In an interview with character and demon designer Masayuki Doi, Hayataro was supposed to be the first demon that players would meet and recruit in the game. The staff considered having the protagonist ride Hayataro's back "as a partner-in-crime," but the idea was scrapped due to the technical circumstances and the demon's role as a one-off character.

Shin Megami Tensei V was developed using Unreal Engine 4 after Atlus accepted an offer to do so from Epic Games' Japanese division, marking the first time Atlus developed a game using an outsourced third-party engine. According to series planner Kazuyuki Yamai, the engine's processing speed expedited longer asset conversions into the game overworld that were a burden with in-house development tools and sometimes forced long work nights. This allowed more time for "trial-and-error" game design, as well as more time to become familiar with the engine and the Nintendo Switch hardware.