Kingdom Hearts 3's Other Version That Was Scrapped 

The one thing I noticed is that it took a while for them to nail sora’s face on ue4. You can see from the earlier trailers how derpy it was before 2018. However, they pretty much nail his face from the get go on the luminous engine. Even from the reveal trailer it look straight out of kh2 pre rendered cutscenes.

It still blows my mind how the first ever scene of any KH3 footage 10+ years ago made it out to the final version. With how KH3 ended up in it's final version, I bet the original plans had more cool ideas that ended up cut thanks to switching engines and multiple delays. One of them as I mention in a previous video is the lack of focus on original KH worlds. I hope they just don't do the same mistake with KH4. Now since Quadratum is the main world this time and from what see saw in Missing-Link so far from world details and interactions, I have high hopes this time.

It’s amazing that these stories are a decade old and I lived through this series of events in the midst of becoming a KH fan. Like I remember the day the TGS 2015 trailer dropped bruh…

Nearly two years now since KH4 reveal. Can't wait to see what's next.

I personally think that the original KH3 with Luminous was better looking than what they ended up with UE4/Kingdom Shader: don't get me wrong, it looks gorgeous (even if some world areas and some effects are oversaturated, and the "plasticky" look constantly returns once in a while despite all the progress made from 2.8), but the way Luminous' version seemed, it just strikes me through. I also wonder how many things were changed or straight up cut to catch up with that year and a half of delay that the engine switch caused.

What's very interesting about KH3's original animated face HUD is that Versus XIII also had the same feature. In one of our first looks at the combat trailers, you can see the same removed feature during development. Both KH3's and FFvXIII's were removed with the engine change. Interesting to see it come back for Missing Link!

I really am curious about how KH3 would have turned out if they stuck with the Luminous engine.

In a couple of days kh3 will be half a decade old… Namora said 4 will be quicker but I didn’t realize it’d be an other decade considering them focused on missing link next coming years

What would have been nice to mention is that the BBS 0.2 Game was supposed to be KH3s Prologue and included with KH3. I really wonder if there is a completed Version of 0.2 completly running on Luminos

Now we can see why it took so long until KH3 released. They had to scrap the use of Luminous and take a few years to work around the UE4, and spend time to flesh out the models(including Sora's). It happened similarly when the earlier trailers to Kingdom of Corona sometimes lacked Rapunzel due to heavy progress on properly animating her hair via the same engine. Also, it was disappointing to not explore Scala Ad Caelum further. We even got to see the room YX and Young Eraqus used to play chess in, but modding restored the location from the same world. Luminous Engine was later used for Final Fantasy XV around the same time, and as of recent the underwhelming Forspoken. In my opinion, the Luminous Engine was used less and less compared to Unreal, and on the subject of FFXV, the Pocket Edition was ported to Switch cuz the console couldn't handle it unlike the PS4, Xbox One, and PC at the time. Luminous went through a terrible fate akin to Konami's Fox Engine, because of FFXV, Forspoken, and KH3's troubled production. The original engine footage to the game remains at Square Enix's vaults, never to see the light of day.

I think if Kingdom hearts 3 had still been made on the Lumious engine I think we would’ve gotten a completely different game than what we got.

I can't believe it's been 10 years since Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced. The world was much simple and cleaner back then. I can't wait for Kingdom Hearts 4, but i hope Square Enix takes their time with it so nothing is rushed. Thank you for the insight Cynical, have a nice Christmas!🎄

As someone who’s studying game development, I’m glad you mention the challenges of how switching from one engine to another is the biggest hurdle to getting use to as I’ve been studying both unity and unreal engines. I hope gamers will have an understanding what developers go through

The more I see the Luminous Engine footage, the more I want to see what KH3 would look like if it stayed in the Luminous Engine and didn’t switch to the UE4, because there’s something about it that I really love.

I kinda wished we had KH3 in Luminous Engine, the art style fitted better to my opinion. Also very nice video!I enjoyed it! We need more of these please, or something related to retrospectives or going through the story on how KH games came to be and each era's vibe maybe! Keep up the good work!

I really enjoyed this documentary-style video going through the development of KH3. Would love to see more like this for other KH games! I also enjoyed the environmental fly-through B-roll.

What's really interesting about the moving heads display near the HPs, is that Nomura was also using that idea for his Final Fantasy Versus XIII gameplay back when he was still the developer for that game too.

I honestly still think that Sora's face looked better on the Luminous engine than in Unreal 4. Something about the way it was constructed on luminous just perfectly captured his cgi aesthetic from 2, whereas in Unreal it looks great on its own, but when compared to the older game's cg it looks slightly inaccurate in a way that the luminous model doesn't.

I didn’t start my KH journey until 2020 so a lot of this is new to me. Great video my brother!

The Luminous engine will always be my favorite for kingdom hearts

RIP Mysterious Tower

kingdom hearts video, thank you.

I remember seeing that trailer and getting so excited to see how Master Xehanort and the other Org members would look in that art style. The old man was actually one of the characters I feel the animators got right in KH3. They captured the elasticity of his face and his wriggling fingers very well. But I still wish with all my heart we could have seen the Other KH3. I still occasionally daydream about it lol

Dude your videos have been BANGERS recently!!

EVERYTHING was affected by SE's shitty management and stubbornness to use their in house tools. Crystal Tools, Luminous Engine. Everything suffered because of it. FF14,VERSUS 13, KH3 are the main things that were delayed or destroyed because of this

This takes me back. I remember all of this, every day anticipating any news at all and the long drought. I kinda miss KH3s development time because it was exciting when we got news but i definitely dont miss the wait

stellar video bro I was hoping you’d make a video on this for a while

I really liked how the alpha looked before the unreal engine, it also felt less floaty, i have found that alot of ue games have that problem

14:06 It's not the only bad habit, releasing 20 trailers in one year and 20 others in like 4 years took away the exittment and mystery while experiencing the game after watching all those trailers. Not pretending I was never hungry for more back in 2018, but going back to that old question you once mentioned in 2018 '"how much is too much" of trailers. Well I guess it was too TOO much. For example, when I saw in-game how the tornado heartless took everyone away and Sora start crying? I felt nothing. Why? Because I already watched a trailer showing them ALL Okay and alive in a scene that had YET to come. It ruined the experience so I hope they be more careful in what they show for KH4.

I wish KH3 had more DLC. 🙁 It would've been cool to have a KH3 official Sephiroth fight.

Think Ive been watching you for nearly a decade now. Cheers friend!

I remember all of when this happened. In fact, I came back to your channel for news and updates. But the extra reasons for the engine change? I didn’t know.

I like the live face HUD idea, not just animated but if it is accurate to the player model as if its just a camera always tracking the faces. It's obvious that KH3 was more of a tech demo thanks to the length of time of development and adopting the game to modern engines, which makes me excited for KH4 now that the kinks have been worked out and experience within Unreal has been acquired, onward to a new era of the series!

I had no idea about this for Kingdom Hearts 3, but I kinda like the idea & wanna see more of how it would have looked in comparison to what we got. I also love your voice & your content, could watch your videos about my #1 favorite video game series

The old Luminous engine footage looks stunning, especially for the time, but I don't think Kingdom Hearts switching to Unreal was a mistake. On the contrary, I think the series moving to Unreal was the right call since in the long run it removes the burden of Square-Enix having to make and support their own engine in-house. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Fragmentary Passage in 2.8, and while KH3 felt almost random whether certain options appeared in battle the actual gameplay felt very nice. Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth also look _amazing,_ so I think it's safe to say Square-Enix knows Unreal pretty well by now. Coincidentally, Disney just bought a huge stake in Epic Games worth $1.5 billion, which I think is another surefire sign that Unreal Engine is here to stay as far as Kingdom Hearts is concerned.

Yeeaa. Love reminiscing about this kinda stuff. Thanks for a dope & well-made video yet again.

if they still have any tech demos or anything I would love to see more footage of the original version of KH3 with Luminous. Especially that Shadow tornado fight in Twilight Town! Sure that was pre rendered animation for the trailer, but they probably did at least a small gameplay version of that boss fight. I know KH3 will never get a final mix and am alright with that, but if it ever were to, that's the kind of content I'd want from it. That and Re:Mind edited into the main game.

I remember when the just the test video of Sora vs the demon swirl many were like "oh shiz this looks so good." I will always cherish those moments of HS being hyped for 3 and a friend telling me "the game will release in 2016" and me believing it haha. I didn't get a ps4 til 2018 but i was hyped

Ohhhh Mt goodness thank you for this video!

I’m actually happy how KH3 ended up looking on UE4 and also appreciate the technical aspects. The worlds were so much bigger, they felt substantial and with minimal amount of transitional scenes/loading screens. The team that worked on KH3 extracted the best out of the engine and hardware. There’s other things too like how hair had shadows, specular highlights, and fluid animation. I was so impressed with the overall presentation of KH3 and appreciate the work that was done to get it right.

I jokingly predicted KH 3 wouldn't have been released until 2021 way back in 2012 when talking to a friend about it. I was only a few yrs off that year date 😂

I remember it took so long for info on Sky Trolley Town (Scala) to be revealed after the closed showcase, that when it showed up in a public trailer for the first time it was suprising partly because people assumed the content was scrapped entirely.

Could we also assume that this would have been… Another Side, Another Story?

This was great, love your work man ❤

i'll never forgive them for scrapping reveal KH3. that Twilight Town sequence looked badass.

I don't suppose I've ever much thought about how much the game may have changed when switching engines. Thank you for another interesting video. God be with you out there everybody, and Merry Christmas! ✝️ :)

Always wondered about that version.

most likely there was no Quadratum or Yozora in this old KH3, since Nomura was still involved in FFXV, so there was no reason for this concept to be included in KH.

Duuuude, I freaking forgot about the second trailer at d23, what a throwback

Anybody notice that in the big thunder mountain footage, the quadratum symbol is displayed on the top of the screen with the text?

What is the music used around the 7:00 mark with the piano????

New upload LETS GO💙🔥😎

I was LITERALLY JUST looking this up (the whole luminous engine thingamabob) when I saw your video uploaded 26 minutes ago. Telepathy, maybe??? Nice!

Personally the game looked super rough on Luminous but it was still early so the animations and such weren't touched up to the max. I'm glad they switched to Unreal and i'm hoping they stick to it because while I love FF15 the combat doesn't feel smooth imo and the way it felt and comparing how Forspoken felt kinda gives an idea of the limitations of the engine or just the feel it gives and I don't like it. Unreal Engine with KH feels so right outside of the floatiness that the Osake team is known for, but the team took that weakness and the feedback then made it a strength because the KH we know and love gained in air blocking and item usage to compensate for it and some combos are more fun and better thanks to it. The game is gorgeous and I think it looks significantly better than anything the Luminous Engine would've produced simply due to how well each world looks exactly as they should.

The biggest issue with the Luminous Engine at the time was that there was no manual for any Square Enix developer that's outside of the Final Fantasy XV team. Square Enix higher ups are insane for allowing that to happen. 😆 Also with that Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer it's running on Unreal Engine 4. The newer trailers and final game will be running on Unreal Engine 5. 😎

Looking at FFXV and Forspoken, which have tons of graphical engine problems in their final game; it was for the best that they switched to Luminous. And for those saying the original KH3 character renders in Luminous looked “better,” than in the final game- those models were clearly pre-rendered, not in the game’s native engine. I’m glad that they took the effort to change the engine. The game would’ve looked and run way worse if they didn’t.

It would be really cool if someone in the modding community attempted a mock up of what the private 2014 trailer might have looked like based on the descriptions given by those who attended.

I’ll never forget seeing the first trailer for KH3. That was 10 years ago😢

I'm taking credit for the recent tweet about the OG render giving the video idea :3 totally me

Tbh, switching the engine was a bad choice. They should have stayed with Luminous, maybe then they’ll have more time to add more to the game. I’ve always felt KH3 was short in comparison to KH2.

I feel like the motion of the demon tide and sora smacking with the keyblade is something the engine switch deleted its like that realistic inpwct is missing hope that's in kh 4

Kingdom hearts BABYYYYY

I kinda feel like the luminose engine version looks better and more kingdom heartsy then what we ended up getting in kh3 they both look great but i wish i hade gotten a luminose version

3:32 I've been wanting this to become a real game since 2012 😭

+The Gamers Joint I wish we could have play the Luminous engine Demo of KH3, I love the final product but it could have been more crazier if the Luminous engine was the final product, don't you think?

I will say that FF14 2.0 onwards does run on a modified, stripped down, version of the Luminos engine.

FFXIV also runs on luminos but a lite version of it

I wonder if square even uses the luminous engine anymore after forspoken

I honestly think it is better that they moved to UE because it works so well with resource management that I don't believe a company, who is so busy with other projects that games get put on hold, would be able to create something just as good. But then I don't know how Luminous Engine ticks. My guess is the reason it was pre-rendered is because it was not optimized for the engine yet and may have run laggy/buggy. I also don't believe Nomura contradicts anything, sure the assets were going to be reused and I think this was referring to 3D models, textures, sounds, artwork and a lot of the code. They would only replace particle things like water, fire, and magic, and use UE's reflections, materials and lighting. The the only code that needs to be rewritten is code that interacts with the engine, and if they were doing it properly, they would convert it to UE nodes. I guess changes like collision checking, etc would need to be updated. Again, I don't know how LE works.

Those were the years, how nostalgic

Thank you for talking about the engine switch again. This is something ALOT community either forgot about… or simply didn’t know. This is why I gave KH3 another chance on release, but it was a heartbreak at first lol. After remind the combat is chefs kiss

I feel that it's possible you're misunderstanding what the quote "the transition was quite a process" may mean in this case. I think that it's very possible for the graphical assets to be ported directly from the Luminous Engine to UE4, but only after the relevant code and tools were made to support that transition. As such, the transition between engines - particularly tooling and the process of making sure assets made in one engine didn't go to waste - is able to be quite a process without contradicting the previous statement ^^

Jungle Book should've been in this game

This actually explains alot... like why there's no final fantasy characters or original worlds to actually explore in the game like Hollow Bastion or Traversetown. I guess it has Twilight Town but as we can see its the only level they always showed being there so be kinda weird to leave it out.

After going to school for stuff like this, building the 3d models and working with UE I've finally come to understand the true pain of making games myself. It is a very difficult process, and honestly I have always respected gaming companies within their work, but it is very much more appreciated now that I know how it works. UE4 is a very convenient program. I enjoyed using it.

The Fabula Nova Cristrallis wasn't being intended to run on Luminous Engine, but on the previous Square's In-house engine White Engine or Crystal Tools (the engine used in FFXIII and FFXIV 1.0), however, that engine had a lot of issues and couldn't handle different types of game, the 1.0 version of Final Fantasy XIV being a clear example of that. Because of that, Square Enix hired Yoshihisa Hashimoto and a lot of Sonic Team devs that worked on Sonic Unleashed HD and the creation of it's engine, the Hedgehog Engine, to develop a new game engine for the next gen titles of square enix, that one being Luminous, Final Fantasy Versus XIII were one of the few games that changed from Crystal Tools to Luminous Engine, others being Final Fantasy XIV 2.0, but even with that, Luminous was still in development and there was issues with it, there are tales that the first versions of Final Fantasy XV on Luminous made some PS4 catch fire because they couldn't handle it, from what we've seen from Luminous, it is quite a impressive engine for making some stunning CGI visuals, but just as the first Hedgehog Engine, it is not very well optimized to use all that potential in real time hardware, probably even less optimized than HE1 considering how Forspoken turned out looking. Edit: although Final Fantasy XV and Forspoken weren't huge sucess, Luminous Engine (or at least it's core) helped saving Final Fantasy XIV wich is one of the more profitable games in Square Enix nowadays, so at least we can say that the development of luminous wasn't a complete waste of time and money.

Was Forespoken in the Luminous Engine?

While the visuals may have been ever so slightly downgraded in the switch to Unreal Engine 4, I think it worked out in KH3's favor in the long run because not only was the final game's general performance on the base 8th-gen consoles much better than Final Fantasy XV's (you think the bad frame-pacing in 30fps mode and the framerate dips in The Caribbean on UE4 KH3 were bad, that was nothing compared to the constant slowdown and frequent dips into very low resolution that FFXV suffered from), but I'm 100% convinced UE4's non-proprietary nature is the entire reason why the PC port has so many fan-made mods that enhance the experience of the base game and even fix some of its flaws. (Special shoutout to the Coliseum mod!)

As painstaking as the delays were, I think things ended up in the best possible outcome. It sucks that all the plans Square Enix had for the Luminous Engine really didn't come to pass, but by using a very successful and universe engine like Unreal, they're making life a lot easier for themselves going forward. They're now part of a community of other prominent game developers who also use this engine and moving forward to UE5 will also be easier.

Kh3 just felt rushed. Like Square just wanted it out the door so fans would quit asking.

I just wish KHIII’s combat felt more like HKII. Combat felt fast but firm in the second game.

defintely luminious was tough to work with

I think if it did release on Luminous, Missing Link would be nearly impossible, as Square almost certainly never made any tooling for it to run on mobile. I do think they probably should have started on Unreal, but I can totally imagine that pride was on the line

god the luminos engine looked so much better then unreal i wish they never wouldve switched

LETS GO MY GOAT DROPPED 🔥🔥🔥🔥

The story and creative sub events is what mattered not how it looks tbh. I wish they had someone spend all those years writing an actual good story for 3, hence why people like KH2 more even though it looks worse.

am i the only one that thought the luminos engine hp and mp bars looked fucking sick??

Fordpoken wasnt a success tho 😂

Kingdom hearts 3 greatly disappointed me and I have not recovered from the colossal failure that is kingdom hearts 3. With all their time of development, the story felt rushed and the pacing was awful...

I think KH3's dev cycle has also humbled fans a bit. Moving forward, fans might be more inclined to be patient when it comes to trailers and updates on big name titles in the series. Rather than beg for a new trailer to be dropped every couple months (and thus spoil large chunks of the story), fans will (hopefully) let Square cook for a while before dropping new footage.

Was there a version that didn’t wanna make me end it all whenever a cutscene happens?

what square needed was a live service game that was consistent on update to show off the engine kinda like how epic has fortnite. the way i see it, fortnite is designed to teach people how to develop games with their creation mode since it allows you to mod assets you want to use in your creations and i think because of that, games that are on the unreal engine tend to go smoothely where and because luminous didnt have the team free enough to teach people how to use the engine as much as epic does.

I have a friend that was at Square USA around 2011-2019. From what he's told me, the switch to Unreal was because Luminous was progressing super slow, and the higher ups were afraid of another FF15 situation where it was too far to switch engines.

Wish we got the luminous KH3 instead

Unreal Engine 4 is the worst thing to happen to KH3, it just feels and looks fundamentally different than the previous games

Please do a history lesson on 0.2, it was a rough road to make Terra’s face right

I miss the moving hud. it felt so "next gen" at the time but its nice to see it in missing link

Long term using UE does make sense. Though I still think that 2013 luminous demo looks better, the UE is too clean and bright. There's just something about the lightning in luminous that I prefer

I think the best thing to ever happen to KH3 was being switched to UE and coming to PC. Mods seriously extend that game's lifespan and allows people to fix the problems they have with the game. I only rebought it for PC because of mods.

I still liked the visual style of that very first teaser of KH3 with Sora on Destiny Islands more than the final game. KH3 leaned back into something more realistic or in line with modern animated Disney movies, which is fine, but it also took away a piece of Kingdom Hearts' unique identity. That's my biggest gripe with what's happened to Kingdom Hearts over time, it just feels like it's lost what made it unique to begin with. It has become a really convoluted Disney game with the occasional Final Fantasy cameo. Maybe Unreal 4 gave the team a lot more flexibility to experiment, maybe it was a bit more modern, but it cost them a lot of what made Kingdom Hearts special. We could have even gotten Kingdom Hearts 3 in the PS3 generation, had they not gone through with the engine change. I could only imagine how different of a game it would have been.