Dragon Quest 3 Remake Sets Up a 'Surprise' Ending for the HD-2D Trilogy

Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii has said players will encounter a "new discovery" if they play through the Dragon Quest HD-2D Remake trilogy in chronological order. As reported by Famitsu and translated by Automaton, Horii teased some fun changes to the trilogy, which strangely begins with Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake on November 14, including a "bit of a surprise." Dragon Quest 3 was, thankfully, a prequel to the first two games, meaning this instruction to play them chronologically also matches the release order. Square Enix announced the third game's remake in 2021 but years later revealed the first two games were also being remade for a collection coming in 2025. Square Enix has already confirmed Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake will have some story changes (that were supervised by Horii), though it appears these will stretch to the other two games too, and perhaps tie the first two to three in a way not possible when they originally arrived in the 1980s. IGN called the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake as faithful a remake as fans could ask for in our first preview of the turn-based role-playing game, adding that it still makes important, respectful changes too. IGN said we're "extremely pleased with the new content that spruces things up without unrecognizably transforming the original experience" in our final preview as well. This new content includes plenty of quality-of-life improvements, as Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake has Performance and Graphics modes on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Players can also choose between two protagonist appearances and three difficulty settings, and other features include optional autosaves, the ability to speed up battle with the shoulder buttons, two camera modes, a mini map which can be toggled on and off, and an NPC conversation log which saves the last 30 interactions.