The first game I’ll be looking at (and by that I mean, geeking out about the more literary aspects of) is Kingdom Hearts. Debuted in 2002, when I was just a lad of 12, who thought the Disney-Square mashup was a complete gimmick—oh, how wrong I was; in my youth, I overlooked the very severe commentaries being made on childhood and innocence, as well as on the different kinds of fantasy and myths we grow up with (being exposed to Disney and the Final Fantasy series, both of which factored heavily into my childhood) and how these affect us at different stages in our lives.
The most grim realization I came to was this: the reason Disney shows up in the game at all is to be retold in a more adult manner. Each Disney world is roughly a distillation of the primary struggle within the given movie: Aladdin is about Jafar trying to take over Agrabah, Tarzan is about Clayton trying to cap some gorillas, etc. The only key difference is the presence of the Heartless, who are, for all intents and purposes, shadows that are hungry for Hearts, which are the quintessence of humanity (consciousness, emotion, reason, etc)—in that way, these shadows metaphorically flesh out another dimension to the once-flat cartoon characters of youth (now faithfully rendered in 3D, with original voiceactors where the developers could find them)…but the extra dimension that is added is one of darkness.
Kingdom Hearts is all about taking Disney mythos and showing you how dark it is.
The effect is not dissimilar to children who grow up with common fairytales, then later on pick up a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and find out how horrifying these stories they were raised on happened to be. Back to the Tarzan world (which is fresh in my mind as of writing this): Why does Clayton hunt gorillas? It’s not just because he’s a bastard who hates zoology—it’s because there’s a shadow preying on his humanity that, by sucking out all his reason and self-control, amplifies the killer instinct and bloodlust that any hunter, on a primal level, must necessarily feel (in this day and age, no one goes on safari as a reluctant provider of food—they do it to kill some big fucking animals for the sake of killing some big fucking animals). You banish this shadow (in the form of an evil chameleon), and now the gorillas can go back to doing whatever gorillas do.
I will refine my summary of the game’s raison d’etre: Kingdom Hearts is all about erasing the darkness inherent to these stories, and making them childlike in their innocence and simple harmony.
With this introduction out of the way, I will henceforth be examining in depth key game moments that catch my eye as I (re)play through this crowning achievement of video game literature.
2 years ago • Notes