Loads about the game hints and tips for Kingdom Hearts II

Loads about the game

Hi! It's Karan, the 14 year old boy here with a load of information about the game.

First of all, there are actually two of these secret movies: "Another Side, Another Story" which could be found in the original release, and "Deep Dive", from the Final Mix release.

Another Side, Another Story is considered anything more than virtual cameras twirling around two mysterious figures trying their very best to look as cool as possible.

There is a third movie, of which I’ll talk about later.

Deep Dive's first scene of note features Sora standing all alone at a dirt crossroads in the middle of a vast, empty field. Those of you with good memories should recall that Kingdom Hearts ended with our spiky-haired hero running through the very same fields, chasing after Pluto, with Donald and Goofy right behind him. This quick scene raises a few items of interest, the most pressing; where did Goofy, Pluto, and Donald run off?

Sora appears to be perhaps lost, or trying to decide where to go. Seeing how it is nighttime in the scene, I can only assume Sora had been running around in that crazy field for quite a while.

Up next, we cut to a message in a bottle.

A few words and phrases are displayed over the image, but like most of the writing in the Deep Dive trailer, which rather most would call confusing, has seemingly no connection to the rest of the movie.

Yet, if one were to go back to Another Side, they might be reminded of the very last scene. The scene in question featured a young lady standing on a beach, watching a meteor falling. The girl, it is safe to assume, is an older Kairi.

It is also safe to assume she is standing on the beach of Destiny Island. We know that Kairi and Sora were separated at the end of Kingdom Hearts, with all the worlds getting closed off to each other, and such.

This rambling about Kairi and beaches and bottles has a point.

You see, that bottle could very well be from Kairi, thrown out to sea in hopes that Sora might find it. But how could Sora find it, if all the worlds were getting closed off? Remember that meteor Kairi was watching? The Ansem Reports hinted strongly that meteor showers were one of the signs that ushered in the breakdown of borders between worlds.

This all becomes important for Deep Dive, because of all the mysterious hooded figures with unknown identities. We can probably assume Kairi is not one of these hooded figures, since she appears to be stuck on Destiny Island. Also, she is featured prominently on all of the video screens in the dark city the hooded figures seem to enjoy standing around in.

Her status as the only character featured on the screens gives her a special place in the Deep Dive and Another Side, Another Story movies. This status seems to imply that she is somehow the object of a search, or of some sort of conflict. Between Sora and Riku?

There are a possible six hooded figures in the Kingdom Hearts universe. One is an optional boss in the Final Mix release, called simply “Unknown”.

It is assumed by most that Unknown is one of the hooded figures in Deep Dive, but that cannot be certain. Now, the Unknown is referred to as the "Enigmatic Man". Another hooded figure is Mickey, and it is fairly obvious which one he is.

One of the hooded figures in Another Side, Another Story was Riku. Which one he is, of course, is still up in the air. So, we have eliminated Mickey from the question leaving the remaining four (or five) hooded figures to be analyzed.

The first hooded figure we encounter in Deep Dive, for the sake of clarity, we will refer to as glowing eye unknown, well, his/her eyes glow.

I say the gender of this figure is questionable, mainly because of a few items of a physical nature. I'm referring to Glow's rather curvy, feminine hips and pronounced chest. It should also be noted that for a split second, right before Glow appears, we see the symbol of the Heartless flicker. This could very well mean that the glowing eye unknown is some sort of adversary, some sort of mean, bad guy-type person.

It would be safe to assume Glow has some connection to the Heartless, but then, it would be safe to assume that any shady character in a hooded robe would be connected to the Heartless.

Perhaps the glowing eye unknown is Kairi, who would be the only female character that would make much sense. Flashing words later on in the movie hint that Kairi wishes to become more involved in the next series of adventures, which we are assuming to be Kingdom Hearts II.

"This time...I'll fight", "His voice...it left me", and "The secret place" are all phrases that seem to strongly apply to Kairi.

The secret place is clearly a reference to the cave in Destiny Island where Sora first encounters Ansem, and where he and Kairi draw silly pictures on the walls.

The reference to "his" voice means the quotes must be attributed to Kairi, not Sora. Thus, it is certainly believable that Kairi is one of the hooded figures.

Any theory about the glowing eye unknown being Kairi, though, gets crushed once we run into another hooded figure, who I like to call the sitting unknown...due to the fact the figure it sitting. We know the two hooded mystery figures are the glowing eyed unknown and the sitting unknown because we get a shot of the glowing eyed unknown coming away from that Heartless rock, with the sitting unknown looking out to sea. Notice also the pronounced chest.

More importantly, the sitting unknown says that Glow looks a lot like somebody.

"He looks just like you" probably implies that the glowing unknown is male, or that the glowing eyed unknown has a lot in common with Final Fantasy IX's Kuja.

The sitting unknown's comment is also important, because it sounds an awful lot like what Unknown says to Sora in his scene from Final Mix: "You look like him." Sora looks like somebody, apparently. Like the glowing eyed unknown? The fact that these two very similar lines came from a hooded figure is perhaps evidence that Sitty and Unknown are the same person.

Meanwhile, far away from that demented beach, in a city that is almost a cross between Traverse Town and Midgar, we come across two more hooded figures. One, commonly referred to the dual-keyblade wielder. The other, commonly referred to the as the blindfolded unknown, because of well, the blindfold..The first thing you should note is that both dual-wielder and blindfold unknown have very similar hair-styles.

(Perhaps also of note, both Glow and Sitty have no visible hair.)

The hair of both the dual-wielder and blindfold unknown appears to be very light, maybe even white. Their hair also seems very fine, very limp, and devoid of body or curl. Both hair-styles are the same length, from what we can tell.

As I mentioned earlier, Riku was in the Another Side, Another Story movie. Only the dual-wielder and blindfold unknown were in that movie, meaning one of them is Riku. Yes, but which one? Frankly, it could be either. Look at their damn hair. But the blindfolded unknown seems to have the upper hand in the battle, mainly because he always comes across as more menacing and manipulative.

He also seems to have some sort of sway over the Neo Heartless, whereas the duel-wielder appears to be the one stuck with slicing them up.

(Also take note of a scene from Another Side where a glowing symbol of the Heartless pops up around the dual-wielder. Did the dual-wielder cause that, or the blindfolded unknown?) So far the sake of argument, let's say the blindfolded unknown is indeed Riku. Seeing how he appears to have some sort of rivalry going on with the dual-wielder, it would be safe to assume that duel-wieldier could very well be Sora.

The dual-wielder even has some fighting moves that are similar to Sora's.

I would start talking about keyblades here, but I feel they are largely irrelevant, seeing as the dual-wielder and blindfold unknown actually trade keyblades at one point (when both are falling/flying in front of the giant Kairi screens). Even Mickey's keyblade holds little relevance, as it is different from the one he had when we last saw him in Kingdom Hearts.

Everyone is trading around those things so much; there really isn't anything you can discover by analyzing them.

I will say, though, that the duel-wielding kid is likely not Sora, for several reasons. The main one being that the duel-wielding kid asks the blindfolded unknown where Sora is, during the Another Side movie. Thus, neither the duel-wielding kid nor blindfolded unknown is Sora. That leaves either glowing eyed unknown or sitting unknown. From what we've already discussed, the glowing eyed unknown is the most likely candidate for Sora, and the sitting unknown is the most likely candidate for Unknown, assuming Unknown is one of the four non-Mickey hooded figures in Deep Dive.

There is of course, a chance that nobody is Sora.

A wise viewer, by this point, likely should have discovered that every one of the hooded figures is wearing an identical robe. The same draw strings, zippers, and everything. This might lead one to believe that there are even less than five hooded figures, since we never see more than two in the same frame. Could the glowing unknown be the duel-wielder, with his hair back? Could the blindfolded unknown be the sitting unknown?

Such theories will be quickly leveled, though, by my superior fashion sense. Shoes, my friends, it is all in the shoes.

In the trailer we can see the shoes of every hooded figure except for Mickey and Sitty (since Sitty never lets us see his/her shoes). The blindfolded unknown, the duel-wielder, and Glowing eyed unknown each have completely different shoe styles.

The blindfolded unknown has a ridge down the middle, duel-wielder has colorful soles on his, and the glowing eyed unknown has no real detail on his whatsoever. (Glow's shoes are similar in style to Unknown’s, it should be noted.) So we know that along with Mickey, each of the five hooded figures in Deep Dive are separate entities, at least.

It should be noted that each of the hooded figures looks much like the other, in terms of their facial features. Would it be far-fetched to say each hooded figure is, in fact, a different version of Riku?

Aside from Mickey, all of the hooded figures appear very similar, aside from the two keyblade-wielding figures having (visible) long hair. The Ansem Reports also make mention of four types of existence, which could explain four versions of Riku.

Such an arrangement could make sense, since we know Mickey and Riku ended up on the other side of that giant door at the end of Kingdom Hearts.

Oh, let's not forget Sora floating around over an ocean somewhere. What's that all about? Maybe Sora isn't any of the hooded figures, because he is too busy floating around.

Maybe he's dreaming, and all those hooded figures are fighting it out in some sort of dream world. Although, after encountering Unknown in Final Mix, we can probably discount the dream idea.

Still, the floating Sora scene might very well be telling us that Sora is the object of everyone's search. After all, we know the duel-wielders looking for Sora.

Maybe none of the hooded figures are Sora, and they are all out to find him and use him for some evil (or not so evil) purpose.

More tricks, tips and cheats for this game are right here - Kingdom Hearts II cheats