Quote Originally Posted by Sieses View Post
Granted, but I don't think that quite excuses the pure lack of screen time from them.

Part of the reason that they couldn't show up more in CoM was that the Disney Worlds of that game were created from Sora's memory, and there was nothing to be gained from the members of the Organization interfering with what occurred in them. Nomura could have easily had them take part in the Disney worlds, trying to turn the villains into Heartless, with their interference changing how things go down from the movie. As things are, I have to agree with some of the critics; Kingdom Hearts II feels like a bad fanfic, with most of the canon Disney worlds going the same way as they did in the movies except Sora takes an unnecessarily large part that he didn't have the first time.

On the topic of how much they had planed, it was at least enough for them to know that Xigbar had interacted with the Keyblade wielders of the past. It was only an offhanded comment on his part, but no other character in the game mentioned another Keyblade wielder in the past tense other than Roxas. They could have easily given that part to Saix, being for all intents and proposes the second-in-command of the Organization, or even Xemnas himself to establish him as more of a threat, but they chose to give it to Xigbar. They had to have known something about what would happen in BBS at that point.

Anyway, they should have firmly established what each villain was going to be like before doing anything with them, and a single Disney World with one of them as the main antagonist would have been enough to establish their characters. If they really felt that they needed more than Xemnas to fight at the World that Never Was, then they could have easily had Xigbar and Saix survive their initial encounters with Sora.
Maybe it doesn't excuse the lack of screen time, but it might explain.

Honestly, more characters in CoM would have been ridiculous. I can't imagine trying to cram more Organization characters in. And while they obviously didn't do the best job with KH2's story, it was only the 3rd game in the series, on the second where interaction with the worlds really mattered, it takes time to work out kinks. I think the games that have followed since have done a pretty good job of not repeating that mistake, but I could be wrong...I haven't played KH2 in years, and try to avoid fighting the rest of the family to play the household consoles, so I haven't gotten the PS3 remakes.

At the time, they'd also had some minor details of BBS in place as well, I think--wasn't 2's secret ending essentially a trailer for BBS? But while they may have established that he had contact with keyblade wielders in the past, they may not have established how much he had, or what kind of contact he'd had with them. It was barely hinted at again in Days with Roxas and Xigbar, but again, we have no idea just how far they had gotten with that background at that point in time. Just because you have base details fleshed out, doesn't mean you always have full details fleshed out...or Nomura could just like being that secretive--look at how long it took him to explain stuff from the beginning of the series, I mean what number in the series is 3D? Like 6 or 7? And it was only then that he got around to explaining certain stuff from KH1.

I think they did firmly establish what everyone was going to be like--their personalities were pretty clear from the start. They just waitied to pile on the final boss fights until the end, but that just seems to be an annoying KH tradition. XD

EDIT: And while they could have added more scenes to 2.5, Square isn't exactly known for making the best decisions, now are they?