In a surprise reveal during Kingdom Hearts' 20th anniversary event, Square Enix announced a new mainline entry to the franchise, titled Kingdom Hearts 4. While the game doesn't have any release date yet, the announcement came with a full-blown trailer showing snippets of gameplay in Kingdom Hearts 4. As expected, the new game looks great, but a new report claims that the final release will look even better courtesy of Unreal Engine 5.
While Kingdom Hearts 3 ends with a cliffhanger, it's been confirmed by Square Enix that Kingdom Hearts 4 will kickstart a new epic saga named the "Lost Master Arc." Kingdom Hearts 4 is set in Quadratum, which is described by Square Enix as an expansive city set in a "realistic world unlike anything ever seen before in the Kingdom Hearts series." With skyscrapers, highways, and dozens of cars scattered around its streets, Quadratum is indeed looking very realistic, yet what's shown in the trailer reportedly isn't representative of the final look.
The report came from Famitsu, which explained that while the debut trailer video of Kingdom Hearts 4 is actually a real-time rendering in Unreal Engine 4, the full game is currently being developed in parallel using Unreal Engine 5. As a result, the final release of Kingdom Hearts 4 is expected to have a visual quality that is several levels higher than what the public can already see in the trailer video, particularly in the areas of lighting and details.
The Japanese publication also claimed that the studio responsible for the development of Kingdom Hearts 4 is Square Enix's Osaka studio, led by co-director Yasushi Yasue. This is great news for fans of the series since the Osaka studio is apparently the same team that made Kingdom Hearts 3. Seeing that the team is already familiar with Unreal Engine 4 during the development of Kingdom Hearts 3, making the transition to Epic's newest game engine should be easy enough for them.
This recent announcement adds to the growing list of AAA games being developed using Unreal Engine 5. With Unreal Engine 5, Kingdom Hearts 4 is bound to have a serious level of realism. Players have already seen how good the engine is for showcasing action scenes in a modern city through The Matrix Awakens demo, and hopefully it will translate as well in Kingdom Hearts 4.
Kingdom Hearts 4 is in development.