Seeing as how Kingdom Hearts II is quite a long game, with quite a bit packed into it, I figured I’d chop this retrospective up. As I go through the game, I may come back and revise certain things here, but for now, let’s just look at KH II’s extended prelude with Roxas.
A lot of people say that this section of the game is overlong; a lot of people are right. The breaking point for me was the “seven wonders” episode. Everything in that day - story content, thematic underpinning, character beats - had already been stated by that point. One could argue that these all saw minor advancement during the “seven wonders” episode, or that DiZ showing some kindness by giving Roxas a glimpse of one of the wonders while also plotting Namine’s death in the same scene was important to his character. I wouldn’t disagree on the latter point, but I think finding a moment in the Struggle tournament for DiZ to have a flicker of kindness would have allowed that scene, or one very close to it, to happen after that day, without creating the lag on the pace of the game that the “seven wonders” episode creates.
However, that is my only major complaint with the Roxas prelude. Not only does it hold up well in spite of that lag, but in some ways it’s better than I remember.
I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t know Chain of Memories existed the first time I played KH II, and I thought it was one of the most impressive and daring feats of narrative I’d seen pulled in a series using such high-profile, mainstream characters. So many series have time jumps between entries - some of them longer than the year between KH I and II - without any major changes in the characters. Now, here was this E10-rated video game from Disney with an entire untold chapter that lands its hero in hibernation, his magical weapon in the hands of a total stranger! It blew my mind that they would do that, almost as much as it blew my mind that they’d end the first game on such a bittersweet note!
Of course, CoM does exist, and I can’t go back to a time where I didn’t know that. But I think that, if I’d somehow stayed ignorant of CoM all these years, I’d still ultimately applaud KH II, both for the idea of starting in such a different place from the end of KH I (when they had to at least suspect that a lot of players wouldn’t have caught the GBA title), and for the execution of that idea. And the key to the execution is that, ultimately, the player is given enough information to figure out the essentials of what happened to Sora without needing to know everything. That is - within that Roxas prelude, you see and learn enough to figure out that, at some point after KH I, Sora ended up in a conflict that cost him his memories, that a witch named Namine has power over his memories and has been working to restore them to Sora while he sleeps, and that this boy Roxas is somehow connected or derived from Sora and must reunite with him in order for Sora to be whole again. You can also safely deduce that the “Ansem” working with this character DiZ isn’t Ansem, Seeker of Darkness as you know him from KH I. If you really thought about it, you could probably figure out that it’s Riku, but going just on what the prelude shows you, that’s a bit more of a stretch.
If memory serves me well, this is the case throughout KH II. The events of CoM, and the (then) untold story about Roxas and Organization XIII, are revealed piecemeal over the course of the game, never in full, but just enough to make the story and character relationships work within this story. This is the way to have mystery in your plot and an open-ended quality to your world lore without it becoming needlessly confusing or detracting from the actual story.
If you had played CoM and Reverse/Rebirth, the deduction about Riku would be much easier to make, and Namine’s reappearance would be much more meaningful. I think her reappearance is handled very well, establishing her as in league with DiZ and “Ansem” in some way but possessed of more independent agency than she showed in CoM. Her ties to Kairi are also nicely reintroduced, as is Kairi herself. She’s the best character to choose IMO for showing how the events of the past year have affected the memories of Sora in the worlds, and how they’re being restored. And since Kairi is the one member of our original character trio of protagonists who hasn’t gone through extreme changes between games, this is a great way to get her involved in the story again. How all these things tie into Roxas’s connection to Sora, while allowing for a recap of the events of KH I for those who needed it, is very well-handled. Though I must admit - I didn’t remember that the Xemnas battle in Hollow Bastion from Final Mix being thrown into the flashbacks. If, like me, you’ve stuck to the vanilla versions of these games, that could be pretty confusing.
DiZ and “Ansem” make for an intriguing odd couple in this prelude. It was wonderful to hear Christopher Lee’s voice behind DiZ again. Why he wasn’t brought back for R/R, and why they redubbed his 358/2 Days material, I will never know. I can’t say much more about them now, because I can’t remember much more without having played more of the game XD
As far as Twilight Town and the people within it go - this is one area where the game is definitely better than I remember, because I really couldn’t recall much about Hayner, Pence, and Olette. Their material in KH III was so dull that, after playing that game, I wondered if they’d always been that way, and that’s why I didn’t remember them. But they’re actually a pretty good trio, with nice echoes of the Destiny Islands characters without feeling too derivative of them the way some later groups will. Olette, admittedly, isn’t all that fleshed out as a character, but Hayner is (Pence is somewhere in the middle). The parallels with Riku are fairly obvious - the self-appointed leader status, the petty jealousy over friends hanging out with others - but he shows maturity that that character didn’t, in his quiet acceptance of the passage of time drifting some friends apart. His dynamic with Roxas is very good - much more so, I have to say, than anything I’ve ever seen between Roxas and Axel.
I don’t have a whole lot to say about Roxas just now - partly because I want to play more of the game, and partly because I have some fairly unpopular ideas about Roxas I’m saving for a later post. But for now, I do want to push back on a critique of this prelude that I’ve seen tossed around: that Roxas had no choice in his fate. He is, I grant you, backed into a very tight corner when he reaches Sora. The digital world that he’s been living in no longer recognizes or interacts with him; he can’t remember his frienship with Axel or his time in Organization XIII, but intuits that they were a bad bunch; this girl Namine he’s started to forge a connection with and get answers from has been taken away; and he’s been psychologically hammered with the idea that he was never meant to exist. But up until the last, Roxas displays a lot of anger and fight. He could have used the Keyblade to attack Sora, or at least destroy the pod he was in, just as he’d been attacking DiZ’s projection. He could have turned around and fled, escaping (though he couldn’t have known it at the time) into the real Twilight Town. He could have asked Axel to take him away in their last encounter. But he doesn’t do any of those things. He chooses to go back to Sora. It’s a very resigned choice, made by someone not in a great state of mind, but if I remember the rest of this game correctly, things end up working in such a way that Roxas, and the player, can be at peace with that choice.
Not much more to say at this point, except: as someone who came to this series by way of Disney, and doesn’t know much about Final Fantasy, Vivi was so confusing to see the first time I played this game.
Things That Should Have Been Done With Organization XIII In “Kingdom Hearts II.”
The six man faction of Organization XIII in “Kingdom Hearts II” were pretty notoriously let down by the game’s narrative and the material they were given or not given. Things that Nomura wanted to do with them (meeting council scenes where they’d interact and establish their basic characters, fights with the five deceased members from “Chain of Memories”, expansion on Roxas such as showing how he got initiated by Xemnas into the Organization and giving him and Sora an actual playable fight) did not end up happening in the original edition of the PS2 game for whatever reason. The “Final Mix” edition did so much to rectify this problem immensely and now the Organization’s portrayal in the game is pretty much mostly perfect. Note I say mostly perfect, because I do believe there was still at least 11 things that really ought to have been done with the group and the characters from the very start but sadly weren’t. I will list them all here:
1. A mini-fight with Xigbar at Hollow Bastion: When first encountered with Organization XIII, the members all appear before Sora at the Hollow Bastion construction site in order to make their presence known, taunt him, and leave. The one who gets directly confrontational with Sora, Donald, and Goofy is Xigbar, who says some weird stuff and then says “Why don’t I remind you how tough the crowd you’re dealing with really is?” When he says “I just don’t know”, he gets into a fighting stance, as do Sora, Donald, and Goofy. But he doesn’t fight - he says “be a good boy now!” and takes leave. So he was just psyching us out? I can’t help but feel like there was meant to be a fight here, one that would be impossible for Sora to win at this point, so the game’s story resumes even after you lose the fight, like with Leon and Cloud in the first game. But the game designers couldn’t work out a fight wtih a hooded model of Xigbar with his weapons, so the fight didn’t take place. Which sucks since it’d be a great way of teasing the Organization’s power.
2. Put Luxord in the Cave of Wonders: In the first half of the quest, Xigbar, Xaldin, and Demyx get encountered - meeting Saix sets the stage for the midway point, where Xemnas is revealed. So where the hell was Luxord during all this time? We literally never meet him before the second half’s visit to Port Royal! So where would he even fit in? Well back in Agrabah, the interiors of the Cave of Wonders was redesigned with a heavy emphasis on challenges and obstacles. This sort of thing seems very suited for Luxord - he could have imposed one of the challenges onto Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Aladdin. He wouldn’t even have to say anything - just the character model and a toss of a dice would tell us it’s him. This would also give us a villain to encounter in that level before Pete takes center stage in the final act of the world’s scenario.
3. Xemnas and the MCP/Chamber of Repose: So remember the scene in “Final Mix” that plays right before the Demyx battle where Xemnas puts a code into Ansem’s computer, accesses a secret passageway, walks down a long staircase, arrives at the Chamber of Repose, and sits down, addressing Aqua’s armor as “friend?” Great scene but it was terribly misplaced. They should have placed it somewhere around the time of the first visit to Space Paranoids, probably right as the Heartless siege is getting under way. Just earlier Mickey said that “the Organization might be listening”, but we were given no sign that the Organization was active at this time and place. Showing Xemnas lurking around would confirm the king’s suspicions. Also, remove the long staircase section that features dialogue between Xehanort and Ansem the Wise, because that spoils way too much. Instead put in a bit where the MCP directly addresses Xemnas as he inserts the code, answering to him and allowing him to access the room despite him being a “user.” This connects the MCP to Organization XIII’s leader and foreshadows that it was actually Xehanort who re-installed the MCP into Space Paranoids under Ansem’s user name.
4. Reloacting this scene: And I thought that last scene was misplaced! The scene that immediately follows it is even worse! Putting this scene where it is in the game absolutely kills the momentum of the Hollow Bastion War sequence, does the unforgivable of spoiling both Xehanort AND Xemnas’ names before they’re actually revealed in the story, and is so sudden and awkwardly placed that at first it’s hard to tell that it’s meant to be a flashback being had by…wait, who exactly? Yeah, the choices made with this scene are bizarre and it seems completely skippable since the information given in it has zero bearing on the game’s plot and Xemnas’ current actions - it’s just there to set up “Birth By Sleep.” But you can’t skip it at first because then you’re launched right into the fight with Demyx! What the hell, Square Enix? So yeah, I’d turn this into a scene that plays by accessing the computer at the Cavern of Remembrances. That way we’d be able to have Xigbar without his hood, since by then we’d know what he looks like.
5. Put Demyx in Atlantica: So they put Atlantica, a world entirely underwater, into the game but as an optional world based around musical mini-games, under the excuse that King Triton was putting on a musical. They have Demyx, a member of an Organization that travels between the Disney worlds, whose elemental power is water and his weapon is a musical instrument. And these two things…don’t end up going together? This one really confounded me. I know the world is optional, you have to make repeat visits to it, and many of, if not all of those visits could be done well after Demyx is dead, but the first game had altered cutscenes for Olympus Coliseum and Monstro in case you ended up doing them well after you’d done Hollow Bastion. With time and effort, they could have made scenes with Demyx in the scenario of Atlantica and scenes without him if he’s already been fought and killed by the point you’re playing the scenario he could’ve been featured in. This would also give us an antagonist to hold us over before Ursula’s return, and they could’ve even used him to explain her return rather than pull a clumsy retcon.
6. Expand Xigbar’s role in Land of Dragons revisit: Supposedly Xigbar is the one who turned a dragon into the Heartless enemy of this visit, but I don’t think that was ever confirmed outright. Xigbar is only in the world for a very brief moment where Sora thinks he might be Riku under the hood, so he unhoods himself, says “Nope! Never heard of him!”, calls his Nobody flunkies and runs away behind Sora. That’s it. It’s a funny moment and effective in it’s shock value, but it’s all he’s there for - this brief incident that never even gets brought up or referenced again afterwards. That he runs away rather than vanishing into a corridor of darkness like other members’ exits makes his role in this world’s scneario look even more incomplete. He ought to have stuck around and actually commanded that Heartless in it’s attack on the Imperial City.
7. Expand Luxord’s role in Port Royal revisit: Luxord’s role here started off brilliantly, but he vanishes from the plot after having the Black Pearl fire upon the Interceptor. We never even see him leave the ship! Once all the cursed medallions are collected, Jack asks where the chest is, and Will states “If we find the hooded man, we’ll find the chest” and Elizabeth remarks that Luxord and the chest should be back at Port Royal. Well we find the chest but no Luxord - all we get is the Grim Reaper Heartless in a Hellish boss battle! Luxord reappears after it’s been killed to collect it’s captive heart, say “Sora, bravo!”, and take his leave. Really, how hard was it to put Luxord in town and have him sic the Grim Reaper on the party like he did on board the Pearl?
8. Expand XIgbar’s role in Agrabah revisit: In “358/2 Days”, we see Demyx accompany Roxas to Olympus Coliseum, Xaldin accompany him to Beast’s Castle, Xigbar accompany him to Agrabah, and Luxord accompany him to Wonderland. Obviously one of those worlds is not in KH2, so Luxord had to settle on a world without living cards. But Xigbar going to Agrabah before suggests that he’s the member who got the Peddler into the dungeon to release Jafar from his lamp. So why isn’t he actually there? Imagine if we had him playing the Abis Mal role to Jafar for the entirety of that visit? Seeing both villains in action and interacting with one another would have improved that ordeal! Hell, that screenshot even looks like it could’ve come from KH2!
9. Put Saix in the Halloween Town revisit. The bulk of this scenario was a whodunit mystery, yet a member Organization XIII was not present to be a possible suspect. What if there had been a member in that world at one point, and just to make the situation extra funny, what if it was Saix? On his hunt for Axel he somehow would up at Halloween Town or Christmas Town and gets suspected for something he didn’t do, which pretty much gives him leeway to call his Nobodies on the party. It would be a very brief and strange encounter, but it would’ve added something.
10. Give the Dreadnought a narrative function: This is actually a huge one for me. After the war sequence, Sora, Donald, and Goofy received a box with ice cream and photograph of the Twilight Town mansion from Riku, which was a clue to where they were meant to go and what they were supposed to do next. Yet Sora then went “think the other worlds are in more trouble?” and they so go revisit every other world we’ve been to BEFORE going to Twilight Town to follow up on the clues! The game didn’t let you go back to Twilight Town because the worlds still had loose ends that needed to be tied up, but the story failed to given an in-narrative reason as to why Sora, Donald, and Goofy wouldn’t or couldn’t go to Twilight Town. When they finally get around to doing it, they travel a new path there in the final Gummi Ship segment, Assault of the Dreadnought. The Dreadnought turns out to be a an enormous Nobodoy battle station, loaded with a deadly arsenal and backed by a star fleet. Why the heck was this thing blocking the path to Twilight Town not given as the reason for why we couldn’t go? A scene on the world map could have easily set this up, then when Tron becomes the new MCP of Ansem’s computer system, in addition to restoring the memory of Radiant Garden, finds a way around the blocked off path to Twilight Town that Sora, Donald, and Goofy could take. We’d then see a cutscene where Saix senses the Gummi Ship on it’s way and mobilizes the Dreadnought and it’s fleet to stop it from passing through. This would raise the stakes for the final Gummi Ship flight and improve the plot
11. Out with Axel and Roxas, in with Axel and Saix! - The scene where Axel and Roxas’ spirits have a talk on an imaginary Twilight Town clocktower roof sucked. I hate it. I feel it was needless, it slowed things down, and it was mostly there to tie into “358/2 Days.” You know what would have been more substantial and less fanservice-y, and would do that last part better? An extended scene with Axel and Saix! I don’t care where they place it, but it would be a direct set up for Axel’s death, explaining why he was so beaten down and weary when he showed up in Betwixt and Between, and why he was so dedicated to helping Sora rescue Kairi from Saix. Their dynamic is far more interesting than Axel and Roxas’ anyway. Now this wouldn’t need to happen if Axel had just stayed dead after the prologue and not been awkwardly inserted into the main quest of the game but hey, what can you do at this point?
Reblogging this ‘cause additional tweaks to the Organization’s part in KH2 recently came to mind, making it appropriately 13 in all:
12. More legit mystery, and Saix explains it all. - When really putting thought and attention on the Organization in the first half of the game, it dawns on me that if they’re to be presented as a “mysterious” evil group, there really needed to be more of a mystery to not just their goals but who/what they even were. Yen Sid should not have known that the members of Organization XIII were humanoid Nobodies, only that they controlled the Nobodies like the Villain Council in the first adventure controlled the Heartless. While the goal they’re working towards would be unknown at the time, their early actions would have them both trying to create Heartless out of strong hearts so that not only could those hearts go into the making of Xemnas’ Kingdom Hearts, but they’d gain new Nobody servants in the process, and also attempting to weaponize magic and energy from things supplementary to hearts (Beasts’ rose, dead souls in the Underworld, the cursed Aztec treasure, anything in the Cave of Wonders) to damage the fabric of existence itself that holds the walls between worlds together so that the worlds are left susceptible to a surprise apocalypse once Kingdom Hearts is complete. Then in the meeting with Saix in Twilight Town, Saix would reveal these details without outright mentioning Kingdom Hearts and the Keyblade’s part in bringing it about, and instead of the “it’d break our hearts” line being used to lead to the stupidly contradictory “we remember what it was like”, it’s used by Saix to lead into the reveal that the Organization don’t have hearts because they are, in fact, Nobodies themselves who were able to keep their human forms! And this is how and when it’s learned that Organization XIII is made up of Nobodies, a fact that comes back at the start of the fight with Demyx.
13. Axel actually dies for real in the prologue. - In CoM, Axel faked us out with a possible death that he evaded in Sora’s first fight with him, then he outright faked his own death in Sora’s second fight with him. A THIRD not-death for him was officially too much. In the original base story for the game, this was Axel’s time to die. He’d fully served his intended purpose of being a foil for Sora, Roxas’ friend turned enemy, and Warm Up Boss for KH2 as a whole, so it made sense for him to get written out here, but his popularity with the staff kept him alive to play a part in the game’s main story and it shows just how little they knew what that role should actually entail due to how awkwardly worked in Axel seemed in all post-prologue events he appeared in. He seriously accomplishes nothing in any of that borrowed time he was living on: Coming to take Kairi from Destiny Islands? “Ansem”, with help from Pluto, gets her off there instead. Kidnapping Kairi? Saix kidnaps her after she escapes Axel off-screen. Exposing Organization XIII’s plan and how they’re using Sora for it? Again, Saix comes in and does that anyway. Opening up a way to the World That Never Was? Mickey apparently already found one since he was already on the other side by the time Sora, Donald, and Goofy get there! Telling Sora that his princess is in another castle? Saix said “we’re taking good care of her”, which means Sora knows she’s imprisoned in the Organization’s stronghold, which is very obviously the big fucking castle! So the most Axel did was kill himself in order to end a fight with lowly mook Nobodies that only happened just so that he could do so! Ending Axel’s life at an earlier point would’ve been more appropriate and kinder to the character, not to mention it’d spare us that “he made me feel like I had a heart” line that caused a whole lot of trouble for Axel within fandom…
Oh, wait a minute. If Axel dies in the prologue, then the Number 11 fix (more Axel and Saix) can’t happen, thus these are not 13 points. OK, time for a Number Fourteen!
14. Move that fight with Luxord! - At Yen Sid’s Tower, Yen Sid showed a hologram image of the three leading Organization members - Xemnas, the Superior. Xigbar, the literal Number 2 member/co-founder of the Organization. And Saix, Xemnas’ actual Number 2 guy despite being Number 7. Fittingly, in the final world of the game, we face those exact members….and also Luxord in a crazy game-style battle in between the fights with Xigbar and Saix. It’s a fun fight and a great way to break up all the plot-heavy cutscenes following Xigbar’s death with some sudden excitement, but it’s quite objectively out of place in this big climax because Luxord himself is out of place. He ought to have been taken out of the way earlier, but when? Well, the fight has Sora on his own without Donald and Goofy to help, and “Thirteenth Struggle” is playing…when was that last done? Oh yeah, in Betwixt and Between! During the fight that ended in Axel’s death! And in that fight, there was no damn reason that Donald and Goofy suddenly aren’t fighting alongside Sora and aren’t even in the following cutscene where Axel bites it! If instead, Luxord ambushed them in Betwixt and Between, sealing Donald and Goofy off in cards and challenging Sora one-on-one, leading to his death and the advancement into The World That Never Was, that would be a heck of a lot better a fit. It’s taking care of two problems with one solution!
A good article with good points - Kingdom Hearts II is definitely the better game, but the original Kingdom Hearts is the better experience, and it’s always nice to analyze just why that is.
However, I object to the “Roxas is first introduced” point in KH2′s favor, given that he never really achieved anything remotely on the level of his role here in the series beyond, not even in his own game. So allow me to replace it with something much more appropriate:
Caveat that it mainly applies to the Final Mix edition (Xemnas was still a good Big Bad in KH2 vanilla but was severely lacking compared to FM), but that’s the version that is most primarily available these days anyway so it’s probably a moot point to make.
Yes, in KH2 vanilla Xemnas was still a character with a lot of depth in the scenes he got throughout the story’s beginning, middle and end, a charismatic and intimidating villain, and a perfect Final Boss.
The issue was that he was also supposed to be the leader of Organization XIII, the mastermind behind a vast and complicated conspiracy that threatened all worlds…and we didn’t get a sense of that at all. And when this is following Maleficent and Ansem who were perfectly believable as the villainous group leader and secret puppetmaster, and Marluxia and Zexion who were believable as the ones in charge of their respective levels of Castle Oblivion, this was a big problem. Mercifully, every additional scene of Xemnas that Final Mix provided rectified this in spades, and that’s the version of the game and version of Xemnas most are familiar with so it’s all water under the bridge now.
Agreed, even when this aren’t whole reasons KH2 is still my favorite Kingdom Hearts game
send this to the twelve nicest people you know or who seem to have a good heart and if you get five back you must be pretty awesome 💕💕💕💕
Xemnas merges with the incomplete shell of Kingdom Hearts, being pulled inside of its spiritual realm. Said realm has been warped to match the physical world surroundings and Xemnas is revealed to have used the power of Kingdom Hearts to manifest this thing:
If the manifestation process completed, the incomplete shell of Kingdom Hearts in the physical world would turn into this thing! From there, Xemnas could fly it to any world he wants and, well…
As he said to Kingdom Hearts before “I will give you as many hearts as it takes”. And this is certainly an efficient way of gathering hearts.
Man, the only thing cooler than this is that instead of a flying fortress he tried manifesting a giant god-like mecha Nobody to go kaiju on the worlds’ asses. Just imagine how awesome that would have been!
1. His bashing of CoM. Yes, his points on how it was the Franchise Original Sin in so many regards are dead on, but the game (both in 2D and 3D) was nowhere near as “shitty” as he makes it out to be, ill-advised card battle system and all.
2. Sora’s time as the lead, and even the whole series, still could have ended even with that scene with the letter, which was framed as just a call to new adventures. Us ever seeing said adventures or even learning what the letter said was never the point.
3. He ends the video expressing hope for Kingdom Hearts IV…and it’s played straight? No joke about what the announcement teaser showed and how DOA it makes the whole thing!?
Here are some similar videos on the subject:
since I only played KH1-2 and GBA version of CHain of Memories so far, Until I played Birth by Sleep
Looking over the videos and magazine scans released for Kingdom Hearts II during its production, I have ascertained the general order of the Disney worlds in terms of how their plots were shaped. KH2 was greenlit early into 2003, and the choice of Disney worlds was made shortly afterward. Over the span of the remainder of 2003 and well into 2004, Oka and his event team planned out the plots (both visits) of the Disney worlds at the same time Nomura planned the game’s main plot, both of which would then be written by Nojima.
This is the apparent order they were made in:
Space Paranoids Beast’s Castle Olympus Coliseum Land of Dragons Agrabah Port Royal Disney Castle / Timeless River Halloween Town Pride Land 100 Acre Wood & Atlantica
Some interesting observations:
Space Paranoids was the first Disney world to be chosen and the first one to have its plot written for a simple reason: it has the most direct ties to Nomura’s main plot. Major developments for the story and the overall lore are made during both visits to Space Paranoids.
Guess which Disney worlds have the most relevance outside of Space Paranoids, even if not quite as directly? That’s right: Beast’s Castle and Olympus Coliseum, which are naturally the next world plots to be made. Space Paranoids, Beast’s Castle, and Olympus Coliseum are also the only ones where the stories span both visits rather than there being two completely separate stories per visit.
Land of Dragons, Agrabah and Port Royal are all similar cases where Organization XIII and the Nobodies have no presence whatsoever in the first visits while they do in the second. For some reason or other, only Port Royal had any effort put into their presence there; Land of Dragons and especially Agrabah are both very lazy about it.
It was clearly after Port Royal that the decision was made to resurrect Maleficent and add her into the main plot. If you actually go back and look at Olympus Coliseum, Agrabah and Port Royal, Pete never once mentions Maleficent or acts like he’s serving anyone but himself. That’s because he was a solo villain when those plots were written. Once Maleficent was brought in, Disney Castle / Timeless River was written with her as Pete’s boss, and Halloween Town was written to have her as the villain in the first visit as opposed to Pete.
By that same token, there is a high likelihood that Disney Castle / Timeless River was originally supposed to come after Pride Land and serve as the climax to Pete’s villainy before his army gets wiped out at Hollow Bastion, which is why it wasn’t being written even as the likes of Port Royal and Agrabah were. But Maleficent caused it to be moved to earlier on the map, hence why it was written when it was.
Even with Maleficent’s return, I’m pretty damn sure that Pete wasn’t in Pride Land’s first visit initially; he could be cut out and nothing would be missed. It’s the only visit where we don’t even see him retreat; he’s there in the cutscene before the Scar battle and then he’s just gone afterward. But it must have been decided that Scar as a Heartless needed more exposition and a reason behind it, and Maleficent being back conveniently meant Pete had access to form-changing magic, and so he was shoehorned in at the last minute.
And naturally the two optional worlds that unfold through five separate episodes over the course of the game were written last.
Reblogging to clarify that this is all from a writing standpoint. From a gameplay standpoint, the worlds were being developed more or less concurrently. But thankfully, we actually have a reliable source as to the order in which worlds finished development: Jiminy’s Journal!
Twilight Town ended development first, which was easy to tell given that it’s the only new world showcased in the beta trailer at the 2003 Tokyo Game Show. Then it was Hollow Bastion, Beast’s Castle, Olympus Coliseum, Agrabah and Land of Dragons; this goes in accordance to how they were written (Space Paranoids aside) and the promotional material like trailers and magazine articles released throughout 2004. The 100 Acre Wood, Pride Land, Atlantica, and Disney Castle / Timeless River took longer because the style of gameplay shifts considerably in those levels, while Port Royal, Halloween Town and Space Paranoids took the longest to finish developing due to the graphical style, as the environments and characters needed to look claymation / live-action enough to be considered faithful to the source material. The World That Never Was was naturally the last world developed, which is why we only saw glimpses of it in the trailers toward the very end of 2005 prior to the game’s release. They really came down to the wire on this game.
I’m no doubt the existence Extrasolar aliens, but most aliens that people encounter are cryptoterrestrials
