-
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
So good - it feels like I am fighting some badass Atma Weapon again
Cant wait for this game to drop!
It's all a reference to The Canterbury Tales, Octopath's narrative inspiration. Look at the tavern option to switch whose story you're following: "Hear a Tale." The protagonists are telling each other their stories during their travels together—that's why they're alone in their personal story scenes, but banter outside of it.
They should have woven that into the narrative more explicitly, and without awkward exceptions (recruitment interjecting before people's first bosses, rather than recruiting at tavern), but that's seemingly the intent. Fits the open-ended roleplaying the game's about.
Now, I understand why that is an issue in particular.
What I don't understand is how some lament the eight stories approach altogether and speak as if the the united storyline would have superior story quality.
If anything, the writing would have been at the same level, in a typical JRPG story set up.
Yeah that's really stupid and weird, what a strange detail to miss. And then her parents tell her "you're our best customer after all" when she's leaving and I'm pretty sure they didn't mean it like that but I took it literally lol.
I want some kind of justification for why these people are helping each other or even interacting telling each other their story in the first place. This is the first time "because videogame" is the answer I'm being given for an rpg.
The idea, perhaps poorly communicated by the game, is that they are actually not.
They are, at least according to some, telling each other their stories in a tavern and the participation of the listeners in those stories is just them self-inserting.
Man, this all should've just been explicit if true.
Again I get the whole awkwardness of them being cypher party members for each other and say that they should have made unique companions for each traveler.
However, that's not enough for me to turn away from this unique selling point in favor of "what Tokyo RPG factory has been doing except better, maybe".
The soundtrack so far is great and the battle system seems like it could be great with more going on.
Guess its time to wait and see how the full game turns out
Guess its time to wait and see how the full game turns out
Thank you for your effort and and putting up with all the accusations and such. Really looking forward to reading your review.
If it was someone else, I would be worried that all the negativity had ruined the experience of the game for you, but I trust your professionalism and know you are going to give the game a fair shake.
Yeah, knew for sure that he was wrong. They just didn't know it most likely but still had to do PR for the game as the marketing and devs in interviews totally spoke against what he said.
Maaan, the song that plays at H'aanit's village is gorgeous.
Of course!
People have brought up in this thread a lot of time SaGa series. Having said that, a lot of classic JRPG in NES/SNES actually have the same "problem" where your party member doesn't have much reason to band together.
I hope you enjoy it. Those games made a huge impact on a generation of gamers.
NintendoLife did not write that lol. The guy who tweeted works freelance for them and Game Revolution sometimes.
You can't just blacklist someone on association.
I guess I missed that era thankfully. Didn't get into playing rpgs until the PSX/Saturn generation.
There really isn't any one particularly best character because each character has their own primary job and abilities.
Also keep in mind the first character you pick is locked in for the duration until you finish their questline. So who you pick first entirely depends on what you want as your first starting role. Want a strong frontline fighter, go with Olberic. Want a Caster type Primrose or Cyrus are good, need a Healer? Opheria is essentially a White Mage.
Alfyn might be good since he seems to be a jack-of-all trades sort with decent front line fighting ability and his Apothecary class gives him some additional control as a support healer.
I'm quite sure PSX era also has JRPG where some of the party members have little to no reason to join.
Yep. SaGa Frontier is essentially this. It's one of my favorite PSX era RPGs, and it some ways Octopath Traveler shares some concepts with it.
Yeah I know, that's why I want to pick someone who's generally useful. I suppose Ophelia or Olberic would be fine and then I can just recruit in OCTOPATH order.
I'm sure if new SaGa is released today, people will complain: "This girl join me to get a Rune, but after she joins she has done and said nothing"
Well SaGa: Scarlet Grace is releasing on the PS4 and Switch later this year in Japan, hopefully they are localized to the West.
I could use more RPGs to pad out my PS4 and Switch libraries anyways.
No one will ever care about SaGa in any capacity in the west. But even then story-driven SaGas are more logical. Frontier criss-crosses with playable characters, and each chapter gets dedicated characters in which some of them moves the plot. In Octopath it's a band of people who will not have anything to say about stories other than their own so it's largely about 1 character, so even SaGa fans will be in for a loop since you don't recruit characters in someone's chapters
Except the whole point of Octopath's marketing, title and uniqueness is "8 Characters' stories come together", so I don't think this is a faithful argument to make at all. I'll reserve judgement for when the damn thing is out and being played, but the criticism is completely valid and fair.
Welp, the second demo sold me on the game. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, and have now pre-ordered the full game from the e-shop. Can't wait!
Have Square or Nintendo said the stories come together at some point? For instance, the page Nintendo has on their site for the game states "Choose from eight characters, each with their own distinct story".
I think it's natural people would assume the stories would meld at some point, but I'm not sure SE or Nintendo outright stated they would.
Their own distinct stories and yet we have the other characters participating in them but ignore that because they aren't really there and don't give it much thought because its just a videogame.
I'll go ahead and say "semantics". As you said, it's natural to assume because it's been heavily implied from the start, since the first concepts and the working title were announced. I don't know if they ever said this exact wording in some interview, but I feel it's dishonest to use "they never explicitely said.." as a discussion counterpoint. They may not have, but given the point and name of the game since it's inception, it's a valid discussion to be had.
Sure, it's a problem with the game that may keep people away. I think it's a pretty simple case where if someone doesn't find the actual game, rather than what they thought it was, appealing to just not buy it or wait for it to be cheaper. Not sure it needs to become a discussion about the legitimacy of the marketing. It's always going to stretch and bend the truth of what a product is, but if they never said the stories would converge I personally feel holding it against them becomes a bit tricky. It's disappointing for sure and I can see why some would choose not to buy it though.
No where have I seen marketing for Octopath saying 8 stories come together.
I thought the issue is minimal interaction between playable characters?
SaGa has similar issue. For example in Unlimited:SaGa, Judy is on a quest to find her family members, but can be recruited in Laura's story.
However, in Laura story, you will not encounter any of Judy's family members and she will just be another silent character after her recruitment dialogue.
That's not what I'm talking about.
This website and ESPECIALLY where it has been taken from is a nest of immature trolls of the worst kind. It's posted on a console war part of a rarely intersting forum ("biggest" video game "journalist" website forum). I'm French and I know this place enough to say it's just a useless bag of trash.
I also got more informations from it and it's clearly not reliable as a review.
And thus, even if the person really played it. What they say shows a lot of contradictions. It feels like it's there only to be negative as much as possible on whatever.
Doesn't make the game better or worse. Just gives a negative feeling ahead. Exactly as planned from someone posting there.
The game is out at my place according to several people on forums. Going to get a copy if true.
Last edited:
What even implies the stories come together? The name implies it's 8 separate paths.
The reason people assumed the stories would come together isn't based on anything said or implied, it's based on usual JRPG tropes. You could argue that they should have explicitly said otherwise for sure, but the idea that they've somehow implied the stories come together? I'm gonna need receipts.
Yes, main characters don't interact much, but each chapter has their own unique characters that does. And also there is probably only 2 people on ERA that likes Unlimited Saga anyway.
I've translated the poster's impressions myself on resetera and I haven't seen anything contradicting himself. He's not even overly negative of the game.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/octopath-traveler-preview-thread.53684/page-39#post-10180674
This "stories doesn't meet" thing is getting very boring.
It doesn't make any sense to assume it would from the beginning.
The game is NAMED octopath. Not : "The group of 8 world saviors joining together" or whatever.
The only thing close to a relation between them we saw was an artwork of them at a table.
I'm happy it is as it is because Jrpg needs new style of games. And maybe Octopath can prepare the way for Saga Scarlet Grace. Which might deserve even more success.
It doesn't make any sense to assume it would from the beginning.
The game is NAMED octopath. Not : "The group of 8 world saviors joining together" or whatever.
The only thing close to a relation between them we saw was an artwork of them at a table.
I'm happy it is as it is because Jrpg needs new style of games. And maybe Octopath can prepare the way for Saga Scarlet Grace. Which might deserve even more success.
Last edited:
It's not just that they don't meet though, it's that the characters don't have any meaningful interaction