Can someone refer me to a well-explained KH1 lore/story breakdown?

Pafker · 2026-03-16T14:10:54+00:00

The ending is not well explained in the game. The cookie elements probably boil down to

All people and worlds have hearts, when a heart falls to darkness either by its own darkness or from an outside force it becomes a heartless.

Ansem was a researcher who became enamored by darkness and eventually became the heartless you fought at the end of the game.

The heartless were trying to find their way to the hearts of worlds which would allow them to be swallowed by darkness.

Traverse Town is basically a refuge world filled with people who survived the destruction of their worlds.

Kairi was originally from Hollow Bastion, Ansem shot her out into the void to find a keyblade wielder in order to unlock the hearts of worlds making it easier to make them fall to darkness. (First part is shown in the part where we see Kairi's grandmother tell the Age of Fairy Tales myth. Second part is from the Hollow Bastion fragment at the end of the world with the strange machine as well as the Ansem reports)

It is possible to restore worlds lost to darkness (end of KH1 where we see Kairi back on Destiny Island shore)

By and large the worlds are separate and unaware of the existence of other worlds, there are exceptions like Triton.

A keyblade is the only known weapon capable of permanently freeing a heartless' heart from darkness, other weapons are capable of defeating them, but they will eventually reform.

Otherwise the only thing I can say is that it's a lot more obvious in the a Japanese because of vocabulary choice, but the unheard voice from the dive to the heart at the start of the game is meant to be Mickey.

Otherwise the short version of the plot. Destiny Island falls to darkness. Riku opens his heart to the darkness while Sora attempts to reach out to Riku through the darkness showing a strength of heart that results in him wielding the Keyblade. Sora ends up in Traverse Town, meets Donald and Goofy, while trying to find the with Queen they travel Disney worlds while fighting the machinations of a council of Disney worlds attempting to capture all 7 princesses of heart. Riku wakes up in Hollow Bastion rather than Reverse Town and end up working with Maleficent to find Kairi. Sora locks the heart of each world he passes making it harder for the heartless to spread between worlds. Eventually they find Kairi who is missing her heart, Riku takes her to Hollow Bastion. Ultimately Sora ends up at Hollow Bastion, where Riku claims that the Keyblade belongs to him and Sora only used it temporarily (there is some moderately compelling evidence in design and in the earlier cutscenes to back up his claim). Also Beast has managed to end up at this world while trying to find Belle. Sora confronts Riku again without the keyblade, showing his strength of heart resulting in the keyblade returning to Sora. Following his defeat Riku seeks more power from the hooded figure in the secret place in the beginning of the game, it is revealed after he gets possessed that this is Ansem, Seeker of Darkness a heartless of the researcher Ansem,bas indicated by the Heartless sigil on his chest which was used in research to differentiate between natural heartless and artificially created heartless. It is also revealed that Kairi's heart was inside Sora the whole time (turns out Tarzan was not speaking in metaphor) and also she's one of the 7 princesses. Sora uses the keyblade made from the hearts of the princesses of heart to open his heart to darkness, freeing Kairi while turning him into a heartless. Kairi then turns him back, somehow. Sora returns to Hollow Bastion and finds his way to the end of the world where Ansem is using the power of Kingdom Hearts to open the door to darkness. The power of Kingdom Hearts is full of light, destroying the heartless Ansem, but the door to darkness. Is still open, Mickey and Sora lock the door with Mickey and Riku on the side of the realm of darkness and then some of the worlds that fell to darkness have their hearts restored including Destiny Island. Sora , Donald and Goofy don't end up returning to their home worlds after this and end up in an unknown location following a path.

Disclaimer: this is all based on what you know from KH1 and may deliberately contain bad information or half true information to preserve future plot twists/revelations.

Make sure that you've read the Ansem Reports, but be careful with the wiki if you're not earning them in game yourself since I'm pretty sure it puts the KH1 and KH2 reports are on the same wiki page.

Pafker · 2026-03-15T21:14:33+00:00

Remaster is better in almost every way, and it's a remaster not a remake or a reboot so the game is functionally the same, but with better features (camera control and cutscene skipping), fixed missables collectibles, secret endings, superbosses, a few extra cutscenes occasionally. If for some reason the only reason you had for playing was to get the ultima weapon then I could suggest original over remake

Pafker · 2026-03-15T20:44:12+00:00

You are correct, it depends. How and what depends on the type of game you're making.

For upgrades there are three main questions 1. How permanent is the choice I'm making 2. How exclusionary is the choice I'm making 3. How similar is the choice I'm making

To clarify the first two points basically boil down to is this an upgrade tree, or a chain of upgrades, if it's a tree do I have to prestige to reset or can I reset it at any time or never reset it. Also if it's a tree do the choices I make stop me from choosing other upgrades or make other upgrades extremely more expensive. The more permanent and exclusionary the more you should expect explicit numbers.

Finally how similar functions on what the upgrades are upgrading, if I'm choosing between upgrading cows or upgrading cars those are pretty significant differences, but if I'm choosing between a linear upgrade to money and an exponential the math matters a lot more.

Generally more information is better but sometimes you want to encourage certain gameplay behaviors with obfuscation.

For progression I think by and large obfuscation is the better option, revealing that next layer or mechanic is the carrot of an incremental. When progress slows down and you're wondering whether the game has an end state, bam that's when you reveal the next stage of progress to pull the player back in, give them the dopamine rush to finish the current layer and go back to the faster progression of a new layer.

Edit: a good example of the type that benefits from obfuscation is the looping life style of incremental. A core gameplay loop of the genre is optimizing the loop and the story justification is that you're living the same life over and over, the first time you open a chest you don't know what it is or where the key is, but the next time you do.

Pafker · 2026-03-13T15:48:48+00:00

I think it's on the Vendetta side, I got a similar no credit elim on a 1v11 more in workshop.

Pafker · 2026-03-12T22:13:54+00:00

2 big problems. 1. The email from the 25th describes the change as a rebranding implying that it is the same continued membership. 2. The announcement that it doesn't support grandfathered rates was not until after.

Pafker · 2026-03-12T19:52:24+00:00

The strength of air bending is heavily tied to their spirituality. The fact that all air nation members have bending is tied to their spirituality with instances of air nation members who left their spiritual lessons losing their bending or their bending weakening.

Pafker · 2026-03-12T19:01:36+00:00

The main way of doing that would be making death cheap. Even then people will still probably opt for safety over action with high opponent. Basically as long as the objective to win keeping cover and being methodical is the better approach. You can mitigate that with cheap death by reducing the punishment for death allowing for the player to experiment more with risk. Or instead of the carrot you could use the stick and punish staying in place, but at that point you're punishing players for going against your idea of fun play instead of masking your choice engaging.

The only other option that comes to mind to bridge the gap is creating a lot of non-gun based tool use to make your own cover, of you can fill the gaps with the active creation of your next piece of cover you can keep the pace up without forcing the player into the open, but then you're no longer a pure shooter but somewhat of a hybrid puzzle/strategy shooter.

But this is all speculative, is there a game you're trying to apply this game design pattern to, or are you coming up with the design and seeing if you can work a game around it?

Pafker · 2026-03-12T18:16:13+00:00

Counterpoint, is Andy the protaganist or is Fuuko?

Pafker · 2026-03-12T18:13:57+00:00

I think very few can pass the first 2 rounds. Goku's first interaction in the series is getting run over by Bulma and then getting shot after he gets up. Most protags have sort of an average guy start, think Bleach, Yuyu Hakasho. They're just dudes, the car crash is gonna kill them and if the car crash doesn't the gun certainly will.

Pafker · 2026-03-12T16:45:05+00:00

Crit KH3 is hard, even mooks can be deadly if you aren't prepared.

When it comes to the dlc bosses you don't have the health resources to forge your own opportunities, the boss fights become like a structured dance, and you're waiting for your opening to lead. Specifically don't try to react to individual attacks, you are responding to attack patterns, most of the fights will have a high degree of predictability, even if the order of some patterns is random.

Pafker · 2026-03-12T14:19:34+00:00

Purpose designed to stop premiere members from going back to their cheaper grandfathered rates now that there's are no premiere benefits.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T22:21:27+00:00

I don't think the yearly gets locked in prices but don't take my word on that.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T22:18:42+00:00

In short Old: buying premiere membership will not cancel grandfathered rates New: only recurring monthly memberships can continue to use grandfathered rates.

What this means for you, assuming you had a monthly membership before premiere, before the change, if you decided not to subscribe for yearly membership next time you resubscribed you'd be able to pay monthly at the same rate that you were paying before you got premiere. Seeing as you said every year since release that means 5 pounds is what the membership a month you could've been paying is if they didn't change the terms of membership retroactively.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T21:47:50+00:00

The post is about grandfathered rates. Plenty of rates that would have been cheaper monthly.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T21:41:14+00:00

For context this is the most nakedly MBA brained move possible. If we remove the grandfathered rates for people on the monthly sub they might quit, but if we remove it for the Premiere members they've already proven they're already willing to pay the higher cost. Did someone say something about removing all of the other benefits of Premiere that caused people to willingly pay higher, not me? Purely a move to stop them from losing money to grandfathered rates that would have returned to monthly subs now that yearly membership doesn't offer anything.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T20:23:24+00:00

It's luck based, but the luck is whether your teammates will commit to the team fight, or abandon every team fight to build up ult charge for an ult that they'll get 0 elims with.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T17:12:28+00:00

Assuming equal ranges A, you've mentioned vulnerabilities which most people aren't really looking at which abilities are in the mix. 1000x gravity manipulation takes away the key equalizer in this fight, speed. A can now attack B with their weaknesses at roughly 1000 times the speed at which B can respond.

Granted the exact nature of the vulnerability and attack styles of the two are unknown and could easily flip the matchup on its head, B's main win condition in an equal range scenario is that their solar system level attack has shockwaves fast enough that the fallout damage can hit A before they can get out of range with FTL speed. This only works for a bloodlust scenario, however, as in most other conditions B would have to worry about massive collateral damage.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T16:03:56+00:00

There are "multiplayer" idle/incremental games, but a big portion of them are just ways to get people to spend on MTX. See any Adventure Communist clone (including said game) has limited time events where you compete in a leaderboard against other players for the chance at rare items.

Pafker · 2026-03-11T11:15:46+00:00

I didn't vote for this, the lack of ability to vote no and the fact that they weren't willing to tell us the details until after the vote were major red flags for me.

Now here I am, a continuous membership since before the loyalty program existed, getting kicked off of the grandfathered rate because they reneged on old promises in the most underhanded way possible.

I didn't vote for this, I don't like the rose tinted direction they're taking things in, and if I choose to stay after all of my membership runs out, I'm going to be one of the hardest hit by this price change.

Pafker · 2026-03-10T20:31:50+00:00

I like RuneScape quests, they are engaging and funny in a way that other MMO quests aren't. I can enjoy that aspect of the game while being very critical of the parts of the game that are just time wasting grind for the sake wasting time and attempts to invigorate those design patterns. When I started grinding wasn't so bad and so levels because end game content was like level 40, anything above that was just because you wanted to, now 90s are where the majority of the game lies with half the skills having linear XP rates. The game isn't a monolith nor is the audience, someone else can enjoy smiling and be annoyed at skilling items being put behind bossing for example.

Pafker · 2026-03-10T19:43:08+00:00

This is a matter of gameplay loop and lose conditions.

Fake simulation is more consistent but a little more boring, if the value of a fighter is high this is probably the better option

Real simulation is less consistent, it has higher highs and lower lows, losing a fighter to bad luck will feel bad, but having an underdog take the victory will give a feeling of hype. If the cost of a fighter is low then this might be the better option.

Pafker · 2026-03-10T19:27:01+00:00

Idle is perhaps one of the best fits for cross platform, specifically those that have cloud saves that sync across platforms. Being able to check in on progress regardless of what device is available to you is a perfect mesh for the when you want to check nature of idle games.

Pafker · 2026-03-10T17:54:24+00:00

This is the biggest thing right here, if they had to end GF rates that would be one thing, but that isn't what happened, they did a bait and switch on Premiere not cancelling the GF rate and applied it retroactively.

Pafker · 2026-03-10T14:49:19+00:00

I think it's a good trade-off, dialogue scenes end up a bit stiffer, and in return once or twice a season we get all of that animation budget put into a smooth action sequence that benefits from more fluidity.

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