It has only been about a few weeks since Square Enix announced a HD remake of the original Kingdom Hearts game at the Tokyo Game Show. Since that announcement, Kingdom Hearts fans have been extremely frustrated because there was no mention of Kingdom Hearts II. People wanted to know why the one of if not the most popular game in the franchise was not getting a HD remake as well?
However, today series director Tetsuya Nomura teased that a Kingdom Hearts II HD remake will most likely get done sometime in the future according to his most recent interview. When asked if there was going to be a HD remake of Kingdom Hearts II Nomura responded:“It’d be unusual if there wasn’t”.
He didn’t go into any more detail than that, but I suspect that Kingdom Hearts II is going to be released with Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep; because in the interview he goes on to say:
“I figured since there were people who had a hard time keeping up with the sequels, we had to start from the beginning with Kingdom Hearts HD, I also thought that familiar fans might make new discoveries seeing everything in chronological order with the sequels side by side.”
It looks like Square Enix may be trying to collect the whole series chronologically in two separate HD releases; so Kingdom Hearts II would actually come after Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days story wise. So the next Kingdom Hearts HD remake should include Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, and Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance; but this is all speculation and with the way Square Enix is run nowadays nothing would surprise me.
While there was no more news on a Kingdom Hearts II HD remake, there was some news on the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix. Nomura went on to explain in the Kingdom Hearts HD remake most of the original models for Sora and the others have been replaced with character models from Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. Not only that, but they are refining gameplay mechanics that will play more like Kingdom Hearts II.
Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix has only officially been announced as a Japanese release; but I find it hard to believe Square Enix wouldn’t release the game in North America and Europe considering how much they like money.
