The game originally started out in a fantasy setting where the player used magic, but after the development team realised that there were lots of other games with a fantasy setting, it was changed into a cyberpunk setting based on animes favoured by the game's creator, Takahisa Taura, such as Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed.

In January 2021, Astral Chain's copyright notice on PlatinumGames' website was updated to remove PlatinumGames as one of the rights holders, leaving Nintendo as the sole copyright holder despite previous claims that the IP was co-owned by the two companies. This change would later be confirmed by studio head Atsushi Inaba, who stated "It's as it is written on the website: Astral Chain is their IP and as such there are limitations on how much we feel we should talk about."