Dear Reader:
Bravely Default II producer talks about bringing the series to Switch while retaining its 3DS visual style
Bravely Default II is the first entry in the series that'll be on consoles, as previous entries appeared on the 3DS. While the Switch certainly allowed Square-Enix to express themselves in ways not possible on the 3DS, the team didn't want to lose the visual charm of the previous titles. Bravely Default II producer Masashi Takahashi talked about this in an interview with Dengeki Online.
We were able to make great strides in everything from the graphics to the music and characters to make it feel like a true sequel. Even with all the improvements though, we felt it was important to make sure it still resembled the previous titles in some way.
As an example, if you look at the towns in the game, previously we wanted to make create a feeling that players were walking on a painting in a 3D stereoscopic view. To keep the same feeling in this title, we decided to create the town as if it were paper craft. Once we prototyped it, things felt right and we decided to fully embrace the idea.
Additionally, to keep the series’ atmosphere intact, we aimed for something more akin to a model train rather something more realistic when designing the fields. We experimented a lot to make the graphics unique while keeping that “Bravely Default” feel.
I think players will get a good sense of this when they see it in action on a Switch screen rather than looking at screenshots. The “final demo” was also recently released, so for those players who haven’t seen the game in action yet, please give it a try.