Once my decisions are set in stone, the stained glass Snow White shatters and Sora falls again. I don’t know if it’s through sky or water, and I don’t want to know, okay? He lands on another stained glass image, this one of Cinderella. I make sure to stomp around on her head a few times, because I didn’t like that movie as a kid. The sword–which disappeared when I chose it–re-materializes in Sora’s hands. “You’ve gained the power to fight.” No, I thought I was supposed to chop onions with it. A text box comes up and tells me to press X to attack. I press it once. Sora swings the sword. “Now you’ve got it!” gushes the Random Text God. I want to find out whose idea this opening sequence was and choke him or her to death with my controller cord.

“There will be times you have to fight,” it continues, as little monsters appear from the shadows. They are shadows, actually–shadowy little bug things. RTG’s advice? “Keep your light burning strong.” Great. Door metaphors and light metaphors. This is getting better and better. Sora slays the shadows with his Mickey Mouse Sword of Terrible Destruction, and learns about targeting enemies in the process. Joy. After all this, a big shadow spreads over Cinderella and swallows up Sora. Oh, look, he’s falling into a great abyss again. How many times is that?

He comes to on a generic stained glass thing. On the other side of where he landed, there’s a–wait for it–door. He runs to it, only to discover it won’t open. I’m ever so shocked. He also sees that it’s slightly less than opaque for, again, no apparent reason. It’d be really nice if one freaking thing in this game made any sense at all. Sora is next obligated to smash apart a crate and a barrel. Smashing the crate makes the doorframe solid, likewise with the barrel and the actual door. I can just imagine the game designers, passing around the crack pipe, when one says, “And the door can be opened by…um…smashing a barrel! Dude!!” Meanwhile, the wall next to my computer has a large and impressive dent in it, shaped like my forehead.

I guess it’s time to open this vaunted freaking door. Don’t drop dead from surprise or anything, but there is white light coming from the other side. And here I was, hoping the metaphors could be independent of each other. Silly me.

As soon as Sora goes through the door, RTG tells me, “Hold on. The door won’t open just yet.” Then what the hell do you call that?! It continues, “First, tell me more about yourself.” Okay, let’s see. 1) I hate inane text. 2) I hate tutorials. 3) I hate you. How’s that?

Not good enough, evidently–Sora has to talk to the three children standing around on this wooden deck in the middle of a tropical island. Yes, a tropical island. This place must be the source of the light. Incidentally, the kids Sora must speak with are super-deformed versions of Selphie, Wakka, and Tidus. Tidus–who will now be Tightass, keeping with VGR tradition–being the source of anything, especially light, is just wrong.

I choose to first talk to Selphie. She wants to know what’s most important to me. I choose “friendship,” since it seems like the right answer. Selphie says, “Is friendship such a big deal?” It’s not when your friends are Tidus and Wakka, honey. Sora talks to The Blitzed One next. He asks what our hero wants out of life. He answers “to be strong,” and judging him by what I know so far, that’s gonna take a lot of work. Finally, Sora talks to Tightass, who is curious about Sora’s biggest fear. “To be stuck on an island filled with super-deformed wankers,” I wish I could reply. Sora instead says he’s afraid of growing old. After this final answer, the camera pans to the left, showing Tightass in all his wanky glory, and again I have to confirm my answers. Why? Because they dictate how fast Sora will level up. I’m fine with the medium level-up pace, so maybe now I can actually play.

…BRILLIANT!

Or not. “The day you will open the door is both far off and very near,” RTG tells me. Hello? I opened the freaking door already. Maybe if they wanted to harp on this “opening the door” stuff, they shouldn’t have allowed me to open a goddamn door already. Wait, that would make sense. Never mind. Anyway, Sora is suddenly back in Stained Glass Land. This time our boy is standing on Aurora, aka Sleeping Beauty. After slashing up a few more shadow bugs and collecting HP balls (yes, HP comes in balls), a save point and a staircase appear. I save and get going.

Now Sora gets to walk all over Belle from Beauty and the Beast. RTG makes another appearance to tell me, “The closer you get to light, the greater your shadow becomes.” As if on cue–which is good, because it is on cue–Sora’s shadow grows and turns into a giant shadow monster known as Darkside. I’m caught unprepared for it, since I’m so accustomed at this point to not having to actually play the game. Nevertheless, Sora and his badass, super-scary Disney sword do a fair bit of damage to the boss, until the predetermined time, at which point Sora loses the sword and gets swallowed up by darkness. Yes, again. There’s gonna be 30 hours’ worth of light and shadow metaphors, so you’d better get used to it. Before RTG heads outside to take a smoke break, he reminds Sora that “[He is] the one who will open the door.” Gee, you think?

Blue sky. We get an Extreme Close-Up on Sora’s face as he wakes up on the beach. SS3, the spunky brunette, is standing above him. SS3–or Kairi–berates Sora for falling asleep on the beach like the lazy piece of crap he is. He insists that he was just swallowed by a “huge, black thing” and that what I just endured for the last half hour wasn’t a dream. Oh, but it was! That’s the big excuse for this big drug-induced introduction that left me wanting to claw my eyeballs out: it was a dream sequence. Fucking game designers. Sora stresses his little mind out trying to determine whether or not it was a dream. When he’s still left with nothing–because he’s an idiot–he makes with the pouty face. Jesus, I can’t take this anymore. I could have forgiven the Tidus-like apparel, but he had to go and act like Tightass too. That’s it. Sora is now called Tightass, Jr.

Kairi walks away toward the shoreline, and Junior randomly says, “Say, Kairi, what was your hometown like? You know, where you grew up?” Is that bad exposition I smell? Kairi tells Junior that she doesn’t remember it, but she’d like to go back there someday. Oh, this is so typical. Brunette chick with a mysterious past that she just doesn’t remember. Therefore, Kairi’s new name is Token. Junior says he wants to see it, too, “along with any other worlds out there.” Uh, where did that come from? Worlds? You were talking about hometowns a minute ago. Token’s dying to go on a pleasure cruise with Junior, but their happy plan-making is interrupted by the Quintessential Third Wheel. It’s SS2! Riku makes them feel bad for forgetting about him and making him work on the raft all alone, and tosses a piece of wood to Junior, causing our hero to fall on his ass trying to catch it. Ha ha. I love Riku already.

The giggling! The incessant giggling! MAKE IT STOP!

Token says they should finish the raft together. “I’ll race you!” she says in a stupid Rinoa voice. I can understand Riku not wanting to race if he’s been working all day already, but Junior complains too. I’m so sorry you’re not up for some light jogging after sleeping all afternoon. Wanker. Nevertheless, when Token says “Ready…go!” both of them are up and running as hard as they can. Either they both want her that bad and have to prove their manliness to her, or it’s Squally/Seifer Syndrome. Take your pick. Token trails behind them, again reminding me of Rinoa with her maddening giggling. The camera sweeps off the threesome and into the ocean. The Kingdom Hearts logo comes up, so now I guess the game is actually starting. Hooray. I find out the name of this place is Destiny Islands. But I’ve seen who lives here. It’s now known as the Island of Wankers.

In one corner of the island, Token is standing at the ready to give instructions to Junior. In typical Square fashion, the first real gameplay set in front of me is a goddamn fetch quest. To complete the raft, we need two logs, cloth, and some rope. She warns him not to slack off, while she does nothing but stand in the shade and look spunky. A golden retriever could do her job.