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The new D23 Ultimate Fan Event taking place this weekend in Anaheim started big, with a ton of new info about upcoming movies and shows in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Frozen, Bluey, and... wait, I briefly forgot what website I was writing for.

Kingdom Hearts, yes, that's what we're here for at the moment. Now that we know that Kingdom Hearts IV is genuinely something that exists, Disney and Square Enix are certainly not going to stop giving us more information about it, and that started last night with a new trailer focusing mostly a new world from Pixar's Coco and Quadratum, the "real world." Sora gets a pretty slick-looking keyblade with a Dia de Muertos theme in there, too.

Separately, Disney also announced a new anime series based on Kingdom Hearts that will be aired on Disney Channel and Disney Plus (or, one would have to assume, local variants of each worldwide). There's no specific information about the characters or worlds to be involved yet, nor a release date, though Polygon reports that Tetsuya Nomura and other Squenix staff are involved in development at some level.

Source: Polygon

Square Enix have just announced that there will be a "new look" at Final Fantasy VII Revelation during Opening Night Live at Gamescom, on August 25. It's scheduled for 2pm Eastern, from the Koelnmesse center in Cologne, Germany. At the moment, there are no announcements for what will be shown or even if it will be streamed, but director Naoki Hamaguchi will be in attendance so one can safely assume that there will be some live discussion of the game and probably new video; my guess would be that it will be more gameplay-focused given that the reveal at Summer Game Fest was more oriented towards a general trailer.

We will update with more information and streaming links as they become available!

Source: Final Fantasy VII Facebook

Square Enix announced late last night that another of their live-service gacha games is being put out to pasture, this time the omnibus Final Fantasy VII Compilation title, Ever Crisis. The game released for mobile on September 7, 2023, so its impending shutdown on October 6 of this year will wrap it up in just about 37 months.

When announced, the game had two big selling points to players; first was the potential to replay the original stories of Final Fantasy VII, and second was to experience a new story that predated the events of Crisis Core. Of course, the gacha element also brought in many of the hallmarks of that genre, such as content crossovers and unique cosmetics, some of which I must say were pretty fun.

It appears that before end-of-service, the game will complete the original Final Fantasy VII storyline, as well as an event that will cover the story of Before Crisis, marking the first time that game will have an official localization outside of Japan. However, there is no roadmap for any further content in the First Soldier storyline, which I find unfortunate given that plot has been canonicalized in Remake - and one would presume that it will expand further in Revelation.

There have been no announcements regarding whether any of the story-driven content may live on in another form, though the recent announcement of Final Fantasy Resonance may not rule it out in the long run.

One of the major disappointments from Summer Game Fest, despite getting Revelation information, was the lack of Kingdom Hearts updates. Nintendo and Square Enix fixed that - a little - with this morning’s Nintendo Direct.

For the first time in years, we got to see some evidence that the game still exists, in the form of a new teaser shown late in the event.There’s not much detail to be had, still, and certainly no sniff of a release window; but at least the company confirmed that the game will be released to every major current platform, day-and-date for launch.

Elsewhere in the teaser, we get to see a number of snippets of cutscenes, mostly centered around battles with various Heartless, including one very massive one. Some of the combat appears to be live, as well, though none of these scenes had any interface layer shown on screen.

A quick cut through other characters is interspersed through the combat, confirming a few characters like Luxu, Luxord, and Strelitzia. A couple new characters appear as well, but what appears to be pretty thin so far is Disney representation; only Donald and Goofy show up in the new trailer at all, and only for the briefest glimpse. This tracks with the direction of the series and this particular game, though it might still be a bit disappointing for fans.

During this morning's Nintendo Direct, Square Enix announced a new HD-2D turn-based RPG being released on October 22nd, 2026. Titled Final Fantasy Resonance it's a remake - not a port - of Season 1 of the retired mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. The game will incorporate battle upgrades and other story content from later in Brave Exvius' lifespan.

For those who never played the mobile game: the premise is that Rain and Lasswell, who are Knights from Grandshelt, have been granted the power of Visions, which allows them to summon characters from across the Final Fantasy franchise to fight at their sides. These Visions level up independently of the main characters. Unlike Brave Exvius, though, where Visions could be used in place of the main characters, screenshots from Final Fantasy Resonance show the Visions alongside the main characters. In one such screenshot, we see Rain summoned Charlotte (FFBE), Lid summoned Aileen (FFBE), Fina summoned Shantotto (FFXI) and Jake summoned Firion (FFII).

Along with those mentioned above, the following Visions have been confirmed thus far:

• The Warrior of Light, Final Fantasy I
• Terra, Final Fantasy VI
• Cloud, Final Fantasy VII
• Zidane, Final Fantasy IX
• Shantotto, Final Fantasy XI
• Y'shtola, Final Fantasy XIV

The game will be coming to PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch 1 and 2.It'll be interesting to see if future seasons of Brave Exvius will be released as sequels to Final Fantasy Resonance, as the mobile game featured four seasons and numerous story events.

Source: IGN