Octopath Traveler devs talk inspiration, desire to revisit the golden era of RPGs, Octopath being a spiritual success to FFVI, and more

The producer and composer on Octopath Traveler have shared some new details on the title, which we've broken down into bulletpoints below.

- both devs grew up during the golden era of SNES JRPGs
- the producer has been trying to make a game like Octopath Traveler for years, and was finally given the green light to do so
- if Bravely was a spiritual successor of FFV, Octopath has been developed as a spiritual successor of FFVI
- the producer wanted to work on a new IP with a strong visual style that players would enjoy
- the original demo for the game was full pixel art, but the team decided they wanted to spruce things up with modern visuals
- the composer didn't know where to adapt to the global audience or keep his own style
- he asked himself what Nobuo Uematsu would do in the same situation and therefore he finally decided to keep his own style
- Octopath's OST is influenced by his love of classical music
- Bach and music from films were noted as inspiration
- the first demo has been downloaded 1.5 millions times
- reaction to the demo was overwhelmingly positive, even more so in Europe than in Japan.
- the target demo was gamers in their 30s and 40s who were seeking the same great feelings they had in the Golden RPG era
- they felt that the Switch was the perfect platform for that with its ability to play an hour in bed before sleeping