Kingdom Hearts 2 was released on December 22, 2005 on the PS2. There have been some remakes, spin-offs and re-releases, but 12 years later we finally get the sequel we've been waiting for.
At Disney’s D23 expo, director Tetsuya Nomura explained exactly why this took so long:
A lot of people have been mentioning and making it sound like ‘Oh, Nomura’s taking too much time,’ and it hurts. There was a decision made to change to an external [engine]...Unreal Engine 4. So we switched over to that. Unfortunately there was a bit of time that needed to be rewinded and started over. So there was a bit of a setback there, but it was a decision that the company had to make, so it was inevitable.
Nomura also explained that it was mostly down to limited personnel at the time, and that it was really out of their hands to make the process go any faster. And GameSpot believes that there might already be some DLC coming our way after the game's release, following this comment at the expo:
I don’t think we’ll be keeping any worlds secret until the game is released. I think we will be introducing them leading up to launch. Nowadays games can add content on after the fact through DLC content, so there’s no need to hide any worlds.
Nothing is set in stone, and I’m afraid we can’t go into details, but I have told the team: Just be prepared to be able to accommodate for something like that. We can’t suddenly develop a system where we’re accommodating for downloadable content. So it’s not confirming or denying either way, but just so that the development team will be prepared, I have informed them of making the preparations.
So not only are they rewarding out patience with Kingdom Hearts 3, but some DLC may be a sure thing yet. Sure, it's not set in stone, but if they are preparing for it, why shouldn't we believe there will be DLC on the way? I'm with GameSpot on this one, and I don't feel that we will be disappointed.
Here's the reaction of the crowd at the D23 expo with the announcement of Kingdom Hearts 3, brought to you by HMK:
