Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Incoming - Official

[Night Fury]

kingdom hearts 2.jpg

It hasn't even been that long since Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 was released, and it comes as no surprise to anyone that Square Enix are going to continue to cash in on this popular franchise by given the second game in the series a HD makeover too. Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 will feature Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix, Birth by Sleep Final Mix, and some pretty snazzy remastered HD cinematics from Re:coded.

I can't help but feel a little skeptical of all these HD remakes myself, especially when Square Enix have already teased us with Kingdom Hearts III, is that something they should be focusing on more? It seems like giving previous games a HD touch up is all the rage at the moment, and of course the fans seem to lap it up as they usually come with special bits of merchandise too.

This particular HD game has been given a release date of 2014 - so nothing too concrete just yet. Also, like it's predecessor, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 will be an exclusive title for the PS3, with no mention of a PS4 release just yet.

Still, this will tide over all the Kingdom Hearts fanatics for a while until Square Enix spill a few more beans on Kingdom Hearts III...

[Aulayna]

HD BBS on my big TV. Yes. Please.

[Depression Moon]

trout, Finally a chance for me to play BBS without having to buy a PSP.

[Hollycat]

I don't know why they are bothering to add Re:coded. All it did was set up a single line from a single character so far.


Still, I'm happy to get to play KH2 and BBS again.

[Shauna]

Cool. Maybe I will have played 1.5 by that point. loljk.

[Fynn]

What about 3D?

[Hollycat]

What about 3D?

What if they got it to do 3d on the playstation?

That'd be great.

[kotora]

Donald and Goofy don't seem to happy about getting re-released like a million times

[Freya]

No dream drop? Just saw the trailer while at work. Good job on catching it for an article

[SirPrizes]

Excited for this, never got a chance to play BBS

[Mirage]

I can't help but feel a little skeptical of all these HD remakes myself, especially when Square Enix have already teased us with Kingdom Hearts III, is that something they should be focusing on more? It seems like giving previous games a HD touch up is all the rage at the moment, and of course the fans seem to lap it up as they usually come with special bits of merchandise too.

That's probably of very little consequence. You don't need a lot of manpower to make a HD port. It's something that they could easily do while also developing KH3. It's not like throwing all your resources at a single game necessarily makes it a better game, after all .

[Freya]

The reason they are releasing the HD remasters is because this series is getting older. When kingdom hearts 3 comes out, how will new fans know wtf any of the story is! By releasing these all in one remasters they are able to have the old stories hit new fans. So when 3 hits stores it will already have all the new fans lined up with the old. It's smart for how little it costs to make like mirage said.

[Jiro]

I can't help but feel a little skeptical of all these HD remakes myself, especially when Square Enix have already teased us with Kingdom Hearts III, is that something they should be focusing on more? It seems like giving previous games a HD touch up is all the rage at the moment, and of course the fans seem to lap it up as they usually come with special bits of merchandise too.

That's probably of very little consequence. You don't need a lot of manpower to make a HD port. It's something that they could easily do while also developing KH3. It's not like throwing all your resources at a single game necessarily makes it a better game, after all .

Except they "lost" the first Kingdom Hearts game.

So we should be expecting a 2015 release for Kingdom Hearts III, which puts it at 10 years since it was teased at the end of KHII. That seems like a pretty smurfing long development cycle. Some older fans (hello) are already getting jaded and just want the smurfing game.

[Aulayna]

Either way it still requires far less developmental resources to make a HD re-master and that's even assuming that the same team making this port is the same team responsible for KH3. Even if it is the same team it's likely only a very small portion of that team that's working on 2.5. Considering 2.5 ReMIX was hinted at in the special ending of the Japanese 1.5 ReMIX, they were very likely working on this as work was wrapping up on 1.5 - hence it's relatively quick turn around considering 1.5 only came out on Western shores last month.

Besides SE have already come out and said that there are developmental difficulties considering Nomura is involved in both XV and KH3 so in all honesty it's very likely we'll see XV way before KH3. Sure the waiting time for KH3 has been immense but a small team working on 2.5 is hardly going to shave years off of the development of KH3 if they were moved over to KH3 instead. Judging by Nomura's interviews at E3 they were still hammering out the basics of the engine and tools to make KH3 so some of the team is likely just working on 2.5 due to it's relatively easy turnaround and once that's done, and the base engine and tools are available, they will transition onto KH3 once development is in full swing.

[Jiro]

Prior to even releasing 1.5, there was an interview in which someone from SE said "it'd be pointless to make 1.5 and not 2.5" so it's not as if this wasn't expected, but I thought there might be a quicker turnaround than this. I just... we used to have dev cycles of a few years and now we're getting a decade long wait? Seems a bit off to me.

I want to make a joke about the original fans dying after this long a wait but it might be in poor taste.