STACK #147 Jan 2017

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GAMES FEATURE

Why Kingdom Hearts Works

With Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue out this month, Mark Ankucic takes a look at why gamers regard the series so highly.

here is no sense – not taste, or sight, or feel – that should allow for children’s light- hearted distractions to mix so elegantly with manifestations of existential dread. Yet Kingdom Hearts succeeds with the assuredness of a runaway mine cart. Despite its passionate following, Kingdom Hearts is a niche title. You couldn’t blame your average shopper from looking at the cover and dismissing it as ‘some weird Japanese thing’; yet the keener-eyed of them might glance again and think ‘what the hell is Goofy doing next to a spiky- haired, ridiculously round-eyed anime trope?' It’s a good question, and the answer is quite simple. Disney and Square Enix shared an office building, and some creators got talking in an elevator. Fast forward through what I’m sure was the most convoluted legal and creative processes in the history of entertainment, and voila, Cloud Strife strides proudly alongside Donald Duck. And it works. It really, really works – for a few reasons.

favourite teddy with you to investigate the noises in the dark – old enough to face the problem, but not without button-eyed emotional support. For a lot of people, that’s the sweet spot, calling back to a time of confusion and hope and angst, all while being surrounded by faces you love and trust. One of the problems with franchises like God of War is that everything you do is epic. You’re either fighting a hundred guys at once or slaying a city-sized monster, so the sense of scale in the game expands and then retracts back to normality. Epic is about juxtaposition more than things being big and explosive all the time.

You’ll hear themes bandied around the KH series, of hope and darkness and hearts and love and all the elements that make sappy anime unbearably addictive. You’ll recognise that these themes exist in Final Fantasy, normally encapsulated deep within superbly outrageous Japanese metaphor, and within Disney, normally encapsulated on the surface following Goofy falling off something and saying ‘YAAAAAAHA HA HOOOOOOIE’. Arguably, what separates how each franchise handles these themes is their respected demographics. Disney is for children and girls in their mid-to-late twenties who still reckon they’re a princess, and Final Fantasy is for

angsty teens and grown-up people that need a 60-hour excuse to escape their families. KH is basically the bridge between the two; the ‘tween’ game, where things are bright, and colourful, and hopeful, but constantly challenged by the new, the scary, the dark, and the fear of things to come. It’s the gaming equivalent of taking your

JANUARY 2017

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