Kingdom Hearts 3 has finally received a release date, but contrary to earlier expectations, it will not be this year. While the constant delays have definitely not left fans happy, the creators have still only provided a possible window, and not a solid date. Game director Tetsuya Nomura, however, has come forward to say that the delays were a necessary part of the process, and not much of it was in his hands.
Following the revelation of the newly set release window for Kingdom Hearts 3 at Disney’s D23 expo, Nomura did an interview where he shed some light on the reasons behind the incessant postponements. “We had a plan of the period that it’s going to take for us to create the content at the start of the project, and we laid out, after such and such years, we would need to add more personnel resources,” Nomura said (via Gamespot).
He further added: “We had submitted [the plans] to our headquarters and had it approved, but internal personnel is very limited, and there are various different projects that happen within our company, so unfortunately timing did not work out. So we had to make due with the timing that was appropriate for the company…the company makes the decisions, so unfortunately sometimes it is out of my control.”
Besides the limitations related to resources, Nomura also said that the mid-development decision to switch to the Unreal Engine 4 also greatly affected the pace of the game, as it necessitated some radical changes. Besides that, the director has said in the past that the new game’s world will be much more enriched than the games before it, and will display a large focus on story.
Kingdom Hearts 3, the follow up to Square Enix‘s Kingdom Hearts 2, has been awaited by fans of the series for well over a decade. It is also one of the most delayed projects in the industry. Although the game’s conceptualization had begun shortly after the release of its immediate predecessor, it was not until 2013 that it finally received an announcement. Since then, Nomura has repeatedly emphasized that the reveal had happened too early, which became evident by the series of delays that followed.
For now, Kingdom Hearts 3 is slated for release sometime during 2018. You can watch the new Toy Story trailer from D23 2017 for the game below.