"At their biggest and most expensive, video games all sort of look the same. The reason often comes down to simple economics: More resources means more costs that need to be recouped, and historically the way publishers have done that is by being comically risk-averse. Hence the glut of semi-realistic rocky wastelands that look like death metal album covers where everyone is some kind of Wild West fetishist, or the hero shooters that all look like Pixar but shredded as hell."
"On occasion, however, new visual ground is staked. Octopath Traveler 0 is an example of this. The third game in the Octopath series is a lot of things - a newcomer-friendly prequel, a reconfigured adaptation of a mobile game, a pretty great JRPG - but it's also the end of a 2025 victory lap for the art style that publisher Square Enix has dubbed "HD-2D.""
High-budget video games often converge on similar, safe visual designs because publishers prioritize recouping costs and avoid risks. Square Enix's HD-2D revives Super Famicom-era pixel texture and feel by placing CRT-like 2D characters into richly lit 3D environments rendered with modern engines. Octopath Traveler 0 exemplifies the approach as a newcomer-friendly JRPG prequel and a refined showcase of the style. Producer Masaaki Hayasaka cites the intent to revive 16-bit pixel art using modern technology. HD-2D now signals which classic aesthetics get revisited and which modern games are framed as worthy of that revival.
Read at The Verge
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