"Built like a brick wall on roids." That's the passive ability Lee Sin—err, Xizun, the blind monk, used to have in League of Legends, which itself used to be a very different-looking game called Onslaught: War of the Immortals. It certainly looks like a game that was pitched the same year Finger Eleven's "Paralyzer" was a charting single, and now we can take a closer look at it than ever thanks to League 'tuber Necrit and Riot's Paul "Pabro" Bellezza.

The full story here is outlined on a video Necrit uploaded last Thursday, but the basic rundown is that he asked to see League at its most primordial and Riot delivered in the form of an ancient investor pitch: a mix of video footage, design documents for a few champions, a lore breakdown, and screenshots. While leaks had revealed some of this stuff in the past, there's plenty of new details to comb through.

The game is barely recognizable. Rather than the empty field that is Summoner's Rift, it takes place in a cartoony cityscape split between "order" and "chaos" realms. Players would take the role of customizable immortals they could temporarily bring to the fight in climactic moments, and certain heroes were even exclusive to one of the two realms—an allegiance players would have to declare when they began playing.

It's easier to point out what's familiar than what's new. Annie is here and still has a flaming teddy bear minion, though she and most other champions look very different; Sion has a beard, for God's sake! The only character who truly hasn't changed much is Singed, though his name is Zij for some reason. These days I only call him that if I have a really bad cold.

My favorite bits are about the old lore, since it's edgy in a way that's both typical of the era and sort of precious in 2026, despite the cartoony art style. It's a world where the two factions existed on neutral terms until "an antichrirst of sorts" was born and tore a hole in reality so big chaos now threatens to consume all existence. Riot's logo is also drenched in blood in the pitch video.

League of Legends Classic has been a big hit with me so far, but I think after seeing this it's plain to see we didn't go back far enough. We have not achieved true classic-ification until Sion has a highlighter-orange beard and nobody recognizes a single aspect of the game.

Four long years after it was announced, we finally have some idea when we'll be able to play Kingdom Hearts 4. At Disney's D23 fan event, Square Enix revealed that the sequel will arrive sometime in late 2027.

That isn't everything new that Square Enix had in store for fans either. The reveal was accompanied by a new trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4 that showed off a new world the sequel will take players to—Coco's colourful land of the dead. The trailer shows Sora fighting enemies in the crowd of a concert and riding sky rails, as Mickey, Goofy and Hades strive to reunite with the series' errant hero after he disappeared at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3.

Obviously, it would have been nice if Square Enix had committed to a specific date. But even having some idea of when the game will be released is a big deal after years of near-total radio silence from Square Enix. It was only in June that we received our first glimpse of the game since the sequel was announced in 2022, so going from that to knowing roughly when we'll be able to play it in the space of two months is quite the surprise.

Despite the dearth of information about the game over the years, we do have a rough idea of what Kingdom Hearts 4 will involve. The sequel will commence a new story arc which Square Enix is calling the Lost Master Arc, and will be primarily set in Quadratum—Kingdom Heart's Equivalent of Tokyo. As the latest trailer demonstrates, however, it will still involve the usual jaunt through various Disney worlds

While Square Enix has kept the lid on Kingdom Hearts 4 over the years, series director Tetsuya Nomora has repeatedly reassured fans that the game is on track. And both Square Enix and Disney have plenty of reasons to continue supporting it, since Disney recently revealed that Kingdom Hearts ranks among the company's "billion-dollar franchises". Turns out players really love it when you combine Disney characters and Final Fantasy-style JRPG action. Who knew?

Kingdom Hearts 4 fans wished for rain and got a flood at this weekend's D23 event with a release window trailer, the announcement of a Disney Plus anime, and now, new details about the game's playable King Mickey sections that heavily echo Paper Mario. Oh, and we'll also get to control Donald Duck and Goofy for the first time ever in a mainline game.

People who exist in the venn diagram centre of Disney movie fanatic and JRPG connoisseur will be pleased to know that publisher Square Enix released an extended trailer last night, showing off more from Kingdom Heart 4's Coco world and beyond. Sora has a phone now. City guards who resemble Final Fantasy 15's are here for some reason. Mickey's trying to solve a mystery while exploring the pages of a magical book. And 13 games later, we can finally force Donald to heal, damn it, by playing as him and Goofy directly.

In a deep dive panel, Kingdom Hearts 4 co-director Tai Yasue elaborated on Mickey's sections a little further. We see the Disney icon transform into a 2D paper cut out and a hulking origami to move around, and Yasue says the developers employed a "sort of puzzle-based game design that's very different from Sora's adventure, and I think it's really refreshing and interesting."

"So in this world you get to play with Mickey and you jump into a book [that's] like a paper world," Yasue explains. "And so Mickey in this paper world recreates origami paper copies of himself, and you could create paper-thin Mickeys, giant Mickeys, a tiny Mickey, box Mickeys. When you're a paper thin Mickey, [you can] go through the cracks on the walls, for example. If you throw him he becomes a paper airplane [and] you fly around. And by utilizing these special abilities of these copies of origami Mickeys, you can solve puzzles."

Contorting yourself into different papery forms definitely reminds me of the type of puzzles present in Nintendo's Paper Mario games, but it oddly seems to fit Kingdom Hearts' whole vibe too - the first game was, at least partially, inspired by Super Mario 64, after all.

Kingdom Hearts 4 is set to come out late 2027 for PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S.

"Please let your imaginations run wild" - The Kingdom Hearts 4 team and Tetsuya Nomura are involved in the new Disney Plus anime