Interview When making Kingdom Hearts, the "one thing" RPG icon Tetsuya Nomura "wasn't willing to budge on" was a non-Disney protagonist

[SpartaN]

When first drawing up character designs and initial treatments for the very first Kingdom Hearts game, Nomura knew he wanted to create an original star, which eventually led to him sketching Sora for the first time, a cheery protagonist that mixes classic Disney colours with a little JRPG edge.

"We talked about using an existing Disney character as the protagonist, but from the beginning I knew I wanted the main character to be non-Disney, with an all-star cast of supporting Disney characters," Nomura said in a recently resurfaced interview with Metal Gear Solid artist Yoji Shinkawa, first published in a Hyper PlayStation 2 Magazine, now available on Shmuplations. "That was one thing I wasn't willing to budge on."

"For Sora's coloring, I was very conscious of Mickey Mouse," he continued. "Since all the other characters are not Square characters but Disney, I wanted Sora's design to be a kind of 'grand compilation' of all the characters I'd drawn up till then. So I think he resembles a lot of characters: there's a bit of Cloud, a bit of Tidus, some Sion too. I was very intent on that."

When making Kingdom Hearts, the "one thing" RPG icon Tetsuya Nomura "wasn't willing to budge on" was a non-Disney protagonist

"I wanted Sora's design to be a kind of 'grand compilation' of all the characters I'd drawn up till then."

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