Don’t count on seeing more Final Fantasy characters in Kingdom Hearts 4

Back in the day, gamers were talking about this hot new RPG which combined Final Fantasy and Disney characters. It was wild! You’d get Cloud Strife and Goofy in the same battle. Imagine that! What a novelty.

Over time, though, the Kingdom Hearts franchise slowly became less about Final Fantasy mash-ups, and more about its own original cast of characters. Sora took center stage, and cameos from the Final Fantasy series slowly became less prevalent as the mainline games (and countless sequels) released.

It culminated in Kingdom Hearts 3, which barely had any significant Final Fantasy cameos at all (untile the Re:Mind DLC). If you were expecting that to change with the next entry – the recently revealed Kingdom Hearts 4 – you’re likely going to be disappointed.

In an interview with Game Informer, series director Tetsuya Nomura acknowledged the lack of Final Fantasy characters in the RPG series and noted that, going forward, the company is going to ‘try and find a balance’ between the legacy characters and Kingdom Hearts’ own crew.

“A lot of fans are saying that Kingdom Hearts is this collaboration between Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters,” he explained to the site. “But I really feel like that’s not the basic concept of Kingdom Hearts; that’s not exactly what Kingdom Hearts is.”

Per Nomura, recognizable Final Fantasy characters were there to “lend a hand for everyone to get to know [the Kingdom Hearts] characters better.” Now that we know Sora et al via the games, that functionality is a little… redundant.

“When we released the first title, we had only a few original Kingdom Hearts characters,” Nomura continues. “When they were interacting with really well-known, beloved Disney characters, I felt nobody really knew these new characters, so it was harder for them to stand their ground just yet.”

So, will we see more FF characters in Kingdom Hearts 4? It doesn’t sound too likley.

“That’s something we definitely are thinking about,” Nomura posits. “But just with the sheer number of original characters that we have now, it’s hard to say what the exact balance is going to be and how it will play out in Kingdom Hearts 4.” That’ll please Alex; he’s been saying that the series needs to focus on its Disney worlds once more in order to really impress him.

If you’re eager to think about some of the mash-ups we could see in the series, you can take a look at our list of 10 inappropriate Disney-owned properties we want to see in Kingdom Hearts 4.