Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake may have “never happened” if its devs didn’t have access to the art style Square Enix used to freshen up other beloved JRPGs

“We wanted to keep what made the original so special”

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake may have “never happened” if it wasn’t for the popular art style.

Since Octopath Traveler launched in 2018, the fresh spin on pixel art has been used in severalSquare Enixgames, proving quite handy when bringing old properties back to life specifically, as seen in Live A Live and Star Ocean The Second Story R.

Dragon Quest 3 is the latest JRPG banger from yesteryear to get some HD-2D TLC. Speaking at a Gamescom group interview through an interpreter, producer Masaaki Hayasaka says approaching the remake with that specific art style was so important that it might not have happened at all if the team didn’t have access to it.

“They are quite retro games, and we just thought that this HD-2D style was the perfect style to represent them graphically in a remake,” Hayasaka says. “I think pretty much everyone in the company was in agreement about that.

“There wasn’t ever a question, so in terms of how important it is, I think it would be fair to say that if we didn’t have this HD-2D art style accessible to us, then maybe this remake would have never happened.”

Series creator Yuji Horii adds: “And I think that rather than 3D, being able to explore this space in 2D is really what was part of the enjoyment of the original. So we wanted to keep what made the original so special and so fun and bring it into the modern era, which is why this HD-2D style just works so well.”

We’re certainly not here to argue. Afterplaying Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake for 30 minutes, we can see how the art style brings a fresh sense of charm to a beloved gem, just like it did with Live A Live and Star Ocean. Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D releases November 14, 2024, andHD-2D remakes of Dragon Quest 1 and 2are on the way next year, too.

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake devs want players to have the “same feeling” exploring the JRPG’s open world as they’d have in Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Iain joins the GamesRadar team as Deputy News Editor following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When not helping Ali run the news team, he can be found digging into communities for stories – the sillier the better. When he isn’t pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new hat, you’ll find him amassing an army of Pokemon plushies.

Dragon Quest 3 creator’s group skewers Elon Musk for sharing “mistranslated” video that made it seem “as if the speaker was expressing a negative opinion against a certain ideology”

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake devs want players to have the “same feeling” exploring the JRPG’s open world as they’d have in Zelda: Breath of the Wild

In a first for Dragon Age, The Veilguard director reiterates the RPG won’t have DLC as BioWare pivots to work on Mass Effect 5