Most Kirby games take the titular protagonist far from his home on Planet Popstar. Kirby has spent decades traveling outer space and going to all kinds of remarkable planets that inform each game’s mechanic. Therefore, Kirby fans might therefore have expected that Kirby and the Forgotten Land is all about a journey to another planet, but apparently that’s not quite the case. Instead, Kirby and his friends have been pulled through some kind of interdimensional portal, bringing them to the post-apocalyptic world where the Beast Pack lives. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is only the latest game to focus on a similarly displaced protagonist, potentially signaling a new game industry trend.
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The Game Industry’s Multiverse Trend
Quite a few current games play with the concept of a multiverse in their own ways. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a great example; in the latest Ratchet and Clank game, players find themselves constantly jumping between different dimensions after reality begins to crumble and various dimensions blend together. Square Enix has a game in the works that follows this trend too. Forspoken is an isekai game in which Frey Holland is stolen away from Earth and brought to the mysterious, magical world of Athia. At the same time, Square Enix is working on a remaster of Chrono Cross, a classic RPG that famously tasks the player with traveling between two parallel universes.
Although they aren’t quite the same, there’s a couple current time travel games that operate on similar principles. For instance, Pokemon Legends: Arceus transports players far into the Pokemon world’s past to explore the Sinnoh region’s origins. Square Enix is additionally remaking Live A Live, in which players witness the battle against an eternal evil from multiple time periods before the game’s many protagonists are all displaced to the same time period. Between these new games and revivals about traveling across the multiverse, it certainly seems like there’s a rising interest in interdimensional adventures.
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Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s Dimensions
Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s decision to follow the possible trend of interdimensional travel certainly opens up some interesting narrative possibilities. If Kirby is in a parallel universe in Forgotten Land, then it’s possible that Kirby fans will end up fighting a long-defeated Kirby villain like Marx or 02. What’s more, some of Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s later levels could involve jumping into other universes to help residents of Planet Popstar who’ve been particularly displaced. Forgotten Land’s interdimensional angle is a surprise, but it could be very useful, depending on how HAL Laboratory implements it.
Beyond Kirby and the Forgotten Land, it’ll be interesting to see if other franchises start to jump on the possible multiverse trend. There’s no shortage of IPs that could make good use of it. A future Zelda game could interact with past titles or spinoffs through spacetime distortions, a core Final Fantasy game might bring in iconic characters from various past realities and timelines, and so on. There’s definitely a lot of storytelling potential in confronting characters with alternate versions of themselves and their enemies. For now, though, Kirby and the Forgotten Land looks like the next big interdimensional game. Hopefully HAL will make extensive use of the concept.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land releases March 25, 2022 for Nintendo Switch.
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