Jul 112018
Square Enix’s new turn-based JRPG Octopath Traveler is almost here, but there’s one important question that hasn’t quite been answered yet: does it have an overarching story?
I’ve been excited for Octopath Traveler ever since I tried the first demo and fell in love with its traditional feel and the intriguing start to the characters’ stories.
However, I did mention my hope that they’d all end up united in a single story.
This has pretty much been my biggest concern about the game. It looks great, but if the characters have eight individual stories with no justification for them traveling together, that doesn’t sound nearly as interesting to me as if their stories eventually came together.
From the early marketing, it sounded like the stories would be separate, but then comments from Nintendo representatives indicated that the character stories were part of the build-up for the main story. The demo also included hints of a connection between certain stories.
A few days ago, someone reported that they got the game early and there was no connected main story.
This was shortly followed by a different report that after the individual stories, there would be payoffs involving all the characters.
Jason Schreier from Kotaku said the stories are entirely separate and that the other person’s report was false.
After that, a new interview came out saying the stories absolutely intertwine.
And there’s even more besides these, on both sides of the argument. What makes this even weirder is that an apparent final boss theme was datamined, but it doesn’t appear to be used in the eight individual stories.
For what seemed like a simple question, there sure is a lot of conflicting information. The only thing that makes sense is that it’s one of two things:
- The stories come together into a single main plot, but this is some sort of secret/true ending that must be unlocked.
- Different people are interpreting the question in different ways.
The second option seems more likely. Some people might look at small connections between the stories and say that’s an overarching plot, while others see it as eight separate stories. Still, that doesn’t explain the final boss music…
Well, we should know soon enough. The review embargo lifts tomorrow and the game comes out on Friday. In the meantime, share your thoughts on this unexpectedly confusing situation and keep an eye on the Octopath Traveler subreddit for the latest round of confirmations on both sides.
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IGN’s review says…
“If there’s one thing missing from Octopath Traveler it’s a unifying thread tying all the stories together. There is no absolute evil against which our travelers must band together to battle, no ultimate weapon or looming, world-ending calamity. Each self-contained story is charming and works well in isolation, but it’s a little disappointing that the characters only overlap superficially, joining your party when you encounter them in one of the many villages and cities.”
I’m sure we’ll later hear from the developers why they chose that path.
I’m disappointed that there isn’t at least justification for the characters traveling together. From what I understand, there are optional interactions, but the story cutscenes pretend the other characters aren’t there at all.
I know the option that consumers of media naturally expect is that everything eventually converges.
The fact that they purposefully didn’t choose to do that makes this very interesting and experimental.
Then I wish they were entirely separate, instead of having characters with you that disappear for cutscenes and reappear for battles… and having characters team up when they have no logical reason to work together.
If the stories won’t converge, why do the characters have to come together?
(I also wish that Nintendo Treehouse person hadn’t outright said the stories come together, but I guess that was some sort of misinformation…)