Square-Enix explains Bravely Default II's name, say they internally called the game Bravely: Automata

The "Bravely" series has a bit of a weird approach to names. First we had Bravely Default, then we had Bravely Second: End Layer, and now we have Bravely Default II. Seems a bit strange, doesn't it? To set things straight, Famitsu talked to producer Masashi Takahashi, who shared the following explanation.

For Bravely Default II, we’re kind of going back to our roots. And in order to have the players who are experiencing this as their first Bravely game enjoy it to the fullest extent, we need to completely refresh the world and the characters. So we gave it a lot of thought: what kind of title would convey that this is a brand-new story with brand-new characters, and moreover, this is a completely new entry in the Bravely series?

We considered going with patterns established in Bravely Archive and Bravely Default: Fairy’s Effect, but they didn’t make it feel like a new entry created for home consoles. So ultimately we settled on an easily understood numbering system to plainly convey that this is a new entry – more importantly, this is a game that players with zero knowledge of the series can enjoy.

Dev Tomoya Asano said that the team was actually calling the game Bravely: Automata behind the scenes when they were discussing the features they wanted, but realized they had to move away from that for a name that made more sense.

Finally, we learn that even though this is called Bravely Default II, characters from the previous entry are not going to make an appearance.