Dispatch from the Dive Chapter 11: Would a “Bored TO Sleep” Pun Be Too Easy?

I’ve got five Kingdom Hearts “experiences” – and I’m never gonna not add the quotes to a term that explains why I watched a bunch of cutscenes strung together as a movie several times – under my belt. Now it’s time for the next big step in the series with Birth By Sleep, a prequel with all new characters, a dramatic new perspective, but also assuredly a lot of old elements. But that’s more than fine.

March 13: Didn’t play.

Before I begin, there’s something that’s been on my mind. You’re probably aware of the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” Bill, the colloquial name for the recently-passed Florida law HB 1557. It aggressively limits how classrooms can discuss ideas of sexual orientation in any context, as well as removing protections for LGBTQ+ students. The vague wording it contains can be used to silence any reference to gay people or queer themes – things that are often at risk as it is in public space – and punish teachers who try to be queer-inclusive. This regressive, bigoted bill both harms the LGBTQ+ community in general and is an obvious stepping stone for other anti-queer legislation, something that’s become a pressing concern in my country.

More to the point, though, HB 1557 was also effectively supported by Disney itself, as every politician who voted for it has taken campaign contributions from the corporation. This is because Disney generously contributes to the campaigns of every Florida politician as a way of getting preferential treatment for its Florida businesses, but that still means their money indirectly helped the bill’s passing. The company is currently fielding criticism of this support – much of that criticism by Disney fans themselves – and its response has been insulting and tone deaf. It’s a combination of exaggerated claims of their history of LGBTQ+ inclusivity and financial pledges to queer advocacy groups. While the latter is good (especially since Disney’s initial response was to simply “nope out” and decide to not give anything), their broader responses very pointedly ignore the broader problem: the law itself.

I obliquely mentioned last week that I was starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable with just publishing material on Disney games while this was going on. It was because of this. Even if I’m spending a lot of my time mocking these games, as I suspect I will throughout the rest of the week, I’m still writing a series about this company, its products, and its brand. I’ve absolutely no interest in stopping “Dispatch,” but I do think it would be worth promoting some LGBTQ-focused charities to complement my writing. I’ll add the list to each chapter, though they’ll be at the end in the successive weeks.

So that’s my spiel. No, onto the playing.

March 14: Began Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, chose the Aqua path, played up to completing Castle of Dreams.

Kingdom Hearts II ends with a particularly odd stinger. It shows a dead wasteland – perhaps the future of the Kingdom Hearts world? – with three characters in dumb Power Rangers suits examining a graveyard of Keyblades. It concluded by touting the next entry*, the upcoming Birth by Sleep, as the game that would truly explain everything. It was kinda demented and felt incredibly off-brand, but that also made it somewhat exciting. A story with no Sora (or shadow clone of Sora)? A way to more seriously engage with the material original to the series? That’s what 358/2 Days did, and I think it ultimately worked out decently.

* except, of course, for the two other entries that came first.

What we’ve got in practice is roughly the same, if changed a bit to adjust for some features. It’s a prequel, set roughly ten years before Kingdom Hearts I, so the world hasn’t been fully shaken by Ansem and Xemnas and any other form of Xehanort (who’s still around, of course). In lieu of Sora or Roxas as a singular protagonist, we have our only occasionally space armored heroes in Aqua, Terra, and Ventus. You pick one to use for each playthrough, and only all three stories reveal the entirety of the plot. I’ll be doing all three, and I started with Aqua – given this series’ treatment of its leading ladies, a female protagonist was the most compelling. But we’ll get to see all of them seek “Mark of Mastery” that Sora apparently needs to get in the future. Well, we’ll see Terra and Ventus try. Aqua passed her test right at the start! Clear evidence that she’s the best of the three, a position I’m currently suspecting she’ll hold for the rest of the game.

Of course, some things never change. We’ve got the mixture of Disney animation history and original, hyper-stylized characters. As always, the mix includes good and bad characters from both sides, the worst so far being Jaq the mouse from Cinderella. There’s the already building conspiracy, and the immensely goofy opening set to the same remix of “Simple and Clean” (roughly the seventeenth time it’s been used, by my count). And what would Kingdom Hearts be without stunt casting? Better.

Though we’re actually decently off this time around. Leonard Nimoy is now our old, goateed Xehanort instead of Richard Epcar or Billy Zane, while Mark Hamill is our heroes’ teacher. Get it, ‘cause now we have Mr. Spock and Luke Skywalker talk to each other. Fortunately, it works out. Nimoy is great as Xehanort; he doesn’t really give off any of the scheming aura the villain is supposed to exude, but he adds an element of deep fatigue that’s far more interesting. Hamill, on the other hand, just does a good and engaged performance. It’s not necessarily on the level of Joker or Skips or Ozai, it’s certainly not his Last Jedi work, but it’s good. Believe you me, I know a bad performance from Mark when I see one.

Mechanically, I can feel the roots of Birth by Sleep very well, which is to say that it feels like a portable game. It was one of the later PlayStation Portable releases, and a lot of things are adjusted to account for the limitations of the handheld. Enemies are less numerous (if equally belligerent), and the more complex magic system is gone. Instead, you assign abilities to use, they individually recharge, and it’s overall far more stripped down. Personally, I like it. If Kingdom Hearts II was the game that made the series’ standard gameplay fun and deep, BBS is much more simplistic but goes fast. Fast world, too, that Cinderella level.

I’m a bit confused by more than a few of the systems, admittedly. The abilities you put together can be leveled up but only to a point – I fully upgraded two of my three default ones just from this one session – so should I regularly replace them?

March 15: Didn’t play.

I find it interesting – or, rather, “interesting” – that we have yet another boy-boy-girl trio, and how it’s both similar to and different from our last ones. At first, we had Sora, Riku, and Kairi. Impulsive and happy shōnen hero, impulsive and jerkish shōnen jackass rival, and vaguely “nice” and largely static shōnen love interest. Afterwards, we had Roxas, Axel, and Xion, and while Axel was more “sidekick” than rival, it was largely the same. Even that one’s version of Sora was literally Sora, at least an aspect of him.

Now, we have Venus, Terra, and Aqua, and it’s hard not to compare them – the game assuredly wants us to. Terra’s the most obvious; he’s “too easily seduced by the darkness” and “too afraid of losing” to not be the (less silly and therefore worse) Riku. And Ventus, well, looks exactly like Roxas, so it’s hard to not put him in the Sora position even if he’s as of yet nondescript. But Aqua’s harder to pin down. She lacks that mixture of bland niceness and utter passivity that defined Kairi and Xion and, to a lesser extent, Naminé. She’s more generically serious, the other kind of shōnen hero. It’s notable that she’s at the moment our most acclaimed hero, with Terra having failed the Mark of Mastery exam and Ventus being the kid hero who can’t take it just yet. I know that this gets twisted further over time, and Ventus and Aqua fall into somewhat different roles, but I have to view it as the game following a trend. If it’s done well, it’ll be a satisfying riff, but if it isn’t, then it’s hard to view Kingdom Hearts as able to come up with too many new ideas.

March 16: Entered and completed Dwarf Woodlands.

I’ll confess that I’ve started to feel a bit of Kingdom Hearts fatigue. Part of that’s external; I’ve gotten what has to be decently close to the end game of Elden Ring, and Kirby and the Mario Kart tracks are both close to release. But I’m also feeling less engaged. While I appreciate how stripped down and fast Birth by Sleep is (even if I’m nervous about this new system and keep accidentally using potions), it’s still so similar. The storytelling, the stilted presentation, the general flow and vibe of the combat; it’s a lot. And, admittedly, it doesn’t help that I have had mixed feelings about all of it from the start.

Like, the Dwarf Woodlands, the setting of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Aqua goes there, the Dwarves say their lines, there’s a confusing few rooms, a terrible boss battle, and finally a token connection to the broader plot (in Ventus’ Ventusleep, which I did not remember happening). It’s your prototypical Kingdom Hearts world. Each one works the same: our heroes are try to find someone who’s not there, run into some Disney nostalgia, and come out maybe with a hint about the broader plot. When a level in this series works, it’s a fun little story and a nice diversion from the plot. But none of them ever manage to fully escape this.

The graphics of Birth by Sleep don’t help. The game’s visual palette is more restricted, and its environments are plain and lifeless as a result.

It’s very reminiscent of 2000’s procedural shows like Chuck (whose lead actor may or may not be in Kingdom Hearts III?) or Smallville (whose lead actor is definitely not), which tried to ape the increasing serialization of television in limited ways. Nothing’s wrong with procedural storytelling or “monster of the week” plots, but serialization – the thing where each episode leads directly into the next – was seen by critics, viewers, and other TV producers as the true goal for TV plotting. Which is stupid, as we can see from the great, not serialized Columbo and the moronic, very serialized Heroes, but I digress. Many television shows and their writers weren’t really equipped to do longform stories, and most major American networks weren’t great at supporting it; airing episodes out of order for promotional reasons was very common. So what they did, those clever writers, was pen a standard one-off episode, and then, in the final few minutes, reveal another piece of the plot. Suddenly, the story couldn’t be chided as “unimportant” or “filler,” a common grouse amongst viewers even if the episode was an all-timer. It’s an incredibly odd way to tell stories, and one rife with artistic and narrative pitfalls.

I don’t know if Tetsuya Nomura is trying to do something similar, this weird drip feed of plot, but it feels like it. At least, it feels something like it. It’s hard to not see the Disney worlds as existing to make the original content go down more easily. At the same time, that original content has gotten more intense than ever; we don’t even have a Donald or Goofy to back us up. And since this prequel understandably chose to go to the older Disney backlog than revisit the stuff I prefer by our friends Musker and Clements, we lack many familiar faces. It’s just really weird plotting, and I don’t think it lends itself to satisfying world building or a strong tone. And it’s a little frustrating seeing all these games follow that so strictly.

…Looking at this, I suppose that even if I’m getting tired of watching or playing Kingdom Hearts, I’m clearly not tired of writing about it.

March 17: Entered and completed Enchanted Dominion.

I still think it’s silly that the level based on Sleeping Beauty is called “Enchanted Dominion” and the level based on Cinderella (in which things repeatedly get enchanted) is called “Castle of Dreams.”

March 18: Entered and completed Radiant Garden.

God, another truly awful boss. Not Vanitas, the second (and also very exacting) boss of the world, but the floating mecha. Admittedly, part of the difficulty here is that I’m not regularly dodging despite relying on it in other games, because I’m so used to not dodging from Kingdom Hearts II. But it’s also just an irritant of a boss in other ways, like its multiple attacks that can just chain you into death. I really don’t get how this series struggles so much with bosses, one of the best creative tropes of this entire industry and one that is perfectly suited to an action-RPG.

Narratively, things feel more disjointed than ever. Aqua constantly mentions things I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen in her story, like seeing Vanitas (who we’ve seen, just not her) and plot points seem to be coming out of nowhere. I’m not sure if this’ll make more sense when I do the other characters’ playthroughs, but it takes a weird quirk of the series’ writing – that characters repeatedly act as though they’re ignoring the dialogue of their castmates – pretty far. It’s also noticeable that the only preexisting characters I saw in Radiant Garden were Merlin and a young Kairi, presumably before she was whisked away to Destiny Islands to fall for Sora’s vacuous charms. Radiant Garden has such an outsized role in the series’ lore: the home of the Final Fantasy characters, the home of Ansem, and the site of two separate major battles. We’ll probably return to it in some capacity, but its comparative lack of presence so far is surprising.

March 19: Didn’t play.

Final thoughts: This was a frustrating week. It’s a frustrating story to experience, with the way the plot is cut up and populated by boring characters – even the one I like most, Aqua, is still fairly bland. It’s a frustrating game to play, as the cut down mechanics aren’t stemming the tide of onerous bosses (I’ve repeatedly considered restarting my playthrough on Easy Mode, though I’m not convinced that’d help that much). And despite the fact that the levels are shorter and quicker than ever before, I’ve so far found it an utter slog.

Is this all just “Kingdom Hearts fatigue?” Probably to an extent; I’ve played two of these games and watched three others in less than three months. That’s a lot of intense JRPG gaming. But Birth by Sleep has had issues from the get-go that the other games avoided. It lacks the pleasant niceness of Sora’s cadre, as well as the more dynamic characters of Nineties Disney. But even the presentations are more lacking than usual. I recognize there’s only so much a game can do, especially when it was made for a smaller and more limited console, but it still has the job of translating the art of some of America’s most visually sumptuous animated movies. And when classic, original Maleficent looks like this…

And Birth by Sleep (and Kingdom Hearts in general) Maleficent looks like this…

It’s a bit of a disappointment.

At the same time, the frustrations also became something of a helpful excuse. I’ve wanted to have lighter weeks in this series for some time, and it was easier to do that when I had no real ties to the characters or appreciation of the gameplay. I’d discover a wild new location in Elden Ring, think to myself that I should probably replace the disc in the PS4 drive with one for the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Remix, and quietly decline in favor of slinking further through Siofra River or the Royal Capital of Leyndell. It’s weird how just that small element of switching discs can alter the way we play, isn’t it?

And really, my progress wasn’t bad for this week. I got through the first cluster of worlds (and going by a list of worlds I saw while I was looking up images, I’m pretty far in). That’s pretty much close to how I did for my first weeks of Kingdom Hearts I and II. Those games were, of course, much larger, but maybe it’s best for me to rethink my perspective. I typically judge my performance in these sessions by the hours I log, but really, it’ll be better to do it by the worlds I complete. If this is a more difficult part of this project, then I’m going to need to reassess how I engage with it. And that’s not a bad thing – in fact, it’s probably what I always needed.

Of course, I will need to rethink that perspective when I get to the substantially larger levels in Kingdom Hearts III, but that’s like four “Kingdom Hearts experiences” from now.

Overall progress: Completed the first main act of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, comprising four worlds.

Other games played: