Game Theory: The Frozen Level You Will NEVER Play! (Kingdom Hearts 3)

my friend Simon you watch what how can you possibly think that oh this is so dumb and those are not truffles there is no chance that I'm eating this oh but you will matpat ha ha mouse I should have known you were behind this what are you gonna do hold me down and force-feed him to me oh no no nothing so power barrack but I did hide one of the best key blades behind that stupid cooking minigame so if you want a 100% this game and I know you do you'll eat those mushrooms ha ha you'll eat every last one of them and if that's not enough you'll have to do basic tear QuickTime events before that crack that egg matpat whoops to gentle gifts to hard cracking backpacks over not that anything but that no [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello internet welcome Zig game theory the show with a spin-off that covers movies Disney movies and so you'd think that I would have covered Kingdom Hearts long before now but if I can be real with you guys for a second this series kind of scares me the deep lore of Kingdom Hearts is so complex that it makes scott coffins storytelling seem straightforward and even if i could tell the difference between a keyblade and a key blade the places this story have gone to are so out there that no theory I could come up with would be anywhere near as surprising is what Tetsuya Nomura has already done furthermore say I was able to concoct some sort of incredible lore theory like proving how Sora was actually Xia North the whole time it'd take at least two episodes just to explain enough of the necessary background to get everyone here to appreciate it in the first place anyway the Straight Talk here is that this is a series that I really enjoy and it's something that I've wanted to do a theory on for a long time and with the release of Kingdom Hearts 3 or is it 2.9 Olympus Coliseum here we come whatever I finally have a theory on this game that literally anyone can appreciate no backstory required because buried in the code of Kingdom Hearts 3 are the fragments of a hidden level and today I'm gonna expose the lost stage that Disney didn't want us to see now for those of you who've never played the game let me quickly catch you up we play as Sora who's torn apart from his best friends Riku and Kairi when a mysterious darkness swallows up their Island holes okay so maybe trying to summarize this was a bad idea look all that matters and honestly all that ever should have mattered is that you're a cheerful spiky-haired and a boy named Sora who travels the Disney Final Fantasy multiverse with Donald Duck and Goofy forwarding the evil plans of less cheerful anime boys and girls in black trench coats who are sometimes clones all while saving Disney characters from weirdly cute monsters called the heartless and learning important lessons about friendship and love along the way and cage 3 is basically more the same with new Disney worlds ranging from big hero 6 to tangled to Toy Story but out of all the Disney worlds we visit across the series what in particular has got a bunch of flack from both fans and critics arendelle the world of Disney's breakout musical hit frozen now playing through it it's not hard to see why this level is so disliked it forces players to climb up a mountain just so they can immediately be knocked back down once they reach the summit then it makes them climb back up to the top only to do it yet again you get to the top of this mountain and you get to do nothing and if that doesn't sound tedious enough you don't even get to join forces with Elsa or Kristoff or any of the film's actual heroes instead the only frozen character that actually joined your party is marshmallow Elsa's snow golem who only really shows up at the end of the level for the final boss fight in a game series that's used it's Disney properties or really well in the past it is a massive disappointment to see such an iconic Disney franchise used so poorly but I don't think that this was ever the game developers intent no it's my theory that a different frozen level existed but got cuts from the game at the last minute resulting in the boring repetitive cobbled together mess of arendelle that we eventually play through in the final version of the game and that's not me just blowing smoke I think we can piece together what that level looked and played like using clues left in the game from that initial design today we are piecing together the incredible frozen level that the game devs tried to give us but that Disney asked before the game's final release our first clue that this isn't the level the developers intended is in how different arendelle feels relative to all the other levels in the game heck relative to the other levels in the entire series Kingdom Hearts 3 makes a point of connecting the story of every other world directly into Sora's character art letting the Disney characters influence him just as much as he influences them Hercules teaches them how to get back up after a defeat and believe in himself again meeting Woody and Buzz and hearing about Andy's love of them reaffirms the faith he has in his own friends even Corona which mostly follows the plot of the tangled movie draws parallels between Sora's first adventures off of destiny islands and Rapunzel's first exposure to the outside world but arendelle the characters barely interact with frozen's cast or plot except to bluntly restate what the audience just watched to the cutscene that was Elsa and a lot happier too and don't even get me started on the songs three huge Disney musicals made it into Kingdom Hearts 3 but frozen is the only one to feature a full CGI recreation in one of its iconic musical numbers let it go if you couldn't guess I mean Kingdom Hearts has included musical numbers before I still have vivid war flashbacks to that Little Mermaid stage but it's never been like this it also includes a fragment of do you wanna build a snowman but for some reason Anna talks over at the entire time it's almost like the team was contractually obligated to include these songs that couldn't find a way to organically work them in the whole thing reeks of a creative conflict between the games team and the Disney frozen brand team but to me the strangest bit and the one that really set off my theorist senses to want to look into this in the first place is arendelle's villain Hans who is never introduced never speaks heck we never even really to see his face that's Elsa but who's that guy darkness that is literally his first appearance two-thirds of the way through the level the next time we see him is here and now he's passed out and now he's a portal now he's a nice boy and now I'm just confused now you like me might at first think that this is all the result of Disney forcing Square to include their most successful animated musical into the game but Tetsuya Nomura has gone on record to say that that was not the case quote usually when we think about making a game we choose from works already available to the public however for frozen when we were selecting the world's Disney showed us the preview before it was finished and we liked it enough to continue the discussion to include it in the game we decided on the inclusion before the movie was premiered so we were lucky that it was a huge success end quote frozen was already planned for the game when it was announced at e3 2013 before anyone knew what a success the film would be which suggests that Nomura had more reason to include frozen in the game than sheer marketability it suggests that he had a legitimate story to tell with it so what happened well in an interview with us gamer Nomura mentions that one of the biggest differences in working on Kingdom Hearts 3 is that many of the teams who made the film's they adapted for the game are still around which meant that his team was getting feedback from more people and had tighter guidelines to follow in regards to what they could and couldn't do and according to new Mora frozen had the most refined lines of any world which makes sense it is Disney's biggest animated franchise outside a Pixar and as we just learned they were gearing up to tease the sequel right around the time of Kingdom Hearts is release it's likely they didn't want to risk anything that might spoil audience's perception of these characters or the frozen brand either motivation would explain the world's overly rigid adherence to the plot of the first film and the jarring inclusion of all those hit musical numbers but that leaves us with a bigger question here if that isn't the stories that Tetsuya Nomura wanted to tell then what is lucky for us I think there are some remnants of the world's original story left in the game and by piecing together those anomalies I think we can form a picture of what was lost to Disney's meddling let's go back to Hans the villain of the level who again doesn't speak there's one other notable Disney character who conspicuously shows up without uttering a single line in this game filled from Hercules but for Phil there's a good reason for it Ichiro and a guy Phil's Japanese voice actor died back in 2014 and squared chose not to recast him as a show of respect Asuka Sudha the Japanese voice of Hans is very much alive and looking at his Twitter profile it doesn't seem like he has anything against Hans as a character and considering that everyone else from frozen's English cast reprised their roles in this game it seems unlikely that Square couldn't get access to honza's voice actor so why then would Hans have no speaking lines and game when every other Disney villain who makes an appearance gets a chance to antagonize Sora I need half the fun of these games is watching the bad guys Hamming up well maybe the reason that the main villain of arendelle has no speaking lines is that he was never supposed to be the main villain of arendelle in the first place Hans was brought in at the last minute to replace a villain that Nomura was no longer allowed to use that would explain another inconsistency every other time we see something in the world turn into a boss there's an animated cutscene that shows the transformation when Mother Gothel turns into a heartless we see her cloak engulf and the body parts of the grim Guardian is emerged we see Evil baymax form out of the data cubes we watched the pile of rubble in Monstropolis come to life to become the boss Unversed but with Hans black portal just appears out of nowhere underneath Goofy donnell and Sora when they come out on the other side the monstrous ice wolf skull is already taking shape in front of them there's no physical continuity between Hans and the boss but there's also no thematic continuity here either and that's probably more important I mean sure the story of frozen involves a lot of ice but Hans is from the southern country with no connection to any of that turning Hans into an ice wolf makes no sense unless of course again new Maura's team took the existing heartless transformation sequence from another character and inserted Hans into it after the fact so then who was originally intended to be arendelle's true villain Elsa Rice powers would make a fun boss fight on their own and they give her a much clearer connection to the design of an ice powered heartless boss but more importantly Elsa as the villain works thematically early on in the stage organization 13 member lark scene says this okay I'll admit Elsa is a person of interest to us what if it's dark magic Elsa would never rely on the darkness actually it's still too early to call depends on how she sees it if she believes her magic as darkness that's what it will become so what will L say except light or darkness I know I want to know in the game with god this is a throwaway line the idea that Elsa's conflicted about her powers about whether they're good or evil is never brought up again until lark scene appears at the end of the stage to say oh well I guess she chose good but if the story actually followed this internal struggle of light and darkness within Elsa where the final ice wolf boss breaks free representing her repressed anger and fear about her powers now we have something that makes a lot more sense not just in the level but in the context of Kingdom Hearts as a series one of the major underlying themes of the Kingdom Hearts series is the human hearts potential to house both good and evil and Elsa is one of the only Disney characters who straddles that line I mean in the original draft a frozen Elsa was intended to be the villain that just took several rewrites for the film's producers to realize that she worked better as an antihero the film sure she's saved from the darkness within her by the love of her sister but with a little bit of prodding from organization 13 it would totally make sense for her character to fall into despair and take on the villainous role that she always had the potential to film with Sora Donald and Goofy having to fight to save her from that darkness who she can be the hero she was always meant to be it also totally makes sense why Disney and the creative team behind frozen would shut down that idea Elsa is one of their most popular characters and a role model for tons of young girls there is a ton of potential controversy and portraying her as a bad guy but it's also not just the boss that starts to make a lot more sense with Elsa as the villain it's also the level design the ice labyrinth that lurks scene traps you in at the start of arendelle's story is the biggest anomaly in this world which might as well be the single most out of place thing in a Kingdom Hearts game period and that's saying a lot because this game also expects us to play puzzle bobble with Winnie the Pooh this ice labyrinth literally comes out of nowhere one second Donald Soren goofy our being walled in by lark scenes ice next they've somehow appeared into a deep underground maze and after fighting their way out of it they just come out of a random portal on the side of the mountain not only is there no place in frozen's world that behaves this way there's just no real basis for random portal dungeons appearing in kingdom hearts either it feels as though this section was taken out of another game and slapped into the middle of the level and it's my belief that it kind of was notice the architecture of this area there's only one place in frozen that has architecture like we see in the dungeon Elsa's ice palace when you finally reach the top of the labyrinth you find yourself in a central tower surrounded by three platforms that are clearly very high up in the sky which is a strange way of portraying the exit to an underground dungeon but it makes perfect sense if this is supposed to be the spire of a castle Elsa's castle stranger still is the fact that those three platforms have nothing on them one path leads to an empty room full of enemies while the other leads to a random pile of rocks with the Hidden Mickey emblem the design of this area screams that they're supposed to be soft significant up here but it's really just nothing empty rooms and an exit there are obvious signs that this area is either unfinished or that something like a boss fight was taken out of it but the clincher here is that if you can stomach climbing all the way back up the mountain a third time you'll see that the interior of Elsa's castle appears on the map when you actually try to approach it an invisible wall blocks your way it's exactly what would happen if at one point the castle was supposed to be in explorable area but was instead scrapped and used elsewhere like saying out of nowhere ice dungeon building a level like this takes a lot of time and money so if Disney truly axed this whole storyline new Maura's team would have had to scramble to repurpose as much of the work that they've done is possible to find a way to fit it into the final game that is the only way to make sense of these otherwise baffling bits of level design speaking of baffling level design the final section of the level involves hiding behind cover to avoid being blown back by the raging winds of a blizzard it's an odd section that has no real link to what's going on in the story but what makes it even stranger is that for some reason the blizzard is blowing you uphill something that very cold air tends not to do on account of you know the laws of physics but also by the laws of video games snow storms are always blowing you down the mountain as you try to climb it Chrono Trigger Majora's Mask it would make a lot more sense if instead of going downhill your party were fighting the winds of Elsa's blizzard as they climbed back up towards her palace again a moment that feels repurposed to account for some sort of last-minute changes and finally there's marshmallow Elsa's ice golem creation he is easily the most underutilized guest party member in the entire game considering by the time he joins up with you all that's left to do is clear two short areas of the map and fight the boss Elsa being planned as the world's villain though would explain his late arrival because then he would now be fighting alongside you through the entire palace dungeon making him a heck of a lot more useful it would also explain his last-second heroism at the end of the boss battle where he stands in front of Sora and the team to protect them it's unusual that these cutscene focus so much on him unusual until you consider that he's else's creation something that she gave life to so let's say that Elsa is conflicted about the darkness or lightness of her abilities just like lark seen mentions in those random lines from earlier and then due to the prodding of organization 13 Elsa gives in to the dark potential of her powers with that darkness being manifested by the ice wolf marshmallow choosing to put himself in danger to protect others would be the last thing to help snap her out of her icy rage helping her realize the goodness of what she can do she has the ability to give life she has the ability to bestow love and empathy and self-sacrifice it actually parallels what happens with Anna in the movie and innocent puts themselves in harm's way for the safety of others causing Elsa to come to her senses tame the wolf and finally accept her powers as a force for good the end level over let's puzzle bobble with Winnie the Pooh based on the dangling threads left in the dialogue the level design the themes and the story beats it seems like all the pieces were in place for a much more solid version of arendelle instead what we got was a cobble together confusing mess most likely due to the meddling of brand management teams and isn't that the ironic twist here that in Disney's presumed quest to protect the brand they actually do more harm to it than good at harnessing it attaching it to something that could have told a cool story but instead just looks sloppy sometimes it's best not to meddle but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching and now that you know everything there is to know about the frozen level that Disney censored check out my prediction theory on what exactly frozen 2 is all about feel pretty confident that we've cracked this little nut so impress your friends with the 4 knowledge of what Disney's biggest animated sequel is gonna be all about that link is right here and it is brand new help complete that frozen watch session give me those retention minutes remember just by watching you're helping me in the algorithm

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 3,186,191

Rating: 4.922956 out of 5

Keywords: kingdom hearts 3, frozen, kingdom hearts, disney, kh3, elsa, frozen 2, kingdom hearts 3 arendelle, kh3 arendelle, kingdom hearts 3 frozen, frozen world, kingdom hearts 3 frozen boss, frozen keyblade, arendelle, kingdom hearts 3 lucky emblems, face my fears, face my fears kingdom hearts 3, kh3 lucky emblems, frozen theory, kingdom hearts theory, secret level, hidden level, secret boss, game theory, game theorists, lost level, matpat

Id: Neau6ttz6Bk

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/RandomRedditor44]

TLDW?

[u/bundleofstrings]

On the one hand, it's pretty clear that his theory holds true based on what we've seen in the game. I too expected Elsa as the boss in the game, so I found the outcome of Arandelle disappointing.

On the other hand, I am surprised that a rule as specific as 'stay true to the movie' was not brought up until the near end of development and forced the KH team to slap parts together, especially because Square Enix planned to have Frozen included since the day of the movie release.

Reading some articles about Disney/Pixar supervising their levels, the KH team's main focus was to prove they can animate scenes resembling the movie as close as possible (as seen with the shot-for-shot reanimation of the two musical scenes). I wonder if development chose to focus on the animation first, experimented with some level designs and then working story elements around it. At least that could explain why they didn't have enough time to plan out how to present a story to what Disney wanted, or have realized that Disney didn't want their proposed Arandelle.

Or higher ups jumped in last minute and interfered with what both the Frozen creators and KH team cooked up together.

Either way, I feel it isn't fair to solely blame Disney on that part. Nomura is not a great storyteller himself, and knowing how chaotic workplaces are behind the scenes, it's clear that Frozen fell victim to a not-so-ideal development progress.

[u/blockhead114]

One more thing I noticed, if I’m remembering correctly, someone mentions later in the game that Anna and Elsa are both princesses of heart.

This makes no sense for a few reasons, the first being Larxene’s statement about how she could use her powers for light or darkness. If she’s a princess of heart, that would not at all be possible since her heart literally has no darkness in it. The more damning fact however, is that we have no evidence of two princesses of heart from the same world.

In fact, it makes more sense that they would be from separate worlds. Marluxia mentioned that now that rapunzel is a new princess of heart, she is meant to guard the world’s light. This makes sense, and while the “new princesses of heart” was almost definitely added in after this frozen debacle as a means of tying the three we see into the main story, however it makes sense in the long run as well. The door to darkness opens when the 7 princesses of light, or maybe a better term guardians of light are united. And therefore they should NOT be anywhere near each other in preserving the order of the World.

The reason this is important to the theory, is that Elsa is (in matpat’s idea of the original story of Arendelle) struggling between darkness and light. Therefore she was never meant to be a princess of light. ONLY Anna is. Which makes a whole lot of sense in the movie as well. Elsa was, as matpat said, an antihero of sorts, while Anna was happy-go-lucky, overly trusting, selfless and very loving. Also SHE IS A PRINCESS. ELSA IS NOT (I realize that the fact that they’re not a “princess” means very little for princess of heart like Kairi and Alice, but I mean. Come on)

In conclusion, in support of the theory, Anna was originally supposed to be the only princess of heart in Arendelle, while Elsa’s struggle between her own darkness and light was the driving force of the story

So sorry for the messiness of this, as I started writing, I began to make more connections, resulting in a random train of thought

TL;DR

Matpat is right, supported by Anna and Elsa both being princesses of heart from the same world, which makes no sense

[u/Griz_zy]

Unless I missed it, there was something obvious missing in this theory.

Elsa was supposed to be the villain in Frozen, but Disney decided to change it in the end

Not sure how that works out in the timeline, but it could even be possible Elsa was still the villain when this level started development.

[u/Edvarius]

Yeah, this one seems pretty plausible, and would be a lot more along the lines of what I was hoping would happen after Larxene's speech. It's not like the movie didn't show that Elsa had a lot of fears about her powers anyway, right? Even if she didn't fall entirely to Darkness, they could've at least shown it was a possibility so there was something in the level to catch a players interest. Oh well, nothing to be done for it now, and I really doubt the people at Disney will learn a lesson about why that ended up being the least liked level.

Anyway, on a somewhat separate topic, what also might have been nice to see, if not something they actually planned, would have been if Larxene had been ordered to make sure that Elsa stayed on the side of Light so she could be one of the backup Princesses. That would have put Sora in the awkward position of... trying to foil a evil plan about helping somebody be a better person. And put Larxene in the hilariously awkward position of having to try and be all positivity and friendship and what not despite being a sadistic psychopath.