Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura has said that the upcoming mobile game Missing Link will have links to Kingdom Hearts 4.
In an interview with Game Informer, Nomura spoke about the upcoming mobile game Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link and said: "Compared to our past mobile releases, it's a lot closer to the series and also connected in many ways to Kingdom Hearts 4." If you didn’t know, Missing Link was announced during the Kingdom Hearts 20th-anniversary celebration in April and will apparently be launching as a closed beta later this year.
"The easiest way to get more new information and hints about Kingdom Hearts 4 would be first to play Missing Link," Nomura revealed in the same interview. "I know that not everybody is really into smartphone games, so some fans might not be really excited for it, but we are making it so that it's something that anyone can jump right into."
Previous Kingdom Hearts games such as Kingdom Hearts X (aka 'Unchained X' or 'Dark Road') provided a lot of context for Kingdom Hearts 3. These smaller titles did appear to overcomplicate an already complex story, especially if you didn’t dip your toes into the spin-off stories at all before playing Kingdom Hearts 3, so it’s good to hear that Nomura is considering newer fans this time around with Missing Link.
It doesn’t look like Nomura is leaving Kingdom Hearts X out of Kingdom Hearts 4 though, as in the reveal trailer we can see that Strelitzia makes an appearance in the sequel after mostly only appearing in Kingdom Hearts X. So it's probably wise at least familiarise yourself with all of Nomura’s past Kingdom Hearts efforts before the release of Kingdom Hearts 4.
Elsewhere in the interview, Nomura gave an insight into the future of Final Fantasy in Kingdom Hearts 4.
Kingdom Hearts 4 has been radio silent for 1,005 days, but don’t worry - Tetsuya Nomura teases he has the story planned out
The original Kingdom Hearts was initially "more hardcore" until Square Enix toned it down: "We had some puzzles in there that would make you go, 'what is this, Takeshi's Challenge?'"
