Game Theory: The Frozen Level You Will NEVER Play! (Kingdom Hearts 3)

my friend Simon, look, how can you think that, oh, this is so silly and those aren't truffles, there's no chance I'm eating this, oh, but you'll kill it, ha ha, mouse? I should have known you were behind this, what are you? you're going to hold me down and force me to feed it oh no nothing that powerful but I hid one of the best swords behind that stupid cooking mini

game

so if you want a 100% of this

game

and I know you do. You'll eat those mushrooms, ha ha, you'll eat every last one of them, and if that's not enough, you'll have to do basic QuickTime events before you crack that egg, matpat, screams, soft presents, backpacks breaking hard and nothing more than that. no, hello internet, welcome to Zig's Game Theory, the show with a spin-off that covers Disney movies, so you'd think I would have covered Kingdom Hearts long before, but if I can be honest with you for a second in this series.

It scares me a little, the deep lore of Kingdom Hearts is so complex that it makes Scott Coffins' storytelling seem simple, and even if I could tell the difference between a Keyblade and a Keyblade, the places this story has gone are so obvious. that there is no

theory

. What I can think of would be as surprising as what Tetsuya Nomura has already done, plus, to say that I was able to come up with some kind of incredible historical

theory

, like proving how Sora was actually Xia North all along, would take at least two episodes. Just to explain enough of the background necessary for everyone here to appreciate it first.

Anyway, the clear talk here is that this is a series I really enjoy and it's something I've wanted to theorize about for a long time. time and with the release of Kingdom Hearts 3 or it's 2.9 Olympus Coliseum here we come, whatever it is. I finally have a theory about this game that literally anyone can appreciate, no backstory is required because buried in the code of Kingdom Hearts 3 are the fragments of a

level

and today I'm going to expose the lost setting that Disney didn't want us to see now For those of you who have

never

play

ed the game, let me quickly bring you up to speed.

We

play

as Sora, who is separated from his best friends, Riku. and Kairi when a mysterious darkness swallows her holes on the island, okay, so maybe trying to summarize this was a bad idea. Look, all that matters, and honestly, all that should have mattered, is that you're a jolly, spiky-haired boy named Sora traveling through the Disney Final Fantasy multiverse with Donald Duck and Goofy broadcasting the evil plans of boys and girls. of less cheerful anime in black trench coats who are sometimes clones as they save Disney characters from strangely cute monsters called the heartless and learn important lessons about friendship and love.

Along the way, Cage 3 is basically more the same with new Disney worlds ranging from Big Hero 6 to Tangled to Toy Story, but of all the Disney worlds we visit throughout the series, what in particular has received Many reviews from fans and critics alike are

frozen

, the world of Disney's smash hit musical is now playing, it's not hard to see why this

level

is so disliked: it forces players to climb a mountain just so they can be shot down immediately once they reach the top. they climb back to the top only to do it one more time, you get to the top of this mountain and you can't do anything and if that doesn't sound tedious enough you can't even join forces with Elsa or Kristoff or any of the real heroes of In the movie, however, the only

frozen

character to actually join your party is Elsa's snow golem, which only appears at the end of the level for the final boss fight in a game series that uses Disney properties. or very well in In the past, it's a huge disappointment to see such an iconic Disney franchise used so poorly, but I don't think this was the intention of the game developers.

No, my theory is that a different frozen level existed, but that it ultimately received cuts from the game. minute, resulting in the boring, repetitive Arendelle mess we eventually played in the final version of the game and that's not me just fuming. I think we can reconstruct what that level looked like and how it played using the clues left in the game from that initial design, today we are reconstructing the amazing frozen level that the game developers tried to give us but that Disney asked for before the final release of the game . Our first clue that this isn't the level the developers intended is how different Arendelle feels relative to all the other levels in the game.

Kingdom Hearts 3 strives to connect everyone's story. the other worlds directly with Sora's character art, allowing the Disney characters to influence him as much as he influences them. Hercules. teaches them how to get back up after a loss and believe in themselves again, meet Woody and Buzz and hear about Andy's love for them, reaffirms the faith he has in his own friends, even Corona, which mainly follows the plot from the tangled movie, draws parallels between Sora. first adventures outside the Destiny Islands and Rapunzel's first exposure to the outside world, but in Arendelle, the characters barely interact with the cast or plot of Frozen, except to bluntly restate what the audience just saw in the scene. , which was Elsa and much happier too and let me not even start with the songs.

Three big Disney musicals made it to Kingdom Hearts 3, but Frozen is the only one to feature a full CGI recreation of one of its iconic musical numbers. Let it go if you can't guess. I mean, Kingdom Hearts has included it. previous musical numbers I still have vivid war flashbacks from that run of The Little Mermaid but it's

never

been like that also includes a snippet of you want to build a snowman but for some reason Anna talks all the time it's almost as if the team is contractually obligated to including these songs that couldn't find a way to work them organically into the whole thing reeks of a creative conflict between the games team and Disney's Frozen brand team, but for me the strangest part and the one that really blew my mind theory.

What makes sense to want to see this in the first place is Hans, the villain of Arendelle, who is never introduced, never speaks, hell, we don't even really see his face, that's Elsa, but who is that guy, darkness, which is literally his first appearance two-thirds of the way through. the level the next time we see him is here and now he's passed out and now he's a portal now he's a good boy and now I'm confused now you like me at first you might think this is all a result of Disney forcing Square to include their most successful animated musical in gaming, but Tetsuya Nomura has gone on record to say that was not the case.

Usually when we think about making a game, we choose between works that are already available to the public, however, they froze when we were selecting. Disney of the world showed us the trailer before it was finished and we liked it enough to continue the discussion to include it in the game. We decided to include it before the movie came out, so we were lucky that it was a big hit. End of frozen quote. was already planned for the game when it was announced at e3 2013 before anyone knew how successful the movie would be, suggesting that Nomura had more reasons to include Frozen in the game than pure marketability, suggesting that it had a legitimate story. to count on her.

So what happened well in an interview with us, player Nomura mentions that one of the biggest differences when working on Kingdom Hearts 3 is that many of the teams that made the movies they adapted for the game are still around, which means that his team was getting feedback. of more people and had stricter guidelines to follow regarding what they could and couldn't do and according to the new Mora Frozen had the most refined lines of any world, which makes sense, it's Disney's biggest animated franchise outside of Pixar and, as we just said, they found out that they were preparing to advance the sequel right around the time of Kingdom Hearts' release, they probably didn't want to risk anything that could spoil the audience's perception of these characters or frozen brand, whether motivation would explain the world's overly rigid adherence to the first film's plot and the jarring inclusion of all those hit musical numbers, but that leaves us with a bigger question here: whether those aren't the stories that Tetsuya Nomura wanted to tell, so how lucky are we?

I think there are some remains. of the original history of the world that remains in the game and by piecing together those anomalies I think we can form a picture of what was lost due to Disney's meddling. Let's go back to Hans, the villain of the level, who again doesn't speak. There is another notable Disney. character who conspicuously appears without uttering a single line in this Hercules-filled game, but for Phil there's a good reason for that. Ichiro and a guy, Phil's Japanese voice actor, died in 2014 and Squared decided not to recast him as a mark of respect, Asuka.

Sudha, the Japanese voice of Hans, is very much alive and looking at her Twitter profile it doesn't seem like she has anything against Hans as a character and considering that all the other members of the English Frozen cast reprized their roles in this game, it seems unlikely That Square couldn't access Honza's voice actor, so why wouldn't Hans have any talking lines or gameplay when every other Disney villain that appears gets a chance to antagonize Sora? I need half the fun of these games to be watching the bad guys Hamming Well, maybe the reason Arendelle's main villain doesn't have any lines to speak is because he was never supposed to be the main villain in the first place of Arendelle.

Hans was brought in at the last minute to replace a villain Nomura was no longer allowed to. use that would explain another inconsistency every other time we see something in the world become a boss, there is an animated scene showing the transformation when Mother Gothel becomes a heartless, we see her cloak wrap around and the body parts of the shadowy Guardian they emerge. We see Evil Baymax form from the data cubes. We watched as the pile of rubble in Monstropolis came to life to become the boss. Unversed, but with Hans's black portal appearing out of nowhere beneath Goofy Donnell and Sora as they emerge on the other side of the monster.

The ice wolf skull is already taking shape in front of them, there's no physical continuity between Hans and the boss, but there's no thematic continuity here either and that's probably more important. I mean, I'm sure the Frozen story involves a lot of ice, but Hans is from the southern country with no connection to any of that, making Hans an ice wolf doesn't make sense unless of course again the new Maura's team would take another character's existing heartless transformation sequence and insert Hans into it after the fact, so that then who was originally meant to be Elsa Rice's powers, the true villain of Arendelle, would be a fun fight. against a boss on their own and give it a much clearer connection to the ice-powered heartless boss design, but more importantly, Elsa as a villain works thematically from the beginning of the scenario's setup.

Lark of 13 members. The scene says this, okay, I admit that Elsa is a person we are interested in. What if it's dark magic? Elsa would never trust the darkness. Actually, she's still too early to call. It depends on how she sees it. If she believes her magic is darkness, that is. she

will

become like this, what

will

L say except light or darkness? I know, I want to know in the game with god, this is a throwaway line, the idea that Elsa is conflicted about her powers over whether they are good or bad never comes up again until The Skylark scene appears at the end of the stage to say oh well, I guess she chose good, but if the story actually followed this internal struggle of light and darkness within Elsa, where the final boss of the ice wolf breaks free representing her repressed anger and her fear of her powers. now we have something that makes a lot more sense not only on the level but in the context of Kingdom Hearts as a series.

One of the main underlying themes of the Kingdom Hearts series is the potential of the human heart to harbor both good and evil, and Elsa is one of the only Disney characters who straddles that line - I mean, in The original draft intended Frozen Elsa to be the villain which only required several rewrites for the film's producers to realize that she worked better as an anti-hero in the film that surely saved her from the darkness within her for the love of her sister, but with a little push from Organization 13 it would make a lot of sense for his character to fall into despair and take on the villain role he always had the potential to film with Sora Donald and Goofy.

Having to fight to save her from that darkness, who can be the hero she was always destined to be, also makes a lot of sense.why Disney and the creative team behind Frozen would shut down that idea. Elsa is one of her most popular characters and roles. model for tons of young girls, there's a lot of potential controversy and portraying her as a bad guy, but it's also not just the boss that starts to make a lot more sense with Elsa as the villain, it's also the level design, the ice maze that lurks The cutscene that grabs you at the beginning of Arendelle's story is the biggest anomaly in this world, which might also be the most out of place thing in a Kingdom Hearts game period and that says a lot because this game also expects us to play Puzzle Bobble. with Winnie the Pooh, this ice maze literally comes out of nowhere, one second, Donald Soren, the fool, when we are surrounded by scenes of larks, then somehow they appeared in a deep underground maze and, after fighting to To get out of it, they simply come out of a random portal on the side of the mountain.

Not only is there no place in the world of Frozen that behaves this way, but there's simply no real basis for random portal dungeons to appear in. Kingdom Hearts.O feels like this section was taken from another game and placed in the middle of the level and I think the architecture of this area came through. There is only one place in Frozen that has architecture like the one we see in Elsa's ice palace dungeon. When you finally reach the top of the maze you find yourself on a central tower surrounded by three platforms that are clearly very high in the sky, which which is a strange way to represent the exit to an underground dungeon, but it's perfect.

The strange thing about Elsa's castle is still the fact that those three platforms have nothing on them, one path leads to an empty room full of enemies while the other leads to a random pile of rocks with hidden items. Mickey's emblem, the design of this area screams that they're supposed to be soft and meaningful up here, but they're actually nothing, empty rooms and an exit. There are obvious signs that this area is unfinished or that something like a boss fight was removed. but the clincher here is that if you can bear to climb the mountain a third time, you'll see the inside of Elsa's castle appear on the map when you try to approach it, an invisible wall blocking your way.

Exactly what would happen if at one point the castle was supposed to be in an explorable area but was instead scrapped and used somewhere else, like saying an ice dungeon out of nowhere, building a level like this takes a lot of time and money, so What if Disney really eliminated all of this. new story Maura's team would have had to scramble to reuse most of the work they've done to find a way to fit it into the final game, which is the only way to make sense of these otherwise snippets of level design. They would be disconcerting.

Speaking of baffling level design, the final section of the level involves hiding behind cover to avoid being blown back by the raging winds of a blizzard. It's a strange section that has no real link to what's happening in the story, but what makes it even stranger is that for some reason the blizzard is blowing you uphill something very cold air doesn't usually do due to that you know the laws of physics but also the laws of video games. Snowstorms always drag you down the mountain while you try to climb. In Chrono Trigger Majora's Mask would make a lot more sense if instead of going downhill, your party fought the winds of Elsa's blizzard as they climbed back toward her palace, a moment that feels repurposed to account for some kind of last minute changes. and finally there is the creation of Marshmallow Elsa's ice golem, he is easily the least used guest party member in the entire game, considering that when he joins you, all that is left to do is clear two short areas of the map and fight the boss that Elsa is planning. as a world villain it would explain his late arrival because then he would now be fighting alongside you throughout the entire palace dungeon making him much more useful it would also explain his last second heroism at the end of the boss battle where he stands facing Sora and the team to protect them, it's unusual for these scenes to focus so much on him, unusual until you consider that he is someone else's creation, something she brought to life, so let's say Elsa is in conflict over darkness or lightness of it. abilities like Lark seen mentions in those random lines from before and then due to the insistence of the organization 13 Elsa gives in to the dark potential of her powers with that darkness manifested by the ice wolf marshmallow who chooses to put herself in danger to protect the the rest.

It would be the last thing that would help her get out of her frozen rage, helping her realize the goodness of what she can do, she has the ability to give life, she has the ability to grant love, empathy and self-sacrifice, it actually parallels what What happens to Anna in the movie and innocents put themselves in danger for the safety of others, which causes Elsa to come to her senses, tame the wolf and finally accept her powers as a force for good. The final level ends with Winnie the Pooh based on the remaining threads in the dialogue, the level design, the themes and the pacing of the story, it seems like all the pieces were in place for a much stronger version of Arendelle instead.

What we got was a confusing mess thrown together probably due to the meddling of the brand management teams and isn't that the ironic twist here that in Disney's supposed quest to protect the brand they actually do more harm than good by taking advantage of it and pairing it with something that could have told an interesting story but instead just seems sloppy, sometimes it's best not to pry, but hey, that's just a theory, a game theory, thanks for watching and now that you know everything What to know about the frozen level that Disney censored, check out my prediction theory on what exactly Frozen 2 is about.

Feel pretty confident that we've cracked this little nut, so impress your friends with the knowledge of what It will be Disney's biggest animated sequel. That link is here and it's brand new. Helps round out that frozen viewing session. Give me those retention minutes. Remember just by watching you are helping me in the algorithm