Bravely Default II comes to the Switch on February 26, 2021, but the game was originally released in 2020. Unfortunately, the pandemic led to a significant delay for the game. In an interview with Famitsu, Masashi Takahashi, the producer of Bravely Default II, analyzed in detail how the pandemic pushed things back. See his comments below, translated by NintendoEverything.
The development that overlaps with the spread of the virus, combined with the fact that we were not sure how long things will continue, had a pretty big impact on things.
For example, the progress of voice recording for foreign languages has been slow. We had to train the voice actors from a distance, and they had to record in their own homes without background noise, then send us the sound – everyone involved even gave their all and we succeeded. We were a few months late, but we managed to do the vocal work without much trouble.
Both Square Enix and Claytechworks made the move to work from home, so it took time to create home office environments. Even after we managed to make things work to some extent, we had a few communication mistakes due to the fact that it was the first time we worked like this. It was a difficult decision to make, but given the situation, we delayed its release until February 2021.