Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim has yielded many a happy announcement for nerds over the past few days, featuring such things as details for a sequel to Finding Nemo, casting announcements for a Star Wars spin-off film, and more. Today, during Disney Interactive’s panel highlighting upcoming video games, Disney and Square Enix together announced that Oscar-winning animated film Big Hero 6 will join previously-announced Tangled as a world in the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III!
In a surprise change from previous games in the series, though, the Big Hero 6 world will feature a brand-new original story taking place after the events of the film. This will allow a greater focus on the film’s characters–most notably Baymax–and enable the showdown pictured above between Sora and Baymax and (Big Hero 6 spoiler alert!) Baymax’s original body left behind in the alternate dimension, now possessed by Heartless.
Watch Big Hero 6 producer Master Xehanort Roy Conli discuss the collaboration below!
In addition to the Big Hero 6 announcement, Kingdom Hearts series producer Shinji Hashimoto had an interesting bit of news regarding the series’ iconic Keyblades. Previous trailers for Kingdom Hearts III have shown Sora transforming his Keyblade for a variety of different functions. According to Hashimoto, each of Sora’s Keyblades will have their own unique special transformations.
That wasn’t all the Kingdom Hearts news, however. Disney also announced that this year’s Ultimate Unlock in Disney Infinity will be Sora’s Kingdom Key Keyblade! Past Ultimate Unlocks have foreshadowed future expansions to the game, such as Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and lightsaber preceding the announcement of Disney Infinity 3.0. In addition, D23 attendees were given an exclusive Power Disc to unlock Mickey’s outfit from the Kingdom Hearts series.
Kingdom Hearts III is slated to release on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. No release date has been announced since its reveal at E3 2013.
