Ventus (Kingdom Hearts) - Creation and Development

Creation and Development

When first designing Ventus, Tetsuya Nomura already decided the character should look like Sora or Roxas, and decided to choose the latter when thinking that Vanitas's being revealed to have Sora's appearance would give a big impact to the gamers. Despite similarities with Roxas, Nomura wanted Ventus' personality to more closely resemble Sora's, which led to his forward attitude, yet at the same time, he wanted him to be slightly more serious as the game continued in order to differentiate them. Ventus was first shown in the secret endings of Kingdom Hearts II and its rerelease Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix. Ventus' name first appeared as a code in a 2006 Tokyo Game Show promotional video of the games. In the making of the endings, Nomura had only drawn the settings of Terra, Aqua and him, but after finishing them, he had drawn their faces. Despite not revealing their identities, Nomura still said that they were characters from the past from the Kingdom Hearts series. Following their release, Nomura stated that his nickname was Ven, having been first mentioned by the character Lingering Sentiment in Final Mix, while his full name was still unrevealed. He also mentioned a connection between him and Xemnas but wanted to leave it up to people's imaginations as he still could not reveal his identity.

Nomura commented that, despite how similar they are, Roxas and Ventus are not the same character. Additionally, he stated that by playing Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, players will be able to distinguish Roxas from Ventus, with one of the game's mission being exploring his true identity. In another interview, Nomura implied both characters are related, specifically to Sora, but he wanted fans to imagine reasons for such connection. The guidebook Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Ultimania clarified the connection, stating that Roxas and Ventus look alike because Ventus's heart entered Sora's body and Roxas's birth allowed Ventus' heart to reside in Roxas. In early versions of development, Nomura thought that the heart healing Ventus's broken heart in the beginning would be Sora before being born, but due to overseas opinions, such portrayal was discarded. Like Roxas, Ventus has been voiced Kōki Uchiyama in Japanese and Jesse McCartney in English.

Ventus' name means "wind" in Latin; both it and his Wayward Wind (フレッシュブリーズ?, lit. "Fresh Breeze") Keyblade have a "sky" theme similar to that of Sora's. During development of Birth by Sleep, the Osaka team in charge of making it thought that Ventus should be related with Vanitas, something which Nomura liked as he wanted to add more connections to the game. Therefore, the name Vanitas was also made to link it to Ventus's name, with both of them having similar meanings. Nomura had troubles designing Ventus', Terra's and Aqua's armors due how they would be able to summon them. Therefore, an "X" was added to their clothes as a mean to activate the armors as well as due to the fact it was one of the game's keywords. Ever since development of Birth by Sleep started, the staff already decided that Ventus's, Aqua's and Terra's stories would be told in separate scenarios, with Ventus' story being the second one written. They also wanted emphasize the lack of coincidences in the series, leading to the interaction between the three scenarios. In gameplay perspective, Ventus was designed to be the easiest character to play with in Birth by Sleep, although Nomura recommended to players that Ventus should be the second character to play with in order to understand the story better. Additionally, the way Ventus handles his Keyblade backwards is meant to show the gameplay differences between his and Terra's and Aqua's scenarios. Nomura also remarked Ventus' encounter with the characters Lea and Isa as an important event from the game, hoping both newcomers and older gamers will also find it important from Ventus's perspective.