“Practical in-camera effects for Missing Link required 3D-printing 106,000 unique facial replacements, creating a 36-pound elephant puppet, and building 110 sets for 65 unique locations. Find out how the filmmakers helped surpass the achievements of our previous films!”
“Missing Link is LAIKA’s first film to create custom 3D-printed faces for every character in every shot. This guaranteed a wider range of expressions. Over 106,000 faces were printed for the film.”
ANYWAY here’s a HUGE write-up of the various stuff we saw in the Kingdom Hearts 20th Anniversary video
First, Dark Road Stuff:
First: Xehanort KNOWS he was Player??? THAT’S fucked up lmao
A new cast of Dark Road characters!! I don’t think any of these we saw previously, which is fun!
We see Xehanort’s keyblade armor, and it looks like the No Heart BBS fight! So it’s just always had the little crown motif which is kinda cute. Also one of the original capital-d Darknesses is there, and evidently killed all the other students l o l.
God the jpeg artifacts on this game. It really was built in flash, huh
I’m curious to see who he’s mourning in this shot - is it his mom that we saw at the end of khux? Is it the master who maybe dies at the end? Who Knows
Missing Link Stuff:
As much as I’ve been wanting a khux mmo for a while, I wasn’t expecting…………. this. Whatever Missing Link is. Because I have some Theories.
Specificallythis shot. This is definitely in the early alpha stages because beta signups are opening later this year but like… to ME, the overhead shots of this game feels. Like a augmented reality map game?? Like Pokemon Go or Pikmin Bloom?? I hope to GOD it’s not but it feels like a legitimate city with the little Large Body in the bottom right and the little green markers, it feels like a real life walk game and I’d HATE that. I’m sure it isn’t but. Man. Dystopian thoughts.
But hey check it out we get THREE new keyblades! A red and black one that feels like a gear, a green and gray one with what looks like a wire mesh around a lantern, and a sharp one that looks kind of between Starlight and Missing Ache. I have a feeling there’s some sort of class system that encourages the multiplayer that we see near the end of the trailer here:
Also my boy Brain is there!! And I refused to call him Blaine, you can pry Brain from my cold dead hands.
And now, of course, Kingdom Hearts 4 Stuff:
So this feels deliberate, right? Like this is a very obvious message, displayed a couple of times in different areas, written in the in-universe KH alphabet. The first character in the first word is A, the last character is 7, and in the second word there’s a punctuation mark and then a 3. But a lot of it I don’t know, and people haven’t translated yet :(
Also this is the first we start seeing of the dark force in the trailer, which I’m gonna tentatively call the “Heartless” for now. Which I have my doubts about.
Also yeah that’s Endor LOL
MY SLEEPY GIRL also jesus her feet are big, I can see why her yellow shoes are so HUGE now, wearing Size 20s out here
MY OTHER SLEEPY GIRL who looks rough but she has been dead for like a thousand years so. Sleep it off, Strel
They feel TINY compared to the doors and deck lmao, like look how little bitty they are
THIS is interesting, we see English script alongside the Scala script. Which… is weird. Also the D-Dream and D-Eater is very interesting and fun lol, it’s another parallel to DDD alongside Missing Link using a cover of the DDD version of Dearly Beloved
And of course, our Baddy. Who actually looks a lot like Dark Inferno! There’s some differences - no weapons, no glow, no bandana - but it’s got a lot of visual similarities. Also, interestingly, Re:Mind’s Dark Inferno χ is stated to be a “Darkness” sleeping inside of Ven, maybe Vanitas, so it’s possible this is another original Darkness as well? We do see MoM and Luxu here in a second so it could track.
The grapple is SICK and very interesting, almost a fleur de lis?
SORA’S GOT HIS BUILDING SKATING POWERS BACK
We see Luxu and MoM (assumedly, because of the posture? The rightmost one is at least MoM for sure)
And I really like the font!! It’s different, a little more clean than the one in the Dark Seeker Saga.
And of course Goofy and Donald looking for Hades because Sora literally died.
Also this is just a funny smear frame but it’s nice to see they’re embracing the more comical side of things too! They’re making sure it stays cartoony which I like
Anyway that’s all I’ve got for now and tomorrow I’ll ramble more
