Is there such a thing as too many Kingdom Hearts trailers? No? That’s what I thought. Square Enix is finally releasing the Final Mix versions of its popular Kingdom Hearts franchises and I for one can’t wait to finally get my hands on them. Japan saw the game release on October 2nd while the rest of the world has a few more months to wait; Australia: December 4th, Europe: December 5th, and North America on December 2nd.
Watch: Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMix, Introducing the Magic Trailer
Introducing the Magic, is a cinematic trailer comprised of both 1.5 and 2.5 footage. For those of you who haven’t played 1.5, Square Enix has done a great job of updating the graphics. You may also notice that the voice acting sounds off from the original versions, as they “remixed” most of the original audio. Fans of the original games will probably not take to the updated voice acting at first, since the voice actors have aged considerably since the games were first released. The new audio is pulled off well enough however.
In other news, development for Kingdom Hearts 3 was switched over from the Luminous engine to the Unreal Engine 4. The Luminous engine was seen in the Agnis Philosophy tech demo and is the engine behind Final Fantasy XV. The Luminous engine is Square Enix’s in-house developed engine, so the switch to UE4 came as a surprise. Square Enix cited “various reasons” for the switch but most notably was having trouble rendering. Not too much other details are known. Square is adamant that the development process is continuing smoothly despite the engine switch.