Few people can ignite such passionate discussion as Tetsuya Nomura. Mention his name in online gaming forums or comment sections, and you’ll typically get one of two reactions: People who love the impact he’s had at developer Square Enix, and those who hate it. And if you put him in front of hundreds of hardcore Kingdom Hearts fans, they’ll go nuts.
I was in the middle of one of those crowds on Dec. 1, when Square Enix held a special fan event for the release of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, Calif. Nomura’s presence was a tightly guarded secret: Square Enix told the few people who knew about him not to mention his name on social media for fear of spoiling the surprise. When he did show up, the audience rocked the theater with booming screams and cheers, and at least one person shouted “I love you!”.
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Nomura’s distinctive art style can be seen in almost every major Final Fantasy game since then. Eventually, he became the creator and director of Kingdom Hearts, an RPG series that combines real-time battles, Final Fantasy characters, and some of Disney’s most iconic animated movies. He has total control over it — even promotional materials can’t get made until he approves them.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from someone who has had such a big influence on Square Enix’s flagship franchises, many of which I idolized while growing up. All I know is that when I met Nomura, his unassuming appearance and candid responses about Kingdom Hearts’ legacy (he wasn’t ready to talk about the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts 3 just yet) totally caught me off-guard.
Above: Riku and Sora fight their enemies with key-shaped swords.
‘I’m not that good of a person’
A few hours before the day’s festivities began, Square Enix escorted me through a dark theater, past a large piano where Kingdom Hearts composer Yoko Shimomura (another well-received surprise for fans) was busy rehearsing, and into a dressing room where Nomura and his translator were waiting. His clothes had a noticeable Mickey theme: The famous mouse was jamming on a guitar on Nomura’s T-shirt, and I spotted a sparkling silhouette of Mickey’s head and ears on the back of his sweatshirt.
After a few minutes of talking, Nomura struck me as being somewhat shy. He had a habit of looking down or away, even when he showed up later on stage, and our eyes only met a handful of times. Though Kingdom Hearts is still going strong 12 years after its debut — the series has shipped more than 20 million copies worldwide — he isn’t too sure why it’s so popular.
Above: Nomura and his Heartless buddies.
“I can’t put my finger on why exactly it became such a fan-favorite,” said Nomura. “I’m especially not familiar with what exactly the Western audience enjoys in the games. But I feel that the story is definitely a big draw for it. Of course gameplay is there, and that’s enjoyable as well, but maybe it’s [also] because of the storyline.”
Following Kingdom Hearts’ story is tricky; I watched a nearly hour-long video just to get the gist of it before our meeting. But its main heroes (the ever-optimistic Sora and his pals Donald and Goofy) tend to show up or have some connection to the events in each game. A few themes persist as well: the importance of friendship, hearts, souls, light, and dark. In the games, they can come off as a bit cheesy and overly dramatic, but using such universal themes was important for Nomura.
“Friendship and bonds and things like that are things anyone can relate to and put their own feelings into. Anybody in any region can associate with the theme of friendship and bonds between people, so I felt that it was a very [personal] subject matter that I could portray in this story,” he explained.
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Above: In the KH universe, Mickey is a king, and Goofy and Donald are two of his loyal subjects.
Nomura isn’t just in charge of the franchise; he’s also the perennial director of each installment. He’s been living with these stories for so long that he says the characters almost feel like his own children … but he won’t be winning Father of the Year awards any time soon. Part of the reason he makes so many Kingdom Hearts games is because he likes to constantly test the heroes with new conflicts and villains.
“The characters that appear in Kingdom Hearts, especially the original characters like Sora, are very cheerful and happy, and they kind of resemble the light in the world,” said Nomura. “As well as the Disney characters: They’re inherently very bright and cheery. Personally, I feel that I’m not that good of a person, so I relate better to the enemy characters. The story continues to develop because I’m in that mindset of ‘How does this enemy confront Sora?’ and I pose those hurdles and challenges [to him].”
I told him that no one is truly a “good” person, at least not in the way that Sora represents, and that we all struggle with our own vices. He laughed when the translator said this.
“If you see throughout the series that Sora is struggling and struggling, that’s probably because I’m putting my evil schemes in there to see how much he can [handle],” said Nomura.
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Above: Nomura working on a sketch of Sora.
Making an unexpected hit
Before Nomura created the characters that he would later love to torment, he had an idea for a game that, at the time, had nothing to do with Disney or Final Fantasy. He was purely focused on building a game around a specific mechanic.
“I wanted to make an action-packed RPG in which the character can move around freely in 360 degrees. That was brewing in my head,” he said. “I was contemplating, ‘Do I want to go with a completely original storyline and totally new IP?’ or ‘What are my [other] options?’ And that’s when I heard about Square Enix wanting to do a Disney collaboration. That was moving at the same time. So it was a good opportunity to merge [those two ideas] … . [Since we are] working with Disney, we can’t be too violent. So I had to tweak it and that’s when I came up with the idea of stealing hearts. That’s how it evolved.”
The first Kingdom Hearts became an unexpected hit for Square Enix. During a developer panel at the Disney lot, executive producer Shinji Hashimoto added more context to their success story. He said it took some time for the first game to take shape. And while that was going on, Square and Enix were still two separate companies who specialized in JRPGs, but plans for their merger (partly to “fight off the threat of heightened development costs”) were already well underway. It was a “relief” for him to see both the game and the company’s transition work out in the end.
Above: The launch ceremonies were held in the Disney lot’s theater.
Nomura also revealed that he didn’t originally plan to release so many Kingdom Hearts games (seven in all as of this writing). He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever get to make a sequel.
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“When I went into the very first Kingdom Hearts game, I was bracing myself for what could possibly be the one and only title within the franchise,” said Nomura. “And maybe if we can get to a sequel, I could tease something about it at the end, but I was okay with it being just a standalone title.”
History would later prove that he had nothing to worry about. Square Enix chased after the first game’s popularity with a flood of sequels, prequels, and side stories. These added new characters and plot twists that expanded the overarching narrative.
Nomura explained his reasoning for writing such a complex story: He wants to encourage people to share their interpretations and reactions with one another. He compared it to the way movies can generate lively discussions because of intentionally vague or complicated storylines. Whether Kingdom Hearts actually deserves this kind of analytical breakdown is another hot topic of debate among players.
Above: Master Xehanort (right) is the series’ main villain.
Finding time for his fans
Despite vacating his role as director on the upcoming Final Fantasy XV, Nomura still seems to have a pretty busy schedule. In addition to Kingdom Hearts, he’s involved with many projects outside of game development. His personal life, however, is a bit more ordinary. At the panel, he described himself as a “homebody” who really only leaves his house to grab groceries, and he recently got two cats to keep him company. And while he’s no stranger to doing interviews with the press, he’s slowly been coming around to the idea of meeting with fans in person.
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“For both [the 2014] San Diego and New York Comic-Con, I came with the Square Enix merchandise team, and the division head of that team has always been prodding me, ‘You should come to the states and interact with the fans more!’” said Nomura. “So, reluctantly, I started to warm up to the idea and attempted to get out there and try to meet with fans. And the more I’ve been interacting with them directly, the more I’m feeling, ‘Oh maybe I should go out and do this more often.’”
On that Monday afternoon, he showed that he wasn’t afraid to have a little fun with them as well. At the end of the program, when he was leaving the theater with his colleagues — and as people chanted “King-dom-Hearts! King-dom-Hearts!” in the background — Nomura ran to the emcee and gave him a piece of paper before disappearing backstage. The emcee read the note to us, where Nomura said that while he couldn’t show any footage of new worlds from Kingdom Hearts 3, he also didn’t want to come here empty-handed.
A short video clip suddenly appeared on screen showing never-before-seen concept art, a few seconds of Sora walking around a library, and rough battle animations. If the “oohs” and “aahs” I heard were any indication, the audience absolutely loved it.
I didn’t have a chance to ask Nomura what he thought about their response to the teaser, but I like to think that somewhere in the building, the scheming creator was already dreaming of new ways to confound both Sora and his fans.