Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
During the production of "Final Fantasy Type-0", the development team explored the possibility of a high-definition port of the game. The idea never went beyond experimentation as the team was focused on keeping the game as a portable experience. The team also experimented with a sequel on eighth generation consoles, but production was halted when the development team were transferred to "Final Fantasy XV". After some time working on "XV", original director Hajime Tabata decided to develop "Type-0 HD" for eighth-generation consoles. The game began development in mid-2012, around the same time "XV" was shifted onto PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One. Tabata came on board in July of that year as director and producer, though his involvement was fairly minor due to his directing duties for "XV". The main development was handled by HexaDrive, who had previously collaborated successfully with Square Enix on "The 3rd Birthday", and had developed the high-definition remasters of "Ōkami" and "". The remaster was intended as an incentive for "Final Fantasy" players in both Japan and the west to purchase eighth generation consoles before "XV"s release. The original plan was for a port to both the seventh generation PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, and eighth generation consoles. After the PS4 proved popular at the 2013 Tokyo Game Show, and as Tabata had no development experience with seventh generation console hardware, the team focused on the eighth generation versions. According to art director Yusuke Naora, moving from the PlayStation Portable to eighth-generation hardware proved hard for the team. Despite early claims, no version of "Type-0 HD" was developed for the PlayStation Vita. According to Tabata, this was due to difficulties in porting between console and Vita development environments, and his wish for a playing experience he could only envision on home consoles.
History of Eastern role-playing video games
In 1999, the cinematic trend set by "Final Fantasy VII" continued with "Final Fantasy VIII", which introduced characters with a proportionately sized human appearance. The game also featured a level-scaling system where the enemies scale in level along with the player's party. Similar level-scaling mechanics have been used in a number of later RPGs, including "", "Silverfall", "", "Fable II", "Fallout 3", and "". Square also expanded on the non-linearity of "SaGa Frontier" with their 1999 action RPG "Legend of Mana", the most open-ended in the "Mana" series, allowing the player to build the game world however they choose, complete any quests and subplots they choose in any order of their choice, and choose which storyline paths to follow, departing from most other action RPGs in its time. That same year, Square's survival horror RPG "Parasite Eve II" featured branching storylines and up to three different possible endings, while the sci-fi RPG "" boasted as many as 86 different endings, with each of the possible permutations to these endings numbering in the hundreds, setting a benchmark for the amount of outcomes possible for a video game. Using a relationship system inspired by dating sims, each of the characters in "Star Ocean" had friendship points and relationship points with each of the other characters, allowing the player to pair together, or ship, any couples (both romantic heterosexual relationships as well as friendships) of their choice, allowing a form of fan fiction to exist within the game itself. This type of social system was later extended to allow romantic lesbian relationships in BioWare's 2007 sci-fi RPG "Mass Effect". However, the relationship system in "Star Ocean" not only affected the storyline, but also the gameplay, affecting the way the characters behave towards each other in battle. Another 1999 RPG, "", also featured dating elements, including the option to engage in a homosexual relationship. That same year saw the release of "Chrono Cross", which became the third game to receive a perfect score from GameSpot, after "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" and "Soulcalibur". The game featured two major parallel dimensions, where the player must go back and forth between the worlds to recruit party members, obtain items, and advance the plot, with events in one dimension influencing the other. Like its predecessor "Chrono Trigger", "Chrono Cross" featured a New Game+ option and multiple endings, with at least a dozen possible endings based on the player's actions.