Last week rumours spread around the Internet after an employee leaked information that he had worked on a game titled Kingdom Hearts 2.9. Many assumed this would be a demo to Kingdom Hearts III or include a version of the previously Nintendo 3DS exclusive Dream Drop Distance. Well during TGS Square Enix has announced they will be releasing a new game called Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue exclusively for the PS4. KH 2.8 will contain a full HD remaster of Dream Drop Distance, a non-playable cutscene movie and a playable ‘short episode’.
The cutscene movie is called Back Cover and covers the events of Kingdom Hearts Unchained X (pronounced chi). Unchained X is a Japanese exclusive mobile version of a browser game and predates Birth By Sleep, telling the tale of the Foretellers and detailing more of the series’ history. Birth By Sleep 0.2 (quite possibly the long awaited Birth By Sleep Volume 2) – A Fragmentary Passage is being labelled as a ‘short episode’, this episode will feature brand new content telling the events following the original Birth By Sleep from Aqua’s perspective, after she faded into darkness when saving Terra. Nomura has stated the episode will take the same amount of time to complete this episode as it would take to complete one world.
Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue will release in Japan sometime in 2016 with an International release not yet detailed. While I believe the initial point of these HD remasters was so that each Kingdom Hearts game could be on one console, it seems 2.8 is breaking this by being a PS4 exclusive. Maybe we will see 2.9 as some sort of all encompassing collection for the PS4? Let us know your fan theories in the comments below.
