There hasn't been much Kingdom Hearts 3 news since the reveal of a Toy Story world this summer, but a supposed leak from ResetEra has reenergized the game’s community. If these images are to be believed, Pixar’s Monsters Inc. might play a big role in the 2018 title.
These images first appeared on a niche Discord server run by ResetEra’s Wrestleman. The user says a chat member posted the screenshots after seeing them “somewhere else.” Going down the rabbit hole even further, the poster from that second location claims “I got them from a friend who got them from an FTP server where they were quickly removed afterwards."
That dubious chain of ownership alone is enough for us to question the leak, and we probably wouldn’t even post about it if the images didn’t look so darn convincing. This one is the clearest of all, and it shows Sora in pretty strange attire standing in the Monsters Inc. plaza. He’s got striped pants, purple hair and he’s surrounded by his two party pals, Mike and Sully. The group has gathered to fight off some Unversed minions and a large Unversed boss, which has some potentially huge implications for Roxas’ plot.
The second image is littered with Japanese development text that claims some of the assets are temporary, but it’s here we get a decent shot of Donald and Goofy. Goofy wears green spotted clothes, while Donald is outfitted in purple.
So is this leak real? Honestly, we have no idea. The assets themselves are pretty well designed and the new Monsters Inc. character icons look like originals, but everything could still be fan-created. After all, Kingdom Hearts 3 is made using the publicly available Unreal Engine 4. That means any skilled designer could create fakes that look very real if they set their mind to it.
If there’s one small detail to look into, it’s Sora’s HUD image. Its styling is much closer to the screenshot revealed during MAGIC 2017 in February. When the Toy Story trailer wowed crowds at D23 in July, the model had been updated. That would tell us these photos are either from an earlier build of the game or that the creator of this leak swiped the old HUD images from the MAGIC source.
Real or not, it wouldn’t be too surprising to have Monsters Inc. and its characters play a role in Kingdom Hearts 3. Now that Pixar franchises are open to getting their own worlds, the licensing is certainly there to make it happen. Monsters Inc. is also popular enough that it might be a world both parties would be interested in experimenting with.
We may get an official Kingdom Hearts 3 update over the next handful of hours, thanks to this weekend's Jump Festa in Japan. Square Enix just wrapped up a showcase that largely focused on Dragon Quest, but it's not impossible for the publisher to share a trailer or screenshot on social media during the convention. Kingdom Hearts 3 footage has been shown there in the past.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is slated for release on PS4 and Xbox One in 2018.
What are your thoughts on this leak? Would you like to see Monsters Inc. in Kingdom Hearts 3? Tell us in the comments section!
