The speculated Kingdom Hearts 3 Ratatouille world won’t actually be featured in the upcoming JRPG, with the film’s anthropomorphic rat Remy instead appearing in a cooking mini-game. While some had hoped that the critically-acclaimed Pixar film would have a more prominent role in the Square Enix game, it seems that players’ interactions with him will be limited to its hub world.
Kingdom Hearts 3 features a wide array of characters from Disney’s past and present, with Square having already shown off the game’s Toy Story and Monsters Inc. worlds in previous demos. Remy also popped up in one of the game’s various trailers, though according to recent reports, he will not be a summon in the game.
In a report from IGN, it is revealed that Remy isn’t a summon and is instead a “denizen of Twilight Town,” the hub world that first appeared in Kingdom Hearts 2. Rather than featuring a level dedicated to Ratatouille, it seems that protagonist Sora will instead be joined by the rat in a cooking mini-game. It’s unclear if Remy will appear during the game outside of this interaction, but those hoping they would be able to jump into its French setting will be disappointed.
Still, it’s difficult to imagine where Square Enix could have gone with a Ratatouille world in Kingdom Hearts 3. While it’s certainly a popular film, it doesn’t particularly lend itself well to a video game, as evidenced by the sub-par 2007 game of the same name. Unless Square were to shrink Sora, Goofy, and Donald down and spend a significant portion of them tasking them with successfully running a restaurant, it’s probably for the best that Disney’s more action-packed movies are the focus of Kingdom Hearts 3.
Square revealed that Kingdom Hearts 3 would be delayed during E3 2018, with it now being pushed back into 2019. The reasoning Square offered for the delay was that its previous 2018 release window “wasn’t a good timing,” and that “the [Square Enix] western offices had requested to release the game as simultaneously as much as possible between Japan and America, so we were no longer able to just think about Japanese issues and retail situations.” Kingdom Hearts 3 will now release on January 29, 2019 for the PS4 and Xbox One.
