Kingdom Hearts 4 director Tetsuya Nomura says we shouldn’t expect to hear any more information about the upcoming game for a while.
During the Q&A session at the Kingdom Hearts 20th-anniversary celebration event - where Kingdom Hearts 4 was originally announced - series director Tetsuya Nomura said more information about the game is due "at a very later date." This quote comes directly from fans who attended the in-person event in Tokyo over the weekend and was shared by Kingdom Hearts fan-site KH13.
According to fans, Nomura said we won’t get any more news about Kingdom Hearts 4 until "way after E3’s period." Of course, as we all know E3 2022 has been completely canceled this year but what Nomura probably means is that we won’t hear anything until well after when E3 is usually held in early summer. Nomura also reportedly said that the reason why Square Enix decided to debut Kingdom Hearts 4 during its "early development" stage was apparently due to wanting to "avoid it being leaked early."
The Q&A event also revealed a number of other interesting things about the upcoming Kingdom Hearts sequel including that all of the footage in the Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer is rendered in real-time by the game engine, Unreal Engine 4. However, KH4 will actually be developed using the new Unreal Engine 5, so it’s going to end up looking even more impressive than it already does.
Nomura also revealed that a new world is currently in development - with many theorizing that it could be a Star Wars-themed world - and that the narration in both trailers (Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link and KH4) was recorded by "a character you have known for a long time."
As the voice-over has only been recorded in Japanese for now, it’s hard for Western players to recognize who it is. As mentioned in the KH13 article though, some fans are suggesting that it could be Young Xehanort. Without official confirmation yet though, we will just have to wait and see.
Do you feel out of the loop on all things Kingdom Hearts 4? Well, it turns out Goofy's English voice actor didn't even know the game was in development until a fan told them weeks after the announcement.
Kingdom Hearts 4 has been radio silent for 1,005 days, but don’t worry - Tetsuya Nomura teases he has the story planned out
The original Kingdom Hearts was initially "more hardcore" until Square Enix toned it down: "We had some puzzles in there that would make you go, 'what is this, Takeshi's Challenge?'"
