-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Octopath Traveler: Preview Thread
- Thread starter Meelow
- Start date
OP
OP
That there are connections to other characters stories in the game.
Beyond this likely being a reference to Z'aanta, is there any significance to posting it?Posted on Reddit, this is from Flamegrace
Anyway, I'm running on the assumption that this game will generate enough discussion to spill beyond more than one topic, so with that in mind:
Octopath Traveler |OT| The OG OT OT
and
Octopath Traveler |OT2| OT OT TWO
From what I can see, Cyrus is using his path action to get backstory from an NPC. The NPC in question apparently fought alongside someone from H'annit's clan in the past.
If most NPCs have unique lore that would be great, lore in games is always great.
I mean no shit there will be references in the world to some of the other characters stories because... they all take place in the same world??
I really hope each characters stories become deeply personal, because I really dig the concept of how there are many people who encounter many challenges who all live in the same world and its not just "the chosen one" who gets to be a hero
I really hope each characters stories become deeply personal, because I really dig the concept of how there are many people who encounter many challenges who all live in the same world and its not just "the chosen one" who gets to be a hero
More than likely this is just a cute little nod to GoT
No worries. With the way a lot of the path actions work for the characters, it leaves room for a lot of filler text being used to flesh out the world. Some of it really just feels like the way the Monster Hunter Generations localization went and has a bunch of references in place of pure world building.
It's a reference to H'aanit's missing master, not GoT, so it is world-building.
It is very clearly referencing H'aanit's master. This isn't a pop culture reference. The prologue towns are filled with this kind of world building.
I love both! English dubs have gotten so good though I can't recommend against it.
I've been playing the game for 4 hours and I can't stop
I was lucky to get my Compendium Edition delivered today :)
I was lucky to get my Compendium Edition delivered today :)
Can the book be detached?I've been playing the game for 4 hours and I can't stop
I was lucky to get my Compendium Edition delivered today :)
Got my copy today too lol.
Other impressions:
- English VA is p bad so swap to JPN
- So far, it seems like this is a game about individual stories with no over-arching plot, which I actually kinda like? More focus on individual arcs instead of some overly ambitious story that goes nowhere. From the characters I've seen so far it seems to be personal stories, and the stories are fairly concentrated and don't have a billion characters to dilute character development out. I'm considering this as a game of short stories, which again I quite like.
- I really like that monsters have multiple breaks to them, and that it has a visual reminder of this. Its fun trying to figure out the breaks and promotes team variety. The boost system is a super neat idea too and just brings a greater depth strategy.
Other impressions:
- English VA is p bad so swap to JPN
- So far, it seems like this is a game about individual stories with no over-arching plot, which I actually kinda like? More focus on individual arcs instead of some overly ambitious story that goes nowhere. From the characters I've seen so far it seems to be personal stories, and the stories are fairly concentrated and don't have a billion characters to dilute character development out. I'm considering this as a game of short stories, which again I quite like.
- I really like that monsters have multiple breaks to them, and that it has a visual reminder of this. Its fun trying to figure out the breaks and promotes team variety. The boost system is a super neat idea too and just brings a greater depth strategy.
Ok can the book be propped up when you want to display a page? Like can it actually stand up on its own while showing a scene?
It's mostly good-to-great, with the exception of children, who either sound like adults or caricatures.
Helgenish's voice actor is absolutely perfect.
Can anyone confirm if you can combine out of combat skills? I tuned out of this thread when people began arguing over the story structure out of fear that someone would start spoiling stuff.
I was just thinking the same thing, I will be the first person to turn to JPN voice acting if I think the eng one is bad but in OT it seemed like generally the VA was solid to good. If OT is considered bad to have bad VO then I really don't know what j rpgs have good voice acting lol.
Gotcha! Apologies, as that was one of the only paths I did not complete in the demo. It's cool to see hints of the story like that all over using other character path actions.
Crazy that this person has the same name and animal as avatar as you. What are the chances?
Yep! They can be used in conjunction to do various things:
Nintendo should make a new 2D mario in these kind of graphics like a sequel to super mario world
Only managed to do it with Ophilia's scene since it's the first one by putting it on my shelf but it has to be touching the wall otherwise it doesn't stand up, didn't manage to make it stand up with the other scenes.
Doesn't feel like it's supposed to be standing up tbh :/
Looks like I'll have to see Ophilia's scene everyday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Better yet.. Super Mario World RPG. Using the SMW sprites in this graphics
I played the demo for like 2.5 hours and my character met another of the 8.
Or are people complaining about actual story intersection, which I have yet to see (because I've barely played).
Or are people complaining about actual story intersection, which I have yet to see (because I've barely played).
"so many animu, look at those big eyes its so animu, why cant japanese make real mature games lol"
"where is my typical shonen jrpg story ?? why is it different ??"
Octopath isn't anything special with its run of the mill, bog standard story. Its nothing to write home about.
Wow crazy that you think english va is bad. From the demo I was surprised to hear exceptional VA from Tressa. Like I legit thought it was better than most triple A jrpgs.
The latter. Character interact and bond, but they don't participate in each others' personal cutscenes.
There are connections between the characters' plotlines, but they don't appear to conjoin into one final chapter. There's a large amount of postgame content regardless, judging from what people have said.
I'm not really parsing what parts of what you're saying is about Scarlet Grace vs Octopath here, sorry.
I will say I don't think either of those aspects are "fresh", not how they're implemented here. The relatively fresh aspect is the focus on individual stories in this segmented all-in-one way.
There's no rules saying RPGs have to be about those, but it is inherently weird for people you are fighting with to be people you never talk to because they don't actually exist. This is not an RPG that is about not a team of people; it's an RPG telling stories about individuals but a team of people is still present for some reason. Rather, those aren't rules; being about a team of people is a genre convention that this game still follows, and interactions between party members is a thing because at a bare minimum it is what makes sense in-universe.
Speaking generally and not about Octopath specifically... If you want to tell a story about individuals fighting by themselves, have them be individual then. If you want to not ever have interactions between party members... well, first of all: why? Second, then have them be generic mercaneries you don't respect, or something. There should be some reason why you're fighting alongside people but talk to them 0% of the time and they don't react to anything that happens that they're seeing.
I feel like you (and many others) keep conflating criticism of the implementation of the 8 individual stories with criticism of the fact that there are 8 individual stories, and furthermore conflate criticism of the fact that there are 8 individual stories with some imagined criticism that the story isn't some super generic god/army fighting mission. I know, to be fair, that some people dislike that it is 8 stories, but that's not what I'm saying.
I've never had an issue with it being 8 stories. I've never had an issue with them being personal stories either- that's appealing to me for the same reasons you have for finding it appealing yourself (though of course, it bears mentioning that nothing about there being 8 personal stories bars those stories from being just as stereotypical). I think them tying together in the end would probably be satisfying, sure, but I'd likely be happier with a big tavern party together than suddenly coming together for a common fight! (Of course, if the common fight was built up to well, I think that could be very satisfying - with switching in all 8 members to take down a boss together - but I digress.)
My issue is that they're half committing to various concepts. If the main story chapters are 8 individual tales told later in a tavern, have my party be made of other people who were actually with that individual and make their bonds meaningful. If the other characters were actually there, show that. And regardless, it's a little baffling to hear that out in the world you're apparently treated like some generic character who NPCs don't recognize. (So much for what was discussed in here previously, the claimed priority of roleplaying as the character you start as...?)
It's just that in the time since those other games we've had plenty of other games that tackle having multiple potential party members that have different interactions based on whose there, handle the possibility that you never recruited someone, etc. The awkwardness around these things is not a "quirk" or an appealing difference in RPG design; when it's left unaddressed, it's a problem. And these problems are not unsolvable. There's an extra effort involved with solving them, yes. And to be 100% perfectly clear I don't think "devs were lazy" or something because they didn't make that effort; I think they bit off more than they could chew, and should have adjusted their design to be more consistent in the scope of what they could achieve. If, for example, the problem is that not everyone recruited all 8 characters and having to work based on that: don't allow that to happen. Or if the problem is having 8 characters, why not have 6 instead? You can say "well, they wanted to have 8!" but you can't know for sure they didn't say "we want to have 10!" once, right?
I'm not arguing for either as the change that needed to happen to allow for one thing or another, mind, but the way things are now, there are disconnects in the design. There is no aspect of the game that needs to be the way it is, unadjusted for their scope, leaving those disconnects unaddressed. Just because the designers say "our goal was X" doesn't mean they couldn't have then thought "our goal was X, but that doesn't work here given the other thing we want to do, so let's go with Y" (and given how game development works- they surely did do that for many many things!). The argument of it being hard to impossible to do something because of a certain different design decision being prioritized goes both ways, because now I get to end up questioning whether that other decision was actually worth it.
As always, I'll say I expect to enjoy the game quite a bit and am excited for it! I've actually appreciated this thread because it helped me set my expectations better. I just resent this idea that people are criticizing only that there are 8 individual stories vs a connected one, that the awkward handling of the characters is a requirement or just how things are, etc. and honestly that kind of defense happening here bothers me more than the flaws in the game.
Strongly agreed.
People obsessing over these arbitrary scores, for games they haven't even played yet most of the time, is incredibly frustrating, and the way it makes people spit venom whenever someone dares to criticize a game they liked (or just think they'll like) is even worse.
I just mainly stick to reading reviews by writers I like and know I have a similar taste to, and then also skimming other reviews to see what their impressions of various aspects are so I can try to judge what I might feel about it myself.