Square Enix on why it’s making its first HD-2D action RPG with The Adventures of Elliot

Square Enix has spoken about why it wanted to make its first HD-2D action RPG with The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales.

The company kicked off the Nintendo Switch generation with Octopath Traveler, which is largely a traditional RPG. We started to see Square Enix explore other genres for HD-2D with Triangle Strategy, but the action RPG space is a new venture.

Now we’re able to hear from Tomoya Asano (concept and planning) about this. Speaking in an interview, he said that attempting to make an action RPG with The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales would pose a new challenge for the team.

Asano stated:

“As the HD-2D series has expanded and evolved, we’ve gradually shifted genres. We started with a classic RPG with Octopath Traveler and went on to do a strategy game with Triangle Strategy. When we thought about where to go next, we felt that challenging ourselves to an action RPG would be a good direction.

It goes without saying that we want to deliver this game to all the people who enjoyed the games that we have made previously (Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, etc.), but I would be delighted if it could reach out to a new audience of gamers as well!”

Also confirmed is that Elliot will indeed be the only protagonist. Because of this, the team put a lot of care into getting the character right. We also learned that Clay Tech Works moved over onto working on the game after Bravely Default 2, so the project has been in development for a few years now.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is due out in 2026 on Nintendo Switch 2 and a demo is out now. We have more news about the console here.