Hey everybody. Just wanted to let you know that this minisode is super geeky, even for us. We really get in there. Make sure you're familiar with the subject matter going in. If you aren't, you might want to skip this one and listen to another show. Just wanted to give you a heads up, but here we go. Enjoy. Hello, hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our very first minisode of Geek Stew. It's just me and Ryan today, and we will be having a short little episode on Kingdom Hearts- A funeral if you will, or maybe an autopsy. The latest trailer for the next game in the franchise just dropped. Me and Ryan, being huge fans of the series, and Justine not really being that acquainted with it, we've decided just to give a short little spiel on our history with the series and what we think of this latest not-so-greatest news. Well, let's get into it then. Where would you say that the series really started for you? What is your first memory or experience with the Kingdom Hearts franchise? Well I remember it had an advertising campaign to the extent that was kind of unusual for games at the time. Either that or I was just getting to the age where the cartoons I was watching had advertisements for video games, either or, but I remember seeing the ads and I was like, "Wow, that is so cool." Although I had virtually no experience with the Final Fantasy series, but I had a friend who I looked up to quite a lot and he was like, "Oh, the Final Fantasy series is just the coolest, most epic fantasy game series of all time" and I was like, "Boy, so they know what they're doing." I don't know how much I read into this/my friend read into this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was almost pitched at that time as a way to get people to understand the experience as like, "Oh, this is like Final Fantasy but with the Disney characters." Yeah, that was exactly how it was pitched. I think I had the same experience where I saw those commercials with the original theme song "Simple and Clean," and I was just hooked. I'm like, "What? Nightmare Before Christmas and Little Mermaid and Aladdin all in the same game? I have to get this." Right. I get that we were 8, 9, 10-ish, but still, that's our childhood. We'll get into this a little bit more later, which I think is one of the key factors to the appeal of the series as a whole, but you see those characters and you see them being presented authentically with one of the best self-insert figures of all time, in my opinion. You're like, "Oh, that's great. I get to go on an adventure and experience all those things that are just so magical to me." I didn't have a PS2 at the time, so it was kind of a moot point but I would always say to my friends, "If I ever get a PS2, this would be the first game I want for it." Funny enough, that was the case with me where the reason I got a PS2 after years and years was finally just so I could play Kingdom Hearts 1. That's funny.
With that, Kingdom Hearts 1 is your favorite game in the franchise, correct? Yes. In fact, my love is predicated almost entirely on that one game and how much it means to me. Yeah. Very briefly, would you like to go into why Kingdom Hearts 1 is such a highlight of the series for you? Yeah, absolutely. I think that, as I said, it has one of the best self-inserts of all time in Sora because there's certain things about him that are just blank enough that you can put yourself in his shoes. As a young teenager, especially a young teenage boy, all his struggles you can relate to. It seems like there's somebody who's just a little bit cooler than you who can outpace you while not outwardly being like a jerk. There's a girl he's got a crush on. You like Sora. You understand where he's coming from throughout this whole adventure. He doesn't make any weird decisions. You're just like, "Oh, that makes sense how he's reacting to this. That makes sense how he's reacting to this." That's a big part of the appeal. I also think that this deepens and changes as you get older. The message of the game is kind of cheesy but it's told so earnestly and with so much poignancy, and heart, and carefulness that it works, which is just like friendship truly can persevere over the challenges of this world if you put your mind to it and you're willing to stick it out. It makes you feel good. Yeah. To me, it definitely comes off as a tried and true adventure story, but just a tried and true adventure done in the best possible way. Having played a great deal more of the franchise than you, from a story perspective, nothing comes close to it. Nothing is able to touch the simplicity but also just the elegance of that very first game. I remember even now, just watching the ending of that game with my best friend or my childhood friend and just loving it, and how much of a special time and a special game that was in my life. Also just that final cutscene with Kairi, it still gets me every time. Between that and the Final Fantasy X ending cutscene. If you want to make me bawl like a 10-year-old child, just play that in front of me. Yeah, when he meets her in the waterway. Sincerely romantic moment. I don't want to get too personal, but I effectively drew on that when I had to say goodbye to a girl who was very special to me. It didn't feel cheesy; it really felt appropriate to the moment. Props to them making what should be a very cheesy moment ring very emotionally true. Yeah. Kind of moving forward, I'll kind of give my thoughts on the series as it goes. Then you can give yours. I know yours probably won't be as long as mine. No. Briefly, first up, Chain of Memories. Fun as a game. Was a weird way to move forward literally just starting with a spinoff game that had so much story content, but it was fun. It was a nice challenge. I really liked the system, and I think it
kind of kicked off this chain with the series for me that they started to have really, really fun or interesting, quirky gameplay but more and more, the story just started to go off the rails. By the time we get to 2, which gameplay-wise is my favorite in the series. Even though a lot of people are ishy about the changes they made to the combat, especially when you have the complete super deluxe edition, which we didn't get for years but I digress. The changes they made and the way they were able to weave a lot of the combat and the gameplay together, and just all the fun and challenge I was able to get out of that, and just the way that game feels, I definitely love it to death but that is the point where that game just literally took this very simple and beautiful, elegant story it had and just proceeded to punch it in the face. Yes. I mean, I actually like the overall story of Chain of Memories in that the series, which has been set up from the word "go" to be very sentimental, very innocent, the idea of the villains' plot to destroy Sora's memories and therefore his connections to all these people who made him so strong and he helped, it worked. Those are genuinely harrowing stakes. The one part of the prologue, which we'll get into a little bit more here I'm sure, I like makes me feel genuinely emotional is that girl whose name I don't remember. Oh, Namine. Namine restoring Sora's memories, feeling bad for him and putting them back together. We get to see those little glimpses as he's being restored. I do like that. I think that's a very well done cinematic touch. As we get into 2, I think that we both agree, me more strongly than you, one of the biggest missteps is that for the first 3, probably less if you know what you're doing, but for the first almost 3 hours of that game you play with a character that you've never met before, is infinitely less interesting than Sora, and has you doing less interesting things like, "Oh, let's solve the 5 mysteries of the time and eat ice cream every night." It's like, what are the stakes? I don't understand. Should I care that this person doesn't exist, because I don't. One of the biggest tragedies to me, and forgive me if I get a little too deep, I'll try to stay surface-level. The biggest tragedy of that whole prologue that they have in 2 is that if you look at the story and the idea of Roxas like bird's eye overall, it's actually a very sad and very poignant story of just like, "I was a person. I had friends, I had feelings, I had things that I cared for and wanted to fight for. I have to go away so that you can have your life and you can have everything you care about." What always drives me nuts is when you look at that game and you look at all the extraneous material that was added in the later versions or added in separate games, I always wonder, "Why didn't you just split the game between Sora and Roxas, Roxas the prologue character? I could've gotten that whole story so when you do finally build to this moment where they clash and the truth is revealed, that could be something that was really poignant and powerful," but it's like, "No, we're just going to jam-pack a bunch of exposition in the first three hours, never reference it again until the last two." Yeah, I guess overall with 2, it's just a case of like, great game to play but, I could literally write an essay on it, there are just so many story problems. It's the
first step down a bad path the series has as a whole where they come up with all these really interesting, quirky ideas, but they just can't weave them into a coherent narrative, at least after like 1 and after Chain of Memories. Right. It's just like, "Oh, let's just throw more things in there," which leads into our last segment for this little minisode. Recently they released a trailer for Kingdom Hearts 2.8- How many 2 point blanks is this at this point? Like 5? So there's 1.5, which is a collection of the first game, Chain of Memories and I don't remember, 2.5 which is an enhanced version of 2, Birth By Sleep which is a prequel, and I don't remember. 2.8 is Dream Drop Distance, which was a spinoff but moved the plot forward- Right. It was the first time they broke their rule of not telling more of the Sora story without going to 3. Then it also features weird, furry convention spinoff movie, which we'll get to in a second, and then it also features 0.2, which is basically a kind of Metal Gear Ground Zeroes prologue featuring Aqua, who is an extremely popular character from Birth By Sleep. The only good thing to come out of Birth By Sleep, I might add. I guess we're getting into this now. From watching this trailer, I give them credit because I'm genuinely interested in Aqua as a character. They set it up so I'm like, "Okay, great. I'm interested to see how she's connected to Sora" because she has some sort of connection and she's a very different character, or at least different enough. She's not a blonde, white guy. That's a start. Yeah, all of the stuff with the, what is their obsession with people you can't see their faces? That is a huge mistake. It makes a character so much less appealing and harder to connect to, and watching this trailer, half of it was people wearing hoods and animal masks. It's just ridiculous because you can't see the emotions on their face. It's like watching robots do Shakespeare, and it's stupid. It's so weird to me because, here's my biggest gripe with the Kingdom Hearts series thus far: every time they answer a question that is raised, they wind up creating even more questions in its wake. Just brief overview: Birth By Sleep was supposed to be this cool, interesting prequel that was going to explain and set up all the backstory for Kingdom Hearts the franchise, and hopefully lead the way for Kingdom Hearts 3. That game raised so many questions and so many plot holes, and so much just weird nonsense where you literally took a character who before was just one generic evil guy and is now the fusion of two, maybe three people. That kind of nonsense. Yeah, that's bad too when you can't pinpoint a singular villain because it means that you're spreading out all of these different motivations and details about the characters. It's like the villain is just this ephemeral thing instead of a real
antagonist you can start to understand and get behind and see how he is different from Sora and the other characters. It's just this gobbledygook mess. Just the more I see, the more concerned I grow because like, okay, now we've got another backstory exposition chapter with these weird animal people who I don't know how they tie in, and then Dream Drop Distance was just an expansion on that issue. It's funny enough, Ryan, the big plot twist in that game, it turns out there is one villain except now, he's technically 13 people. How did that happen? What did he do? I don't know, but there it is. Matt, how can just seven people save the world? That line is so dumb. We don't even know who the traitor is! It doesn't make any sense. It's like, one person can save the world. Two people can save the world. What number does it become inappropriate? It's just... We're referencing a very ham-fisted line from the trailer, by the by. The game pretty much for me is just like, I saw it, Aqua basically being in hell looks kind of cool and interesting. Yeah, it looks gorgeous. The graphics and what looks like the future gameplay for the series looks great, but other than that, it's just that same old feeling I got after finishing Birth By Sleep, which was, "I am losing coherence. I don't know what's happening. I don't know what anything means or what people want anymore." Right. It's gone from a simple fairytale about how light and friendship can beat darkness into just... Why is Aqua in hell again? Yeah. I guess that's the thesis statement. The series, from the first game, I'll admit it, has trended towards faux-pretentiousness. No, real pretentiousness that it doesn't deserve. In the first game, things were so simple and straightforward that you could read texture and depth into the characters, and there was time to do that because what was happening was very clear and simple whereas in these other games, they just made it a ridiculous soap opera but without toning down the pretentiousness of it, so it's like, "This is very important. This is very serious," but you're just like, "No it's not. It's fucking dumb." Let me put it this way: if and when Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out, will you still play it? I will unless the reviews are God awful. If it's getting consistent 6's or below out of 10, I might have to stay away, but otherwise I just got to see this baby to the end. I got to see if they redeemed themselves at all or if they give the characters that I love a real ending because it means so much to me. They can screw it up
and they can finally rob me of all interest in the series, fine. They can let me off the hook, but if it's good, then great. There's some redemption in there. Yeah. I definitely will play it, however I know part of me just wants to play it also because of a warped, bile fascination. At the end of one of the recent games, they introduced the notion of time travel, and so I just need to see with my own eyes if they go fully off the rails or if they can manage to pull some kind of redemption for themselves and just end on a note where I can close the book on 10 years of my life. Yeah. Well I mean- 15 years actually. Right. The first game was 2002, until I didn't play until like '04 I believe. Same. I didn't play it until like two or three years after. Yeah. Oh boy. Kingdom Hearts, you're so beautiful and yet you're so abusive to me. I know. Just let me go. Don't hurt your baby no more. Well, I believe that is all that we have for tonight. I hope that you all enjoyed our little mini spiel on Kingdom Hearts. You can look forward to more in the future, hopefully featuring Justine. I'm sure she's got some very insular interests to share with the world. Yes. I do miss her. She's our beloved third member of the Three Amigos. At the same time, I'm glad she didn't have to hear me weeping quietly into the microphone. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is Matthew and Ryan wishing you all a good night. Geek well. Now that you've had a taste of stew, would you like to sample our other flavors? You can find us on the web at deliciousgeekstew.com where we post our episode as well as a plethora of links that'll clue you into all the references we make, and further explore the topic of the day. We also have short, super geeky minisodes and articles there that really dig into a subject or cover something that we might've missed. We'd like to thank Robert Mai, who composed our amazing theme song and all the other music we use, Rev.com, our transcriber for the hearing impaired and all-purpose wit, and Dana Plasterer, who provides all of our adorable artwork. We couldn't do it without them, and we couldn't do it without you. Thanks for listening, and until next time, geek well.