Square Enix is being extremely careful with Kingdom Hearts 3‘s release to keep players from spoiling the game from each other, and the epilogue and a separate secret movie are being released as post-launch DLC in order to preserve their mystery. You must beat the main game in order to view the epilogue, but viewing the secret movie requires a little bit more work.
Speaking to Famitsu and translated by Kotaku, game director Tetsuya Nomura explained that you must photograph special Mickey Mouse “lucky marks” using Sora’s mobile phone while making your way through the story. The number you need is inversely proportional to your game difficulty, with those playing on “beginner” required to find all of them in order to view the movie. The marks won’t be terribly small, and appear to be made up of debris from the environment in order to partially blend in.
The secret movie won’t be available in Kingdom Hearts 3 on launch day, even if you connect to the internet and download any patches. Instead, it will be added on January 31. The previous day, the epilogue will be added to the game.
Square Enix preemptively chose this release model in order to lower the chance of the full experience being spoiled for the average player. A small number of retail copies leaked over a month before the game’s official release date, and details about the plot are already out in the wild. Of course, if you’re like most of us, you won’t be able to discern what is actually happening by reading a synopsis, anyway, as you haven’t played the various “Remixes” released over the years.
For those who are new to the series, you can get caught up in advance by playing Kingdom Hearts — The Story So Far. The bundle includes nine separate titles, detailing the entire Kingdom Hearts Saga across eight games and one film. Though Kingdom Hearts 3 will be available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the compilation is only available on the latter system.
Kingdom Hearts 3 will be available worldwide on January 29. We’ll have Simple and Clean playing in our heads until then.
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