Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 10 - The God of Sora's Heart

At least, we have completed the primer series. We're done.



And that's that. Sam and I stand by what we said at the end this. Despite the many trials and tribulations to get this series to you guys, we are glad to have done it and hope it was as fun to watch as it was for us to record.

However, I think it's also worth going over some of the lessons we learned doing this series, so that the audience, should they choose to follow in our example and do long form video let's plays on games, can learn from our mistakes.

• Don't get too attached to your original plan and adjust to changing circumstances: When we originally conceived this idea, it was intended to be an easy to produce mini-project. Instead, it dominated our production for over a year. Realistically, after first recording of original Kingdom Hearts, we probably should've scaled back to do smaller, more focused retrospectives (either as a podcast or in smaller episodes where we just took chunks of footage as B-roll). Learn from our mistakes and don't be afraid to scale back when a project it bigger than you anticipated.

• Make sure the game/series you talk about is "Let's Playable": In hindsight, the fact that it never even occurred to us to play through Kingdom Hearts for the channel should have been our first hint we were taking the wrong approach for a long-form video series. Even doing cutscenes only, there were large chunks of the Primer series where we didn't have much to talk about. A lot of Let's Players refuse to play RPGs like Dragon Age because of the way they're paced is not conducive to keeping viewers entertained. Kingdom Hearts is in that vein, and we should have acknowledged that while we were planning the series.

• Pace yourselves: This is something I think Sam and I did fairly well. With any project, especially once this long, it is important to keep a steady, but workable pace. It's a marathon, not a sprint. When it gets finished is not as important as the fact that it did get finished. Since this is a passion project and not paid work, that's even more important. Passion projects live or die by how willing the project owners are willing to put in the work. If you burn yourself out, that dream project you've always wanted to complete will never get off the ground.

And give credit where credit is due. As the person who writes these articles, I have more "presence" than Sam does, but he's been the one diligently editing all of these videos together for your entertainment. A more even distribution of the workload, whenever we return from our long-deserved break, is a crucial element we'll need to work on going forward. I'm not as good an editor as Sam is, but I can do it myself (as seen in my Hitman LP) and it's not fair to him to have to do all of that.

Speaking of new video content, it may be quite some time before we get back into the swing of things. This was a tough project, and both Sam and I have jobs now. As a result, we need to have some serious talks before we can even think of continuing. Odds are we'll be back eventually, and I've been thinking about getting more heavily into writing again, but for now Interactive Friction will go silent.

Farewell for now, and I hope to see you all soon. Kingdom Hearts has been quite the ride.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 9 - Open Dark Surgery

Almost done. After this, just one more episode until we've completed the Kingdom Hearts Primer.



Let's begin my first establishing the timeline, as we know it:

• Master Xehanort, way back in Birth by Sleep, tried to create the keyblade by separating Ventus and his darkness and recombining them. Though he failed, he gained Terra's body as a new vessel to replace his old, frail body.
• In the original Kingdom Hearts, that new Xehanort (now Ansem) became a heartless and tried to use the 7 princesses of heart to open the door to Kingdom Hearts. He failed, and was destroyed.
• In Kingdom Hearts II, the nobody that Xehanort left behind formed an Organization with 12 other nobodies. This group has 2 objectives: To both gather enough hearts to create Kingdom Hearts, and to gather 13 vessels of darkness as a contingency. He also failed, and got destroyed.
• With both the heartless and nobody defeated, Xehanort was restored, and was free to take up the backup plans set up by his heartless and nobody. Gathering his past and future selves, along with the vessels he could gather, to form True Organization XIII.

Take another look at that last part, he planned so far ahead (presumably with future sight) that he had already prepared for everything to fall apart. He even built preparation for future contingencies into his contingencies.

Let's not forget that the significance of the X in each Organization members' names is also explained, along with the gold eyes and pointy ears. If I Nomura hadn't already revealed in an interview that he deliberately leaves elements of each plot vague so that he can fill in details at a later date, I might be impressed this level of forethought. As it stands, just thinking about how likely any one of these events is, let alone all of them occurring in this exact sequence, is mind-shattering.

This is the point where even fans of the franchise question the credulity of the story. Fortunately for Nomura, Kingdom Hearts love the series so much that we (Yes, I still count myself in this group) are still willing to put up with pretty mediocre writing so we can hang out with our "old friends": Sora, Riku, and Kairi.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 8 - Sora-Nort!

Welcome to (almost) the end of the game. Like most Kingdom Hearts finales, this is where all of the main plot twists and story beats start actually getting explained. Unlike other Kingdom Hearts finale, it's crazier than a Metal Gear story.



If you thought that Birth By Sleep did a terrible job with how it linked the stories of games that chronologically (by release date) came out before it, then wait until you see what they did in Dream Drop Distance. There's no other way to explain how what is about to unfold other then Xehanort being literally clairvoyant, or having a copy of Nomura's notes.

But we'll get more into that in the next episode. For now, the most interesting thing to note is, as we'll note in the next episode, Riku is the true protagonist of this game. Sora is actually the victim of a sinister plot that has been unfolding over the course of the whole game. Despite our constant complaining, the game does a good job foreshadowing that something bad is going on by continuously bringing Sora into contact with Xemnas and Young Xehanort.

Buckle up, we haven't even begun to jump down the rabbit hole.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 7 - Sucks To Be Terra

A land of musical, magical wonders... trapped by Kingdom Hearts.



Again, credit to Square Enix for being bold enough to tackle this kind of source material. That said, I don't have much to add here that I didn't say in the recording.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 6 - We Ran Out of Movies

"So that's where this episode came from," Brandon said to himself.



(Before you correct him, I have told Sam that there were actually four musketeers in the original novel. Don't worry about it.)

Though we groaned a lot during this episode, I think it is really cool that Nomura tied a lot of the older Disney movies into established Kingdom Hearts canon. Without calling attention to it, they also explain King Mickey's backstory, even if they use time travel in a dream to do it.

The plot device of the sleeping worlds, despite how silly it is, actually gave the writers an excellent excuse to work with previous Disney films. I appreciate the originality.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 5 - Don't Ask Questions

I completely forgot about this second trip to Traverse Town.



One thing I will actually praise Dream Drop Distance for, it's that it does a pretty good job at foreshadowing many of the twists and plot points that come up in the end game. It's nothing I can get into now, but I look forward to elaborating on it later.

And as for Maleficent... who cares? I don't. She stopped being relevant a long time ago.

Sam also brings up a great point that there is a degree of casual sexism in the game with regards to how it treats female characters. We went into it with Kairi way back in Kingdom Hearts 1, and Sam was right to call it out with Shiki in this game.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 4 - Feeling Sora

Oh great, just what this game needed: A shoddy tie-in to a movie that was "coming soon" when the game came out.



In between when we recorded this episode and the time this episode is released, Joe Parlock from Let's Play Video Games wrote an article criticizing Disney for treating it's games like advertisements. He used Tron: Legacy's inclusion in Dream Drop Distance, and Pirates of the Caribbean in Kingdom Hearts 2, as examples for this, and he was right to do so.

For Port Royale, one could argue that there were interesting things Nomura could do with it that were new and exciting. Here, not only are we treading old ground by going back to Tron, but we're doing so in a way that raises far too many questions about how much any of it matters or even if could plausibly happen. On top of that, the source material isn't that great.

It has all the hallmarks of a shitty move tie-in, and it drags down the whole game as a result.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 3 - Don't Let's Play RPGs

In this episode, we had some plot occur for about 3 minutes, then the Disney worlds took over.



I don't really have anything to say about Pinocchio. It's just kinda there... like many other Disney worlds in this series.

That said, I really do enjoy that Riku, in particular, is getting to explore how his character has evolved since the first game. It was a good idea to contrast him with his "dark side" from back then to see how far he's come.

Now if only we could get some more time with the former-Nobodies.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 2 - Piledrive That Gypsy!

For something as decidedly family-friendly as Kingdom Hearts claims to be, The Hunchback for Notre Dame is such a strange choice.



For reference, this is the "Hellfire" song I mentioned during this episode when talking about how dark this story is.



First off, I have, since the time of the recording, been informed that "gypsy" is a racist slur. (The correct term being Romani.) Had I known that at the time, I would've pointed it out and the conversation that we had would've played out quite different. That said, it further underscores the point I was making in this episode.

Even in the lexicon of Disney movies, this isn't one of their more beloved works. Not to say that it's bad or that it doesn't have fans, but it never reached the kind of popularity that a lot of their movies from this time period did. That might explain why it's in a side game and not one of the bigger games in the Kingdom Hearts canon, but it's still such an odd choice when it's dark tone is combined with it's relative obscurity.

At least we get some good character moments with Sora and Riku out of it, even if I'm left disturbed by Frollo's Romani/Esmerelda obsession to this day.

Kingdom Hearts Primer - Dream Drop Distance - Episode 1 - This Game Gets Weird

At last, we are in the home stretch on the Kingdom Hearts Primer. This is the last sub-series in this major project that has taken Sam and I over a year and tons of our sanity. Finally, we will have recapped all the story you need to know for Kingdom Hearts 3.

After the long and grueling season on Re:Coded, we needed that break to get this started.



First off, the actual reason we had to wait is because when Sam went to edit the footage, Adobe Premier decided that he wasn't allowed to and crashed.

Second, I'm glad to know that Sam reads my articles like the one he mentioned where I talk about Neku and the story of The World Ends With You. I would appreciate it if you did too! (Side note: Man, I really need to get back to writing.)

As for any actual commentary on the story: Man, this Kingdom Hearts game is the most confusing of the bunch. Kingdom Hearts already has a massive problem where it was difficult to explain the story to someone who hasn't been playing the series. Dream Drop Distance adds parallel worlds, dreams, and time travel to the mix all in the introduction. There's no real way to get around how much bloat that adds.

I also feel really bad for all the people out there who saw the cast of The World Ends With You in this game and thought "I'm sure glad Square Enix didn't forget about this IP". Since DDD, there has been nothing done with those characters or that IP. It's such a shame. :(