Kingdom Hearts celebrates the 15th Anniversary of Birth by Sleep with a new anecdote from Tetsuya Nomura

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep was released on January 9, 2010, as a PlayStation Portable exclusive, quickly becoming one of the best and most beloved entries in Disney and Square Enix’s action RPG series. Today is the 15th anniversary of this classic, and Square is celebrating this special occasion.

The official Kingdom Hearts Twitter/X account commemorated the 15th anniversary of Birth by Sleep by posting the secret ending of the original Kingdom Hearts 2 (Known as “The Gathering”), which served as our very first hint of this prequel back in 2006, four years before its release. Furthermore, this nostalgic video is accompanied by a new message from series director Tetsuya Nomura.

It’s always fascinating to read Nomura’s explanations of how he makes games and stories, and this one is no exception. This time, he focused mainly on “crossroads” as a recurring visual throughout the series based on the classic “Devil at a crossroads” myth from American folklore. We saw this imagery in games like Chain of Memories, Union χ, and of course, Birth by Sleep, so it’s quite mind-blowing for Nomura to confirm that he intentionally included this detail in all these games.

Did Nomura just drop a small hint towards Kingdom Hearts 4?

But the most interesting part of Nomura’s message was its cryptic conclusion, which says “But wait… when the Lost Masters gather at the crossroads in KH3, what is gained and what is lost? That is a story for another time,” which references the secret ending of Kingdom Hearts 3, in which Aced, Gula, Invi, and Ira reunite with Luxu (Xigbar) in the very same crossroads located in the Keyblade Graveyard that we saw in Birth by Sleep. This cutscene kickstarted the new Lost Master Arc that will continue with the release of Kingdom Hearts 4.

Square Enix revealed KH4 back in 2022, and it still haven’t released any other trailers or screenshots of this upcoming title. As a result of this drought, fans are naturally desperate to receive any tidbit of information, meaning that they reacted to Nomura’s new message with both excitement and frustration. What’s going to be the significance of crossroads in Kingdom Hearts 4 and beyond? When exactly is going to be the proper time to tell us that story?

Birth by Sleep is an excellent game on its own

Before we go into the next chapter of this incredible and complex story, it’s important to take a moment to reminisce about the game that is turning 15 today: Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Square Enix originally released it for the PlayStation Portable (a year after launching 358/2 Days on the Nintendo DS) but, fortunately, it later ported it to home consoles like the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch via the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix collection.

Considering that there are many key elements from Birth by Sleep that Nomura first teased back in Kingdom Hearts 2 (including the aforementioned secret ending), it’s quite obvious that this was a significant entry in the series, and many consider it to be the “original Kingdom Hearts 3“, before the real KH3 came out, due to its huge impact on the main plot. This is because Birth by Sleep is actually a prequel that tells the story of Terra, Aqua and Ventus, three young Keyblade warriors who have to travel through many Disney worlds to find (and eventually confront) Master Xehanort.

Without going too much into spoilers, Birth by Sleep presented us with a rich and fascinating narrative that explained and established many important events and characters that we had already seen in KH1, Chain of Memories and KH2. Not to mention that it also featured a solid combat system that introduced the “Commands” mechanic, which allowed its three playable characters to perform all sort of over-the-top and powerful attacks to defeat enemies and bosses. Needless to say, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is still one of the absolute best games in the franchise, one that longtime fans of the series should not miss.