Kingdom Hearts IV: the cinematic of the canceled prologue "Missing Link" leaks

A video presented as the cinematic prologue of Kingdom Hearts IV, taken from the initially canceled mobile project Missing Link, has surfaced online. Fans are trying to decode every shot.

Context

Kingdom Hearts Missing Link was the ambitious mobile project by Square Enix designed to expand the saga and serve as a narrative springboard for Kingdom Hearts IV. The project was canceled before reaching commercial release (only a closed beta had been accessible to testers), leaving fans with more questions than answers. According to Kotaku, an alleged cinematic from its prologue has just leaked online - and the community is already in full decoding session.

Warning potential KH4 spoilers: we remain deliberately vague below on the details of the cinematic, those who prefer to discover it untouched can stop here.

What we see (without spoilers)

Kotaku describes a sequence in which a figure of an astronaut appears, whose identity is already causing a lot of ink to flow on the subreddits and Discord dedicated to it. The rendering, the animation style and the scenic clues scattered in the plan have convinced a good part of the fans that the video is authentic - even if Square Enix, at the time of writing, has neither confirmed nor denied anything publicly.

Our reading

Two things strike us, at the editorial staff:

First, the cancellation of Missing Link probably left a narrative void in the preparation of KH4, and this cinematic - if it is authentic - gives an overview of what Nomura and his team wanted to use as a bridge between the two games. It is a fascinating object of video game archaeology.

Then, Square Enix's stance on this kind of leak remains to be monitored. The classic line of the publisher - silence, then DMCA - clashes head-on with the way the Kingdom Hearts communities consume their saga: by clues, by theories, by videos dissected image by image.

For whom

Hardcore fans of the Kingdom Hearts saga, curious about the game design of Tetsuya Nomura, and enthusiasts of video game archaeology (what was not released, what should have been released).