Kingdom Hearts 3 Director Tetsuya Nomura has detailed why Disney’s properties Star Wars and Marvel weren’t included in the game. Sadly, the story’s rather boring: it all boiled down to contract negotiations.
“In order to change those [properties] into a game, contracts must be made with each company separately, and there are cases where other game companies already have contracts, so although the Disney Group has indeed added those [properties], incorporating them into Kingdom Hearts isn’t so simple,” Nomura said in a behind-the-scenes book, as translated by KH13.
The very same issue also cropped up in the original Kingdom Hearts and impacted a rather major character.
“That’s also the reason Mickey [Mouse] is in only one scene in Kingdom Hearts 1,” Nomura added. “At the same time, another company was releasing a game that had to do with Mickey, so though we were denied his usage, we persisted and eventually got ‘as long as you only have one scene, from far away, as a silhouette, with him waving his hand or something.’ Since we had to make the best of the biggest [and only] chance we had, that’s why that scene appears that way.”
Kingdom Hearts 3 is available now on Xbox One and PS4.
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