Kingdom Hearts III director Tetsuya Nomura announced that the third installment of the Disney-fused game will be developed with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. While Nomura did not elaborate on the “variety of reasons” for the switch, he said the development team had been facing rendering issues.
He also said that the switch has not interrupted the development of Kingdom Hearts III.
The change of engine will offer the capability for developers to use techniques such as subsurface light scattering that makes skin look natural and raytracing to produce genuine ambient light. Previously, the Kingdom Hearts series used Square Enix’s in-house Luminous Engine for development. It is unknown if their engine will be used on Final Fantasy XV, a Square Enix title that Nomura was previously a director for.
Kingdom Hearts III does not have a release date, but is expected to be released on the Sony PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
