Kingdom Hearts 4 Features Coco Since It Fits Sora’s Story The Best, Says Nomura

Shortly after officially unveiling Coco as one of the Disney worlds players can explore in Kingdom Hearts 4, director Tetsuya Nomura has shed some more light on the decision. During a D23 panel (courtesy of Genki_JPN), Nomura spoke about how the Pixar film’s depiction of The Land of the Dead served as a good fit for Sora’s own story.

“Whenever I do have a chance to decide that we absolutely need to include a certain world. I generally think about how well it synergizes with the overall main story progression with Sora. When it comes to Kingdom Hearts 4, when I thought about the themes, we felt that Coco would be the best world that would help achieve that goal.”

Since Disney and Pixar have put out several movies since the 2019 release of Kingdom Hearts 3, Coco is unlikely to be the only entirely new world in Kingdom Hearts 4. There are plenty of strong candidates for Disney worlds to show up in the upcoming title thanks to the release of critically-acclaimed films like Luca, Soul, Encanto, and Elemental.

Interestingly, Disney has also focused quite a bit on releasing live-action adaptations of its older animated films in recent years, and as such, we might even get to see some of these make an appearance. Considering how much criticism films like 2019’s Aladdin and 2020’s Mulan have seen, however, this seems like an unlikely choice for Kingdom Hearts 4.

Coco was unveiled as one of Kingdom Hearts 4’s worlds with a trailer during D23. In it, we got to see Sora meeting Miguel, fighting Heartless during a performance, and even getting his hands on a new Keyblade design that matches the themes of The Land of the Dead. Adding an extra wrinkle to the proceedings is the fact that Donald and Goofy were both elsewhere – in the Underworld from Hercules – to meet Hades.

King Mickey will also be a playable character in Kingdom Hearts 4, with an extended version of the trailer giving us a glimpse at his sections. Co-director Tai Yasue has confirmed that Mickey’s sections involve “sort of puzzle-based game design that’s very different from Sora’s adventure, and I think it’s really refreshing and interesting.”

Kingdom Hearts 4 is being developed for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. While Square Enix hasn’t yet announced a concrete release date, Nomura has reaffirmed that there are no planned delays and that the game will come out in late 2027.

“We announced that the game is going to be coming late 2027, and I saw online that some people were saying, ‘oh, you know, maybe the actual release date might still get pushed back’.

“I just wanted to set the record straight – that is not happening. So I do hope people look forward to the game coming in 2027. A lot of the marketing for the game has only just started, and so I do hope that people also look forward to hearing more news as well.”

For more on Kingdom Hearts, check Disney’s thoughts on the franchise when it comes to revenue.