If there was anything that the world was talking about at its announcement it's the unique art style of Octopath Traveler's HD-2D. Taking a 2D 16-bit pixel art aesthetic and adding in depth of field and effects brings the art into the modern age. Square Enix has filed for trademark regarding both iterations of the term HD2D and HD-2D.
On the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) website, you can look up both HD2D and HD-2D and see that they are both registered to Square Enix. While heavily used in regards to the marketing of 2018's Nintendo Switch exclusive Octopath Traveler this move to trademark the term has fans of the series speculating about what moves we may see from Square Enix next.
With just a trademarking there isn't much more that can be specifically said but at its most conservative Square Enix is restricting others use to the term, while the other end could mean that they plan to continue using this term to market the game further, a potential sequel that is already rumored to be in the works, or maybe even a completely new title that will also be HD-2D. At the moment though we'll have to just keep our eyes on Square Enix to see what move they'll take with it.
When Octopath Traveller released last year we gave it a 9/10 praising its battle style and interesting take on storytelling, even though they don't interconnect as much as we'd like.
What did you think of Octopath Traveller's unique HD-2D art style? Would you be excited if an Octopath Traveller 2 were in development? Is there somewhere else that you'd like to see the HD2D style being used?
