"Kingdom Hearts 2" debuted over 10 years ago and its sequel is set to release in the coming year to much fan anticipation. The delay was explained at a Disney convention in Los Angeles recently.
Game director of "Kingdom Hearts 3" Tetsuya Nomura explained at a group interview at the D23 Expo (via Gamespot) that the delay was caused by a change in the engine platform. He said:
"There was a decision made to change to... Unreal Engine 4. So we switched over to that. Unfortunately there was a bit of time that needed to be rewinded and started over. So there was a bit of a setback there, but it was a decision that the company had to make."
However, in a recently unearthed interview from 2014, co-director and game designer Tai Yasue expressed that the conversion to the new engine was easy. He stated:
"It was easy to shift to, but at the same time though, there was a lot of stuff specific to Kingdom Hearts that we couldn't really do on Unreal 4 at first. So we had a lot of co-operation from Epic."
It is unclear whether Nomura was referring to the inadequacy of the Unreal 4 engine as the cause of delay thus requiring some customizations from engine developer Epic Games. However, Yasue strongly suggested in the past interview that the shift to the new engine was relatively smooth.
The upcoming release of the action role-playing game was officially announced at the D23 Expo on July 15. Nomura also brought some footage for the audience to see.
The trailer was received favorably by fans which showed a presence by animation company Pixar through a "Toy Story" world which will be introduced to the "Kingdom Hearts" franchise.
"Kingdom Hearts 3" is expected to arrive in 2018 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
