Summary

  • Tetsuya Nomura, the co-creator of the Kingdom Hearts series, is considering retirement.
  • Set to turn 54 this year, Nomura is also known for his work on Final Fantasy 7 and The World Ends With You.
  • The creator said that he'd like to finish Sora's story before stepping down.

Tetsuya Nomura, the legendary co-creator behind the beloved RPG series Kingdom Hearts, is thinking about retiring and wrapping up the lengthy storyline he helped begin back in 2002. The creator's reputation speaks for itself, with Nomura originally hired by Square Enix as a debugger for 1991’s Final Fantasy 4 before becoming a monster designer for Final Fantasy 5. He then helped Yoshitaka Amano as a character designer for Final Fantasy 6 before making the jump to lead character designer and story co-creator in the seminal Final Fantasy 7, a game that would propel him to stardom alongside projects like the Kingdom Hearts series.

The original Kingdom Hearts was Tetsuya Nomura’s first director role, combining the worlds and characters of Disney properties and the Final Fantasy series into a dimension-crossing epic that told the story of a young boy named Sora as he journeyed to reunite with his friends and defeat the forces of darkness. This tale would be told across two mainline Kingdom Hearts sequels and multiple spin-offs, all with Nomura at the helm alongside fellow Square Enix alumni Shinji Hashimoto. Though 2019’s Kingdom Hearts 3 served as the finale to the “Dark Seeker Saga” that began in the first game, Sora’s saga is set to continue in the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 4.

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Kingdom Hearts 4 might be the beginning of the end for not only Sora’s story, but Tetsuya Nomura’s illustrious career. In a recent interview with YoungJump (via VGC), Nomura spoke about his plans for the future and said that he “only has a few years left” before he retires as the creator is set to turn 54 later this year. On this note, he explained that he is deciding whether he wants to wrap up the Kingdom Hearts storyline before retirement, noting that he is making Kingdom Hearts 4 “with the intention of it being a story that I will complete.”

Tetsuya Nomura Considers Retirement Ahead of Kingdom Hearts 4

Nomura’s recent statement seems to contradict some of Square Enix’s claims of Kingdom Hearts 4 marking the start of a brand-new storyline dubbed the “Lost Master Arc,” though Nomura might pass the torch to someone else if he does decide to retire soon. On the other hand, Nomura is also working on the ongoing Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, which is getting its final chapter in the still-untitled sequel to this year’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

So far, not much has been revealed about Kingdom Hearts 4 since its initial unveiling at the Kingdom Hearts 20th-anniversary event in 2022, which featured a cryptic trailer of Sora waking up in Quadratum, a mysterious, modern-looking city that resembles Japan’s real-life Shibuya neighborhood in Tokyo. A leak from earlier this year suggested that Kingdom Hearts 4 could be released in 2026, but nothing official has been verified as of this writing.