Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance wrap-up

[juushika]

My sleep schedule is, uh, weird rn, but I need to make these notes before I can play Kingdom Hearts III, so whatever: they're notes.

• I've called many of the side games "backloaded" but Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance is the most unbalanced of them all. "It basically has no narrative!" I thought, until the 80% mark, when it reaches the last world and becomes a chain of memories cutscenes and boss battles.



• Part of this is that there's only two big plot points:
  
  
  • Remember all those characters from the side games? Did you notice that they were tied to Sora and that you have a lot of feelings about them? Everyone is important & will be part of the finale!
  
  
  
  • Did you notice that the antagonist situation was a hot mess? It's intentional now: the various incarnations of Xehanort are also plot-related!
  
  
  And while the former could/should have been spread over the narrative, it would have required moving forward some late reveals; and the Disney worlds are meant to serve a similar function, a reminder that the worlds are tied to Sora and vice versa—which would work better if the conceit were "these are the worlds before Sora," but whatever. The latter is a big deal on a meta-narrative level, but as a single plot point to dump here? It's not that complicated. (As a statement. The details as apply to 204249 characters is infinitely more complex.)



• So I had a lot of lategame feelings & I am excited for KHIII, but it was no 358/2 Days or Birth By Sleep in terms of either pacing or a complete side-story still contributing something significant to the meta-narrative. It was significantly more like Coded, particularly in that both share a not-really-real-ness—I mean, all the side games are narrative cul-de-sacs in that they're dreams or simulations or prequels, but those two especially so, moreso given they each offer one meta-narrative plot point at the end of the game.



• There were multiple instances of "remember that Treasured Disney Franchise™?" that fell flat, particularly The Hunchback of Notre Dame & new Tron. No, I don't remember, because I've never seen them! I've had many & conflicted feelings about which worlds work as settings, particularly in light of upcoming KHIII, a decade after, with so many new franchises to draw on.
  
  The TL;DR version is: Golden Age Disney works because they're visually iconic & part of the public consciousness; good for setpieces and for borrowing characters (Maleficent) for meta-narrative. Renaissance Disney is the bread-and-butter; it's the most successful and the micro-narratives map well alongside the KH macro-narrative. Live action franchises work if a) they feel cartoony and b) are actually good: Pirates of the Caribbean feels Disney, even with the human models, but new Tron feels wildly out of place despite the stylized aesthetic. Post-Renaissance Disney is a crapshoot; use at your own risk. Second Renaissance is a) too new to know if they're classic narratives and b) also, tbh, a crapshoot. "We bought Pixar" movies are same but moreso. Successful, classic narrative matters, because the emotion that makes the worlds work alongside the plot comes from nostalgia and/or quality. But Disney needs to emphasize Second Renaissance/otherwise more recent franchises, because: $$$$.
  
  I'm very nervous about this re: KHIII! I'll probably love it anyway! But some of these decisions are still, objectively, A Mistake.



• Not a mistake: Prankster's Paradise and Fantasia. Especially Fantasia. DDD is too sterile—the maps are huge but, because of limitations, also empty. Running through a depopulated Pastoral Symphony was bizarre, but running through it has been a dream since childhood, so ty, KH. These worlds are vibrant and evocative, and Fantasia has, of course!, a rhythm mini-game.



• Dream Eaters/Spirits are a mixed bag. Pros: very cute, surprisingly robust given the one-off appearance, I love me a new skill tree. Cons: crafting mats way too hard to come by, pls make more physical attackers who are cute, some gameplay issues on account of "physical objects wandering around a lot." And they feel out of sync with ... all other KH enemy design, honestly? On a similar note:



• The flowmotion/Dream Eater/drop system is a lot. I spent most of the game feeling like it was the lightest on narrative but would perhaps be one of the more satisfying to replay, on a pure gameplay level: there's so many mechanics, and they make for robust, if messy, exploration. I'll be interested to see how flowmotion translates to the bigger/better/denser/also you can move the camera vertically aspects of KHIII.



• I played the last 15 hours of the game over about two days, and I will tell you this for free: that dense an aesthetic + that long staring at a tiny screen is a head-trip; also, a headache.

That's it! A moment of silence for Tumblr; but a year ago, this wall of text would have been multiple posts on that hellsite, probably with images of my favorite Dream Eater (spoiler: Me Me Bunny, who I painted dark purple, which was beautiful against the warmtoned accents).