There has been some scuttlebutt lately surrounding the release of the Kingdom Hearts III ReMind DLC and what it means for the future of Final Fantasy Versus 13, a game Square Enix fans were lead to believe was both cancelled and consolidated into Final Fantasy 15. It also just so happens that Kingdom Hearts series lead Tetsuya Nomura was the game director on Versus 13. The secret ending of ReMind gives more than a wink and nod to Versus 13 and is leaving fans online arguing about whether or not the mythical game is ever coming back to life.
To give some context, Final Fantasy Versus 13 was a game announced by Square Enix in 2006, alongside Final Fantasy 13 proper. Early trailers showed off an emo-looking protagonist named Noctis. Fans latched onto him so much that he became the protagonist of Final Fantasy 15. A 2011 trailer excited fans by showing gameplay concepts that were reminiscent of action focused Square RPGs, most notably Kingdom Hearts.
This was shown two years after 13 was released and the sequels were already announced and in development. While never officially canned, the game was eventually turned into Final Fantasy 15, or at least the character aspects of it were while the combat system fell by the wayside.
Now that Square Enix fans have played the ReMind DLC to completion, they have found a reference to Versus 13 hidden in the secret “good” ending of the game. The Kingdom Hearts 3 ReMind easter egg can be accessed when players complete the DLC’s story, fight 13 challenging bosses, and then defeat a secret boss called Yozora. It’s worth noting that visually Yozora is similar to Noctis, but sports a lighter hair color.
Following the ending cutscene of the boss fight, Yozora awakens in a car, jarred awake by something the driver says. The scene is a recreation of part of a trailer for Final Fantasy Versus 13. The scenes are near identical, though the new scene from Kingdom Hearts 3 has been entirely remade in the updated engine and with Yozora instead of Noctis. But this is not the first reference Kingdom Hearts director Nomura has made to his cancelled project.
When Kingdom Hearts 3 was released in January of 2019, a trailer for a fictional game entitled “Verum Rex” could be found in the Toy Story world. The trailer is an homage to the style and combat of the Final Fantasy Versus 13 trailers that were shown back in the day, and it featured not Noctis, but the character now known as Yozora. The fake commercial even contained ads for action figures and both standard and limited editions of the Verum Rex.
Many Square fans were excited by the trailer and thought it to be an allusion to the return of Versus 13, but most quickly identified the bit for what it was: an elaborate easter egg placed by Nomura and the Kingdom Hearts team to wink and nod to players about a game that was never released. Or at least this seemed to be the case until ReMind DLC was released.
Now, the secret ending following the secret boss fight suggests that a Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy Versus 13 crossover is potentially in the works. At least in spirit. It is unlikely that Final Fantasy 15 or Versus 13 characters will ever directly make their way into Kingdom Hearts, but there are other ways to pay homage to the cancelled game.
Nomura has said ReMind DLC is the end of the “Dark Seeker Saga”, but is not the final chapter in the Kingdom Hearts journey. Some loose ends are tied up, but many remain for a possible Kingdom Hearts 4. Now fans are wondering what role with Yozora and other concepts from Versus 13 have to play in the next entry.
The idea could exist as a spin-off game. In the Kingdom Hearts series the non-numbered entries are often as important, or more important, to the overall narrative as the main trilogy of games. It is possible Square Enix is using ReMind to set up a spin-off starring Yozora as the playable character with a combat system evocative of what was shown of Versus 13. This would be a pretty big fan service move for Square RPG diehards. Or Yozora could be the star of the next DLC.
The ending of ReMind didn’t exactly close the book on Sora and his friends, but it does seem like their next big move will be in the next main game. Yozora’s story could be the perfect piece of DLC for Square Enix if it wants to experiment with changes to the Kingdom Hearts combat system. Regardless of if this is the direction it goes, it is clear Yozora will be a key player as the franchise moves forward.
It is not entirely a bad thing that Versus 13 never came out, but as with any cancelled project in a franchise as huge as Final Fantasy there are gamers who will always clamor for it. The end result was Final Fantasy 15, a game that proved to be a bit divisive, but went on to sell 9 million units. This makes 15 one of the best selling-games in the series, which is a pretty good situation for Noctis given his humble beginnings in a game that never saw the light of day.
The prospects for Final Fantasy Versus 13 ever getting released were pretty low when Kingdom Hearts 3 came out with most people thinking the easter egg trailer was the last anyone would hear of the game. After ReMind, it still seems unlikely but the secret ending may be teasing out a game, or add-on, that is taking the ideas Nomura and his team had for Versus 13 and bringing them to life in a series that shares a lot of the same fans.
