Following the public announcement that Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link has been cancelled, Square Enix has released half a dozen screenshots for Kingdom Hearts 4, reassuring keen players that work on this title continues. Amongst these screenshots is a single, small image of Mickey Mouse traversing a library, with an accompanying action bar suggesting he’ll be playable in the upcoming adventure.
While Mickey Mouse plays a key part in the events of Kingdom Hearts, he’s only been playable under very special circumstances in past games (in certain game modes, and under dire battle conditions). The image that’s ruffled feathers indicates you’ll be able to play Mickey within the main story of Kingdom Hearts 4, and that he may play a key role in the Quadratum storyline, which will seemingly begin the game.
Read: The KH4 trailer has revealed major gameplay hints
For now, it’s not clear how important Mickey will be in proceedings – particularly given Kingdom Hearts has moved towards telling its own lore and story with recent games, rather than focussing too much on the world of Disney – but it’s an exciting glimpse anyway.
After several years of silence, these screenshots are the first glimpse of Kingdom Hearts 4 we’ve seen in a long time. While they tread familiar ground, there are some new details to be gleaned from this new look.
What’s most notable about these new screenshots is they’re all seemingly from Quadratum, which is the only world revealed for Kingdom Hearts 4 so far. It featured in the first gameplay trailer for the upcoming title, and was heavily teased in Melody of Memory as being one of the most important locations for this adventure.
Based on what we know so far, Quadratum is a world-within-a-world inspired by real-life Shibuya in Tokyo. It appears Sora ends up in this world at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, and that he’ll awaken in Quadratum to begin the events of Kingdom Hearts 4. This won’t be the only world explored in the game, but it may define the early plot.
Drawing clues together, Mickey Mouse could venture to Quadratum to rescue Sora in the opening of KH4, with this act leading to new and bigger worlds.
As for why we haven’t seen more of Kingdom Hearts 4‘s other worlds just yet, that remains a mystery. As Square Enix says, the game’s development team is currently hard at work bringing this sequel to life, so there’s hope we’ll see much more of it soon.
