Square Enix HD-2D Remakes Teased by Octopath Traveler’s Asano

Square Enix held on February 17 the first episode of the SQEX Asano Development Teams Radio, revealing new details on the company’s plans for future HD-2D games and remakes.

The radio featured Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default producer Tomoya Asano, Live A Live producer Takashi Tokita, and Triangle Strategy producer Yasuaki Arai. Funnily, while the trio initially stressed out this is a chill talk show, with no gameplay, no slides prepared, and no new information, they still revealed some interesting details on Square Enix’s strategy established these past few years.

Discussing the announcements on the latest Nintendo Direct in early February, Tomoya Asano most notably explained that Square Enix will make more and more HD-2D games. (Thanks to our Japanese peers at Game’s Talk for pointing it out).

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Tomoya Asano confirms Square Enix will release even more HD-2D games

Starting the 22:20 time stamp of the radio episode, Asano explained how Square Enix’ president Yosuke Matsuda ordered them to release more HD-2D games.

Tomoya Asano: “Our president ordered us to make more HD-2D titles and remakes, so we discussed all the possible titles. We made a fair list of which games would fit HD-2D the most, so we excluded games that would definitely get shot down like Mahjong games (laughs) and made some proposals to the president. We most notably listed all the Square and Enix games released on Super Famicom that we could remake in HD-2D. The first game we decided on was Live A Live. The second one was Actraiser.”

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Asano’s comments are pretty interesting as it shows anything is on the table, everything is possible. Actraiser Renaissance was released on September 23, 2021, immediately after its official reveal. So Asano’s comments also reveals that the remake of Live A live was green-lit pretty early on. It was already in development during the game’s 26th anniversary event we summarized.

Tomoya Asano is leading several teams, and most of them are outside Square Enix. For example, Asano explained in a past interview we translated the differences between the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler teams. Bravely Default was developed by Silicon Studio. Octopath by Acquire, Triangle Strategy by Artdink. And the Live A Live HD-2D remake is developed by yet another team, at Historia.

Triangle Strategy, the newest game produced by Tomoya Asano, is launching worldwide on March 4, 2022, on Nintendo Switch. Another Octopath console game is in development, and the mobile game Champions of the Continent will soon release in English. Another HD-2D game, Dragon Quest III Remake, is also in development with no release date.

Which games do you think can get an HD-2D remake next? What kind of brand new game you’d like to see using HD-2D graphics? Tell me in the comments below!