Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is the latest in a string of HD-2D RPGs that bring a modern, high-resolution twist to nostalgic pixel-art graphics. Fans have long thought Final Fantasy VI, the last game in the venerated series before it switched to polygons, would be a perfect candidate for the retro-feeling visual overhaul, and the producer of the Dragon Quest III remake agrees.
“It’s not that we have concrete plans for this, but personally I would have to say Final Fantasy VI,” Square Enix’s Masaaki Hayasaka recently told Inverse when asked what other game he felt deserves the HD-2D treatment. “Octopath Traveler—the first HD-2D title—was developed while referencing FFVI, as it had the highest-quality pixel art. I would love to see how the game we referenced would look with the HD-2D art style.”
Final Fantasy VI was the last Final Fantasy to appear on SNES and is considered by some to be the series peak, with a sprawling cast of nuanced characters, a grand continent-hopping campaign, and meaty but traditional turn-based combat that sports a unique progression system based around ancient magical creatures collected throughout the journey. It represents the height of a timeless art style and the pinnacle of craftsmanship from the series’ early development team.
That’s part of why Final Fantasy VI seems like a better candidate for a retro-infused makeover rather than a full-scale Unreal Engine update in the style of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy. Plus, Kitase Yoshinori, Final Fantasy VI’s original director who now overseas the FFVII remakes, previously suggested doing the same thing to the SNES classic would require a 20-year timeline to rebuild the dense 16-bit RPG in modern terms.
That doesn’t mean that giving it the HD-2D treatment wouldn’t require several years of work. While some fans treat it like a simple filter that can be applied to the original game, Hayasaka explained to Inverse that the process of transforming Dragon Quest III required a lot of time, learning, and attention to detail. He pointed to how different the remake’s first trailer in 2021 looked compared to the recent launch one.
“Some say that because HD-2D is pixel-based and this game is a remake, it should be easier to produce, but that is far from the truth!” he said. “In my opinion, this style requires a higher level of artistic sensibility, and a remake faces more project-level limitations compared to a brand-new title, making the difficulty extremely high. After all, the expectations from the fans of the original game are a monumental hurdle we must work hard to meet.”
Ideally, the Dragon Quest III remake could serve as a training grounds of sorts for an HD-2D overhaul of Final Fantasy VI. With four years of experience on the project under the team’s belt, maybe the pieces are finally in place to make the long-standing fan dream become a reality. That is, if the Dragon Quest III remake meets or surpasses Square Enix’s sales expectations, arguably a harder task than any individual remake.