After the game was unceremoniously canceled last year, the opening cinematic of Kingdom Hearts: Missing-Link has apparently leaked online. The video contains several hallmarks of the unreleased project and plenty of Tetsuya Nomura-isms besides, lending credence to its legitimacy and providing some hints about what we might see in Kingdom Hearts 4.
Versions of the short film made their way around the information superhighway before a full upload landed on YouTube. The first half contains a massive battle between keyblade-wielders in space suits and a huge Heartless. Eventually, several of these magical astronauts find themselves in Quadratum, a realm based on our real world.
Then we jump to scientists walking around the halls of a facility of some sort, going in and out of various rooms. Narration makes mention of, "The era missing from history's cycle," and that it's "the third generation of the founded city that faced the true nature of this phenomenon," as someone urgently goes to hand over an envelope in a grand hall of some kind.
The "founded city" is Scala ad Caelum, the world from which all others flow. It's a glorious, paradise-like structure composed of white stone where it's perpetually sunny. So far, this all lines up with what we know about Missing-Link, as it would've been set between Union X and Dark Road and depicted what's known as the "blank era."
Perspective jumps to what appears to be a young Sigurd, a character in Union X who looks like he's got an unhealthy obsession with BloodBorne. The final scene shows a young version of him in a huge city at night - it's perpetually daytime in Scale ad Caelum, which means this is probably Daybreak Town, the precursor to the magical metropolis that gets leveled in the Keyblade War.
There's no way of truly verifying the legitimacy of this footage, but there are plenty of signs it's the real deal. It's polished, flows how you'd expect an introductory cutscene to, and the narrative elements line up with existing knowledge of Missing-Link. Members of the Kingdom Hearts community who took part in beta testing for the spin-off have pointed out the aesthetic doesn't line up with what they saw.
"The ML style was more steampunk. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a keyblade mod on something else or some fan art," says a commenter on Reddit. Others are lowkey stunned at what they're seeing. "Why does it look like Pacific Rim but with Keyblades," a top Reddit comment asks.
One thing that does jump out at me here is how large-scale this feels for a mobile release. Kingdom Hearts spin-offs don't tend to feel much like their mainline, triple-A counterparts.
Which leads me to agree with the prevailing theory that this is actually something intended for Kingdom Hearts 4. Missing-Link was going to tee up the new installment, and in the wake of Square Enix ending development on it, parts are probably being reworked for appearances elsewhere.
There's also a non-zero chance this is all part of something for the next Kingdom Hearts collection. Wherever this is from, I can say one thing with confidence: the lore isn't getting any easier to explain.
