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Square-Enix on Octopath Traveler's "heaviest" stories, use of old-school graphics in a new way, and unique features

by rawmeatcowboy
20 June 2018
GN Version 5.0

Octopath Traveler is right around the corner, and it's one of the biggest games hitting Switch this Summer. Demo impressions certainly make it seem like the title is worth the wait, but those demos only scratched the surface. Octopath Traveler producer Masashi Takahashi discussed just how deep the game gets, and also explains why an old-school visual approach was used.

"We're creating a medieval world, and we wanted to think of the realities within that medieval world. What would be a kind of inevitability that would happen as a result of this world existing? What kind of dramas would play out? I think, out of the eight people, that Primrose has the story that deals with the heaviest themes, but that's not to say that the other themes are light in any way. There are also characters that deal with other heavy elements of this world, as well, like Cyrus, the scholar. His story deals with the darkness that exists within this world.

This is the art style that was used for the games that we played when we were growing up. Even though it has a simple character design, the simplicity of the character design allows the user to use their imagination to kind of create their own story of the characters in their own minds, versus how you would respond to, for example, a realistic art style."

Director Keisuke Miyauchi chimed in with some other tidbits that show just how different Octopath Traveler is when compared to other RPGs.

"In addition to that, we've added in things like the additional strategic dimensions of what you can accomplish during battle. And also, things like path actions--where, in other RPGs, if you're talking about NPCs around a town, the only action that you could accomplish with them was to talk to them. We've added in considerably more dimensions of being able to talk with them so that you're able to role-play now in more different ways than you ever were. So that you could feel like you're a scholar, for example, like you're really playing this role of this character in this game."

[Link]