'Kingdom Hearts 3' release date in 2017?

Kingdom Hearts

One thing that is yet to be revealed about "Kingdom Hearts 3" is its release date, leaving gamers in the dark when Sora's next adventure takes off. Thankfully, some folks involved in the game have dropped some clues about this missing puzzle piece, albeit small.

Quinton Flynn, who provided the voices of characters Axel and Lea in the previous "Kingdom Hearts" games, recently tweeted that he is still "waiting and hoping" to be part of the latest iteration of action role-playing game, implying that casting is still ongoing.

Design & Trend points out that interestingly, at least some of the voice work is complete with Jim Cummings, who voiced "Winnie the Pooh" characters Pooh and Tigger, already done with his. The site then guessed that Japanese and English voice acting is being done simultaneously.

With that thought in mind, the Japanese voice work for Cummings's "Kingdom Hearts 3" character should already be wrapped up as well since English translation provided by Cummings is already set up.

If Flynn will be included in the cast at some point in the future, this means that the Japanese voice acting for his character might not be done yet, which is why he is still in waiting. This hints that productions for both languages are both well under way.

Design & Trend concludes that the English and Japanese versions of "Kingdom Hearts 3" will get release dates that are not too far apart, since development for each of the iterations is concurrently being held.

The question now is when that will actually happen. Square Enix has been very secretive about "Kingdom Hearts 3," especially when it comes to its release date. This mystery, however, effectively keeps the hype around the game going.

Rumor has it that the highly anticipated title will be out next year since there's still allegedly so much for Square Enix to do. Game director Tetsuya Nomura revealed in an interview with Games TM that there's "a new battle system" and "new unique moves" in the game.

The truckload of work also comes from the developer's transition to Unreal Engine, describing this as "quite a process. We pretty much had to start from the ground again."