Original Worlds
The worlds created specifically for the series predominantly feature original and Final Fantasy characters and figure more centrally to the overarching plot of the Kingdom Hearts series. The first world of each game serves as a tutorial to introduce new gameplay elements and frame the story. Destiny Islands, the home world of the main characters, Sora, Riku, and Kairi, serves this function at the beginning of the first game and Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded. The next available world serves as a hub world, where the player returns multiple times throughout the game to unfold the main story. Traverse Town, a world cobbled together from the remains of worlds destroyed by the Heartless, fills this role in Kingdom Hearts, but becomes the tutorial world in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. The penultimate world of each game wraps up many plot threads in preparation for the final world. Hollow Bastion is this world for Kingdom Hearts, but, in Kingdom Hearts II, it is the hub world. Twilight Town is both the tutorial world and the penultimate world in Kingdom Hearts II, containing a secret pathway to the final world of that game. The final world culminates in a battle with the main antagonist of the game. End of the World, made out of the worlds that lost their hearts to the Heartless, and the World That Never Was are the final worlds of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II, respectively. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep differs slightly, however. In its case, the Land of Departure serves as the tutorial world, hub world and where the plot threads wrap up. The final world in the game is the Keyblade Graveyard, where each of the main characters' final battles take place (except Aqua).
Hollow Bastion plays a central role in the backstory of the series, as the home world of a majority of the Final Fantasy characters who appear in Kingdom Hearts, as well as the original home of Ansem the Wise, the ruler of that world, then called the Radiant Garden, and Kairi, who was sent to the Destiny Islands as part of an experiment conducted by Ansem's apprentice, Xehanort. Ansem studied the darkness in people's hearts with six apprentices, including Xehanort. His apprentices continued this dangerous research without his permission, causing the world to become overrun by darkness. Deserted, the castle was later adopted by Maleficent as a headquarters. Castle Oblivion, another villainous hideout and the main setting of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, consists of multiple floors which transform into memory-based reconstructions of other worlds, via special cards. Finally, Organization XIII is based in the World That Never Was, a world in the in-between realm that houses Kingdom Hearts. This conception of Kingdom Hearts was designed to appear as the heart-shaped moon from the cover of the first Kingdom Hearts game. When the scenario writer, Kazushige Nojima, created the scenario, he described it as a moon floating in the World That Never Was. Upon reading that, Nomura thought of using the visuals from the first game to create a connection.
Famous quotes containing the words original and/or worlds:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back and forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakespearean Indiaman that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of that wreck and others that are buried in the sands of this desolate island, and such new timber as may be required, in which to sail away to whole new worlds of light and life, where our friends are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)