Dearly beloved melody of memory8/8/2023 We didn't want to take away from the gameplay experience from the different titles in our franchise. Suzui: Generally speaking, we will be using the original music. Will we see lots of remixes to songs, or are you mostly sticking to the originals? Nomura-san also that way, so he came up with a really nice name for this title and a really nice key art as well, and we kind of expanded from there. We all had the same understanding amongst our team members that this is not a Theatrhythm game. That's how we moved along with the development of it. We thought it would be appropriate and proper to have that Kingdom Hearts name. We asked, “How do we leverage and keep the integrity of that?” That was our foundation for our approach.įrom there, we thought, ‘Okay, so we're going to build this from the ground up and we're going to bring this as a brand new title.’ That's why we decided we're going to change up the name and we weren't going to carry over the Theatrhythm title. We incorporate those fun elements of play and make sure that we are leveraging the game mechanics of the original game, as well as bringing in Kingdom Hearts’ stylish action and incorporating the rich story behind it, especially the world settings that we've established in our series titles. We took that as well as some of the technical elements and the mechanics that were already existing in the Theatrhythm titles, and then thought about what kind of music and what kind of scheme of the notes that we want for players to experience. We also took inspiration from 15th anniversary music site.įrom there, we started to think, “Okay, so how do we incorporate different elements?” And Nomura-san provided feedback and a lot of the inspiration that went into the basic idea. We wanted to recreate the original look of the game titles and carry that over. With Kingdom Hearts, we wanted to pursue the idea of utilizing the original characters. And then in terms of Dragon Quest, it was more of a top view where your battles are sort of going inward there's like this field of depth. With Final Fantasy Theatrhythm, you may recall we had this side-scrolling, very 2D sort of aesthetics. But as we were discussing how we go about creating this particular title with Nomura-san, we were keen on making this 3D. Suzui: As we mentioned earlier, we were talking about how we had come up with rough ideas and planning documents. Why is Melody of Memory a separate spinoff rather than a new Theatrhythm game? It does look very similar to Theatrhythm’s gameplay, and Square Enix had entries for Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest in that series. Disney actually came forward to Nomura-san, asking, “Hey, could you do this with us?” They decided that they wanted to move forward with the project and then the discussion came down to me and Suzui-san to do this project, and that's how this project came to be. A few years ago, there was a separate discussion with Nomura-san and Disney. But at the time, we decided that it might be a bit difficult to move forward with the project. kept thinking, “Oh, we would love to do a Theatrhythm Kingdom Hearts.” We were discussing it, making planning documents, and things like that. Hazama: The idea was floating around for a while, it was around five years ago. Here are their answers to our biggest questions.Ĭan you discuss the creative process and how the team approached bringing Kingdom Hearts to a new genre? With rhythm game Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, the rich aural library is finally getting top billing, and we interviewed producer Ichiro Hazama, co-director Masanobu Suzui, and iconic franchise director Testuya Nomura about what to expect. Between acclaimed composer Yoko Shimomura’s masterful work adding emotion to every situation and Utada Hikaru’s vocals breathing life into “Simple and Clean” and “My Sanctuary,” the melodies have captivated audiences, becoming core to the experience. Iconic songs like “Dearly Beloved” have become core to the series’ identity, alongside poignant character themes for Kairi, Ventus, and Xion. Music has always been an integral part of Kingdom Hearts.
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