Watch The Opening Of Kingdom Hearts 3 Right Now

Square Enix is moving ever-closer to the highly anticipated release of Kingdom Hearts 3 for the Xbox One and PS4 in January. A month before the game drops, the publisher has released the official opening cinematic for the game, which you can watch right now.

The opening movie was posted up over on the Kingdom Hearts YouTube channel. It's just under two minutes long, featuring the theme song "Face My Fears" from Hikaru Utada and a surprising collaboration with the dubstep artist, Skrillex.

The CG cinematic features Sora and some of the other characters from the Kingdom Hearts franchise, some of these individuals going through their transformations to the dark side, and Sora's battle alongside the Disney characters against the forces of darkness.

The intro for Kingdom Hearts 3 is surprisingly succinct, and basically draws battle lines between who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Simply transformation sequences give you an idea of how some characters crossed certain lines in the sand, and now it's a battle to either bring them back or defeat them. Or at least, that's the general gist of the intro.

There's also a surprisingly lack of Disney characters featured in the cinematic. One would have expected to see a few more characters from the different worlds making an appearance, such as some of the new entries in this game, like Tangled or Big Hero 6, especially since those were two of the most talked about worlds being added to the game, along with the addition of the characters from Frozen and Toy Story.

Now if you're not familiar with the entire franchise history of who started what, why they became what they did, or what the endgame is, then the intro cinematic probably won't help you one iota in understanding the gist of Kingdom Heart 3's story.

However, Square Enix has prepared for this conundrum and this is why the company released the compilation pack consisting of nine games -- yes, nine games. The compilation is called Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far, and you're able to play through all nine games to get an understanding of what's been happening within this crossover universe since its debut on the PS2 way, way, way back in 2002.

Yes, the Kingdom Hearts series has been an ongoing franchise for the last 16 years. In just four years it will be 20 years old. Can you imagine that? I wonder if the original game will get a remake... again?

Anyway, Kingdom Hearts 3 has been in development for more than half a decade and it made its initial announcement back during E3 for the PS4 in 2013. It's been a long road, but the end is almost in sight as the game preps for release on January 29, 2019.