#gotta look em up after my playthrough probably xd

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

so sad that a neve romance is entirely ooc for ylva at this point 😔

[jmkitsune]

lyraeon

replied to your post

“took me 7 years…but i finally finished Dream Drop Distance :3I somehow...”

Not to be like that but I'm fairly sure all of KH is so convoluted that nothing shy of actually watching a playthrough or at least the cut scenes COULD spoil any of it :P

I know you said- not to be like that but I’ve seen A LOT of people shitting on the convoluted story with KH3 just released and I’ve kept quiet til now cause  “meh whatever let em think what they want” this is not meant SPECIFICALLY AS “rawr don’t shit on my game series” but more a “I hear people...but a lot of people are looking at it...MAYBE too myopically)

so yeah sorry Ly...this is not directed at you...but also yeah XD I have been wanting to say something like this since....well probably a LOT longer than I know because I’m surrounded by people who either SHIT ON the series OR admit- they just button mash and thats it- they dont care and it breaks me inside as a story teller SOOOOOO INCOMING RANT TO THE VOID

I’m going to be honest, 

I’ve played the games since release, and I streamed BBS, KH1, 2 CoM on twitch (play throughs are on yt for anyone who wants to binge those :D- shameless self plug here) and JUST finished Dream Drop Distance (when I streamed the other ones I played in chrono order not release) so as of now I’ve played from BBS-3D in chrono and release order, I still gotta do the last two parts of 2.8 before starting 3.

and before I dive too deep I’m gonna preface this all by saying

when people say its convoluted-

YES it is, no question, this is a series told OVER a decade spanning many games. Its gonna be messy for a lot of people especially those casual gamers who don’t play games for deep story they play to escape. I get ya- this isn’t for you, have fun gaming ^.^

BUT is it SO convoluted it takes too much to understand if you WANT to? 

ok now that I made sure to not DESTROY people’s dash boards--- ON WITH THE SHOW

I don’t think so

I’d even argue FF7 and KH series ON THE WHOLE (like when mapped out beat for beat story wise) so far are pretty equally convoluted but yet EVERYONE LOVES FF7 in spite of its extremely deeply convoluted story. 

I think the MAIN difference was that FF7 relied heavily on explicit unreliable narration. In Cloud being the (redacted reason for spoilers) protagonist (seriously, it may be an old game but I’m not gonna spill the beans go play it to find out, this allowed for A LOT of exposition to be given naturally and also for “plot holes” to be filled in as the game progressed when we see “what really happened” when we did. I truly think that HINDSIGHT and that revealed knowledge is why SO MANY clamor that FF7 is the BEST in the Final Fantasy series when to many- its really not, its a great game but certainly not the best (as seen from the STARK as fuck divide in the fanbase over it’s expanded chapters (crisis core, dirge of cerberus, Advent Children, etc)

KH does not do this entirely, they instead rely on a “childlike” narrator (which is still unreliable but I’d argue a different kind) Sora is 14/15 in the first game, so through HIS journey alone we’re seeing the world from his perspective and ITS A LOT TO TAKE IN but even in DDD everyone kinda points out ...SORA IS A BIT OF A DUNCE lol I attribute the story telling to that, cause in BBS when we play as Ventus/Terra/Aqua- its not as confusing sometimes, cause these players are older, so the world is already understood by them, nothing is really NEW, whats new is their personal blossoming philosophies conflicting with the world they are now thrown into

they’ve studied it but never PARTAKEN in it vs Sora...who literally wakes up in another world carrying magic mcguffin after a giant mother fucking eldritch creature with a gaping hole in it’s torso swallows HIS home world (its not spoiling it’s literally the tutorial/prologue of the game)

the other thing- where FF7 had 3 discs (which back in the way back days) was SHOCKING (until Star Wars came out with their 4 disc KOTOR/KOTOR 2 for the PC) like 3 discs for 1 story? wtf man?

KH so far in their series has had - 

BBS (3 character’s stories over the course of I think a few weeks)

KH1- 10 years later following a new boy with no prior knowledge of what was going on prior to his story, and this takes place over nearly a year

358/2 days- runs relatively overlapping with Chain of Memories, buut starts 7 days before due to the fact it starts in the final act of KH1

KH2- picking up where said above two games leave off, wrapping up the arc of the Organization and reuniting Sora/Riku/Kairi together at home another year has passed

Coded (not needed but is part of the main timeline) happening I’m guessing in a SHORT as fuck span of time

Dream Drop Distance- taking place between 2 and 3 as a bridge cause it shows Riku and Sora finally hitting a maturing point- they take the tests to be LEGIT keyblade warriors

7 main games over 7 “discs”  honestly I like that what they did for us was gave us over time the 

1.5, 2.5 and 2.8 remixes cause that condensed ALL that into “3 discs” (JUST LIKE ff7- also mind you, the thing I’d even stress- imagine if Square Enix tried to compress ALLLL this story back when KH1 started, like it’d be too much, this story needs to be digested slowly. LIKE another LONG running series (that for the most part - MANY PEOPLE love (Game of Thrones? Homestuck? ANY anime that started back in the toonami days and isn’t done (look at you Dragon Ball) 

GRAND stories take time, video games just were normally NOT that format to showcase such a spectacle...hell Final Fantasy which is like...what? nearly 20 games (including side ones) but only...2 of the “main numbered” games have sequels, the rest are not connected plot/world wise. 

being a writer I probably could do all that Kingdom Hearts has done in the form of 

the five act plot vs the 3 act structure we are used to (see Dramatic Structure)

normally people are used to a 3 act structure (Exposition, Rising Action, Climax)

but so far I see KH serie as a 5 act structure (below)

Exposition - BBS (explaining the world and following 3 people well versed in it for the reader to fall into it and be ready for the next step)

Rising Action - Kh1/358days/CoM (Sora is plucked from his world and thrown into a larger one, on the way he learned about the dark and the light, growing and preparing to fight it as he feels he is part of something bigger than himself)

Climax - KH2/Coded/3D (this part is guess work) we see the “end” of Sora’s growth, the boy we started with is grown and all in, we see him and Riku raising up to their peak to fight the darkness only for the ending of 3D to reveal that the end isn’t the end,

Falling Action <- this part here I think is going to be ALL of Kh3, the falling action, that stripping away of all things built up with the end in sight

Denouement/Resolution/Catastrophe- and here is where the series will end...however that is be it ONE MORE GAME or...the climax of KH3? I dunno we’ll see

SO YEAH....long story short...Kingdom Hearts IS LONG but like ANY OTHER long standing story with deep, and expansive lore- consumption can’t be done in one go. It’s not for casual consumption, at least the story isn’t. Many people play it and give ZERO shits about the lore/story/etc....and honestly I can’t with those people I literally don’t comprehend it but thats on me not them

BEFORE I LOSE MY TRAIN I END THIS RANT HERE