Square Enix has announced the lineup of games for its annual Jump Festa event, and Kingdom Hearts II.8 (or 2.8 if you’re sensible) is part of the lineup. The event is open to the Japanese public from December 19-20, and will apparently showcase the trailer that was shown behind closed doors at last month’s D23 Expo. The trailer will likely appear online on December 24th, as happened when Kingdom Hearts 2.5 was shown at Jump Festa in 2013. Fans were angered by misinformation surrounding this year’s D23 event, where it was assumed that the trailer would be posted online afterwards. Unfortunately, no such trailer appeared and fans were left wanting.
Kingdom Hearts II.8 HD Final Chapter Prologue (what a title, eh?) will release exclusively on PlayStation 4 and will contain an HD remaster of Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance, originally a 3DS title, an HD cinematic called Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover that explains part of the lore covered in the Japanese only browser-based MMO Kingdom Hearts χ. Most exciting of the collection will be Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage, which will cover the events immediately preceding Kingdom Hearts III, acting as a sort of short Ground Zeroes-esque prologue to the events of that game.
If you aren’t excited about the wonders of Kingdom Hearts and its increasingly absurd titles, then you might be pleased to know that Jump Festa 2016 will also feature Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Scanner, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3, Dragon Quest of the Stars, Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius, Ikenie to Yuki no Setsuna, Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness, and World of Final Fantasy. Gematsu has a handy list of the event’s livestream schedule.