Speaking during an interview with YoungJump, Square Enix‘s Tetsuya Nomura has revealed that he’s planning on bringing the Kingdom Hearts franchise to an end, and is also considering retirement from the games industry.
When asked about his future plans for the Disney-RPG series, he responded, ‘I only have a few years left until I retire, I have to decide whether to retire first or finish the series first. I’m making Kingdom Hearts 4 now with the intention of it being a story that I will complete.”
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Speaking more generally about Kingdom Hearts 4, which features a new city known as Quadratum, Nomura-san added:
I like worlds that are slightly different from “possible” reality, rather than ones that are too false. It’s the same with movies, but if the world is too fantasy based I can’t really get into it. So I like settings that are like based in Shibuya but not the real Shibuya. Rather than complete fantasy, I think that “unrealistic within reality” fits the fantasy view well.
Kingdom Hearts 4 was announced in 2022 and has yet to attract a release date. Hopefully, it won’t take as long as Kingdom Hearts 3 to arrive, as that game was announced at E3 2013 and didn’t see the light of day until early 2019.
The Kingdom Hearts series originally launched in 2002 for the PS2 and was followed by 2004’s Kingdom Hearts II, although numerous spin-offs were released in the years leading up to Kingdom Hearts 3. Furthermore, Square Enix has bundled them all together in numerous packages, including Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMix, and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue.