Alongside its Kingdom Hearts 4 release window and its Kingdom Hearts anime series announcement, Disney used Friday’s D23 Entertainment Showcase to confirm the first new world for Kingdom Hearts 4: one inspired by Pixar’s Coco.
The trailer opens in Coco’s Land of the Dead, with Miguel’s grandfather Héctor warning that the dead who are forgotten by the living eventually face a “Final Death”.
Sora, sporting his own custom skull face paint to match the world’s Día de los Muertos style, teams up with Miguel and Héctor to fight off a wave of Heartless, picking up a new Coco-themed Keyblade along the way.
Donald and Goofy aren’t part of that stretch of footage; instead, the trailer cuts away to show the pair searching for Sora in the Underworld and around Quadratum, Kingdom Hearts 4’s realistic, Tokyo-inspired hub city.
It’s easily the biggest new gameplay reveal Kingdom Hearts 4 has had since it was first announced back in 2022. Beyond a handful of teaser trailers and Nomura’s reassurances, Square Enix had said very little about the game until now.
Earlier this month we learned that Kingdom Hearts publisher and developer, Square Enix, had denied claims that it used AI-generated content to promote the yet-to-be-released Kingdom Hearts Collection 1-3.
Fans first accused the company of using AI back in early June, and now – some two months after the initial accusations – Square Enix has responded, insisting, “these assets were created by our development team without the use of generative AI, and the issues resulted from human error.”