On May 14, the official Kingdom Hearts account on Twitter announced that their latest game project had been cancelled. Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link will unfortunately never see the light of day. As a long time dedicated fan of the series, I’m surprisingly not as sad about it as one would think.
From what was understood, this was supposed to be yet another game you play on your phone, which would have similar elements to Pokémon: Go where you were supposed to travel around in the real world. And with the official announcement saying that they found it, “difficult for us to offer a service that players would find satisfactory over a long period of time,” I was just left very unsurprised. Kingdom Hearts is not a series where one can spend forever on just one game.
This is the kind of language that game developers would use when discussing something similar to a Gacha game, a game that lasts for decades even with winding story arcs that keep people hooked. While that formula holds for some, it’s just not really the Kingdom Hearts style. Sure, you had the other three app games that they came out with, but they did eventually end, and Kingdom Hearts games have those kinds of satisfactory endings. That’s what their formula is; it has a destination in mind, unlike most popular Gacha games where it’s about the journey.
Some of Kingdom Hearts‘ best lore was in their app games, and to me that was a let down. Severely limited by the phone systems, they decided for some reason to have their best writing, their highest stakes, and their darkest storylines, on 2D side-scrollers that weren’t even voiced at any point. Quite frankly, I don’t think players would want to go through any of that again.
Best way to get the true cinematic experience, in my opinion, is through PC or Console, and give us your best writing through that way. When Kingdom Hearts: IV finally releases, I hope that we get more of that quality. Fans deserve both quality graphics and quality writing, and we’ve seen in such cases like God of War and Doom that such things are possible. If they need to get rid of the Disney whimsy attached to the franchise, that’s okay by me too.
Are you all that hurt by the loss of Missing Link? Let us know what you think on Boss Rush Networks official social Facebook, Twitter, Discord, or Patreon.
Featured Image: Kingdom Hearts
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