Haley Joel Osment has been voicing Sora since the release of Kingdom Hearts in 2002 and has reprised the role in every subsequent game in the series. However, this talented performer admitted that he was ready to say goodbye to his character.
Last month, series director Tetsuya Nomura said in an interview that he is already thinking about his eventual retirement and that he has begun the process of passing off the torch to new writers in the upcoming mobile game, Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link. In a recent episode of IGN Arcade, IGN asked Haley Joel Osment about the potential conclusion of the series after telling him about Nomura’s statement.
For starters, Osment was not even aware of the fact that Kingdom Hearts 4 is currently in development until IGN told him personally. He explained this by saying, “I’m always the last to know, because I’m the last step in the process”, which makes a lot of sense, since voice acting is usually one of the final parts of a video game’s development process.
Osment believes in Tetsuya Nomura’s vision
Osment clearly has a lot of faith in Tetsuya Nomura, as he stated: “I’m sure that he has great plans to wrap it up in a satisfying way. And I think that sometimes that’s the best thing to do, even if you have something that you love, and you feel like you want to play it forever, to tie it up in a nice way and not let it drag out beyond where the creator wants it to go. I think that’s the way to go”.
It’s important to point out that Kingdom Hearts 4 is not actually going to be the final game of the series. Far from it, since in reality, it will mark the beginning of the next major story arc after Kingdom Hearts 3 concluded the classic Dark Seeker Saga. Tetsuya Nomura just mentioned his retirement after Young Jump asked him about it in an interview, so it’s highly likely that he plans on developing a few more entries in the series before leaving his beloved franchise in the hands of Square Enix and Disney.
Regardless of the misunderstanding, Osment clearly appreciates his work in the Kingdom Hearts series, and he will definitely keep voicing Sora for many years to come. If one day, Square Enix decides to retire his character for one reason or another, he is ready to give him a proper goodbye. Curiously enough, Osment also revealed that he tried playing Kingdom Hearts 3 while he was stuck in his own house during quarantine, but he couldn’t get into it because “he hasn’t played a video game in a long time”.
His longtime involvement with the Kingdom Hearts series
Haley Joel Osment has been the voice of Sora from the series’ inception. He was around 13 years old when he recorded his lines for Kingdom Hearts 1 and, around the time, he was famous for his debut role in The Sixth Sense. As expected, his voice was quite different back then, but he still managed to bring Sora to life and eventually became a crucial part of the character’s identity.
Osment reprised his role in all sequels that followed, from the mainline titles like Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3, to handheld games like Chain of Memories, Re: Coded, or Dream Drop Distance. Over the course of more than two decades, his voice got deeper and deeper, but it worked perfectly because Sora was also getting older and more mature with every release. Not to mention that Osment also showed off his range by voicing the villain Vanitas in Birth by Sleep and KH3.
Sora, and the entire Kingdom Hearts franchise, wouldn’t be the same without Osment, so it would be unfortunate to have to say goodbye to both of them. He evidently has a lot of appreciation for his role, and he’s ready to voice Sora once again, especially if Nomura is directing. Hopefully, we’ll get to hear him in the near future when Kingdom Hearts 4 comes out.
