copy is when I still feel a pang of shame in sacrificing the shield as my default stat nerf.
The opening moments of gameplay on the Destiny Islands are totally unremarkable, and serve to highlight a coming weakness in the game -- namely, the clunky as hell platforming, with something of an identity crisis to come. It attempts to make stages interesting and fun by including varied elements of traversal and platforming, but the gameās unforgiving movement and jumping mechanics make it a difficult sell. With small ledges, an obtuse camera, finicky movement and facing requirements, a seeming lack of jump buffering and ledge forgiveness (more on that here https://www.patreon.com/posts/gamemaker-tips-14531948), getting precise movement out of Sora takes a whole lot of patience. Some of this will later be alleviated with Metroidvania-esque upgrades like a glide and a high jump, but running through the gameās platforming challenges with a vanilla Sora is tedious. Punishment for missing jumps can be harsh, reminiscent of Ratchet and Clankās Planet Novalis Waterworks where a single misstep would send you to the back of the line to redo an entire sequence.
Thereās something kind of cool and again telling in the way the tides are rendered on the beach. Theyāre GIF-y, cycling between a few frames of canned sea foam animation. Out of place as they may look running natively on a Playstation 4 in 2018, the way the gentle ebb and flow are rendered serve as a quaint reminder of the hardware that served the original entry -- itās something of a momento mori for the videogame age.
The cave/secluded room on Destiny Islands has a bunch of really cool chalk drawings that I recommend you check out. Some of them seem to be of elements to come in the series, like the royal castle, starry adventures, and what even appears to be a Donald and Goofy. Weather intentional markers of the seriesā now apparent time traveling and mysticism shenanigans or just fun little easter eggs for attentive players using the first person view function, itās still a nice touch.
After some tedious gathering missions meant to familiarize you with the controls, Soraās weighty movement, and some minor characters, the meat of the story begins to reveal itself. The introduction of the trio of Kairi, Sora, and Riku is mostly to the point -- Sora is excitable, smiley, and kind of a bag of rocks; Riku is intent on accompishing his goal of leaving the islands, seemingly in spite of the costs; and Kairi is kind if somewhat mischievous. Thereās something of a love triangle painted between the three which serves to further drive their division in the coming cataclysm.
This is (to my knowledge) the only time the parents of Sora, Kairi, and Riku are even briefly acknowledged in the series. Thereās a quick and disembodied line about dinner being ready at Soraās house, and Kairi only briefly mentions family as the island is being torn apart from within. Itās kind of weird and maybe telling that Nomura and company werenāt sure how the game was going to do and what kind of future it may or may not have had coming. Itās a weird appendage to the series that seems impossible not to acknowledge.
And with that, the trio are sucked into the abyss, we get a glimpse of King Mickeyās castle, Riku in what weāll later discover is Hollow Bastion, and Donald and Goofy are introduced. The story is told from and omniscient, cross-cutting point of view and I think it works for the most part. There are a lot of threads to keep track of, with characters weāre given lots of reasons to care about. In a game where the player character is one of a group of protagonists, each thematically and literally lost and in search of something, it creates a bigger payoff in dramatic tension to see them criss cross and near miss in pursuit of one another.
Next time, weāll visit Traverse Town and discuss itās soothing, soft-porn sax track at the crossroads of every world.
