There’s a point in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth where rookie Turks operative Elena takes a break from being a whiny firestarter and cools off with a stick of sea salt ice cream – a custardy, aquamarine treat featured throughout the Kingdom Hearts series also made by Square Enix. Reasonable fans therefore assumed Elena’s frozen dessert was a sweet self-reference, but Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi says no. Not at all.
Hamaguchi tells The Gamer in a new interview, “It might be disappointing to hear this, but Elena’s ice cream isn’t a homage to Kingdom Hearts.”
Now, if you’ve suddenly started to hear a thousand distant howls, know that it isn’t the wind. It’s the lonely cries of Kingdom Hearts fans around the world realizing the franchise they constantly fret about being dead is more comatose than they first assumed.
Still, Kingdom Hearts is not dead dead. Sure, it would have been lovely to live in the world where Elena’s salty ice cream is a sign that Square Enix loves Kingdom Hearts – in which Cloud-like champion Sora gets to shake hands with Donald Duck – just as much as its other children. However, Square Enix has devoted itself to something better than a measly sign. Kingdom Hearts 4 is definitely in production, the developer confirmed earlier this month, seven years after Kingdom Hearts 3 launched.
I understand, though, that it’s hard for some people to feel soothed by that fact when there’s still no release date for the action RPG in sight. That’s too bad, Hamaguchi suggests. He continues to tell The Gamer that Elena’s ice cream simply introduces audiences to the popular Japanese “soda-flavored popsicle called Garigari-kun, which we’ve actually referenced quite a bit during development.” This pop has a mascot that’s a hungry schoolboy with a concerningly red mouth, and he shoves Gargari-kun’s blue, shaved ice filling into the gaping hole.
“As such, it’s closer to say we were envisioning a slightly nostalgic popsicle, reminiscent of the summer,” Hamaguchi concludes. Right. Well, now that I’ve stopped looking at the Gargari-kun mascot’s gigantic, hypnotic mouth, I’m thinking you could also say that Kingdom Hearts – whose first installment released in 2002 – is also a slightly nostalgic confection, right?
