Game Review: Octopath Traveler

If you are Nintendo Switch gamer or RPG fan, you have probably heard of the game that received much praise this summer: Octopath Traveler. Square Enix, the famed gaming studio famous primarily for the Final Fantasy franchise, set out to design a retro JRPG for the Nintendo Switch completely outside the Final Fantasy franchise to target the significant lack of role playing games on the successful console. What they came up with was gorgeous, nostalgic and engaging game harkening back to the 16-bit era with an incredibly modern twist.

In the past, we have seen a significant trade-off in the RPG world between narrative and choice. For a player to experience a truly appealing story within a game, they are often limiting in what they can do in order to pursue that specific narrative and if players have an incredible amount of options, they may never properly engage with the narrative to spend their time on the many side-quests and sub-plots the game has to offer. Octopath remedies this issue in an incredibly unique way. Within the first minute of gameplay, you brought to the world map, which, expansively and beautifully drawn, contains eight shining spots. Each of these represents one of the game’s eight protagonists, all of whom represent classic archetypes within the genre. This choice is no easy task, as the descriptions and art presented for each character makes the entire cast appealing.

Through play, completionist players will be able to recruit the other 7, adding them to your party and being able to play their stories as well. Each of these stories only has 4 chapters and, altogether, a single story should take about ten hours to complete. Players are given incredible agency not only in choosing their protagonist, but also which party members they want to recruit, letting them play through as many or few of the 8 paths as they want once they complete the original they chose. This framework is optimal for a game with so much content because, naturally, most players won’t be drawn to or relate with every character and their story. Another reason this is so significant is because it creates an opt-in system for it’s storytelling. Many of the plots are thought provoking, like Tressa’s commentary on the role of business is society or Cyrus’ about how and when we should share knowledge with others, even when it may hurt us. Others touch on social issues, such as the treatment of sex-workers with Primrose or if healthcare is truly a fundamental right with Alfyn. Even though these are all interesting, not all players care about them. In a game where a player would have to sit through a 10-hour plot regarding an issue they don’t care about, they could get burned out or frustrated with the experience because the game is quite story heavy. With this model, narratives and messages are able to hit home strongly when they are directed at the right audience. There is no punishment for recruiting a character, starting their story and after 1-2 hours realizing you don’t find it interesting; you can still use them in combat in other plots without finishing all their chapters (except for your chosen protagonist, that you must finish) The game is able to remain consistently engaging when you are only spending the majority of the time with characters and narratives that resonate with you.

Considering how the game lets you craft so much of your experience, you would think that the narrative suffers because of this. How can the game tell an engaging story when many players won’t see all the parts, and will being experiencing them in different orders? The solution Square Enix came to was simple: make all eight stories seemingly unrelated. While each of the eight are all emotional and philosophical in their own ways, finishing the fourth chapter of each reveals nothing of any of the others or how they may relate. On release this was actually a significant criticism of the game, with many players wishing the characters they had grown to love hand anything else in common aside from living on the same continent. It took about a week or two for players to realize there was an incredibly well hidden final dungeon accessible only after completing all eight fourth chapters. There, the player must once again defeat the final boss from each story, but between each battle, it is slowly revealed how all eight seemingly disparate plots are part of a larger narrative, tying them all together. Without giving anything away the finale is truly shocking and thought provoking.

With the existence of this dungeon now being common knowledge, players are highly incentivised to complete all eight stories in order to access the game’s largest challenge and a better understanding of the characters they care about. This works in conjunction with the pro-social messages I mentioned many of the characters deal with earlier. While the choice of not completing every chapter still exists, players who may have avoided certain ones now have a greater incentive to engage with stories they may not like as much. A conservative player might shy-away from Alfyn story or think it’s message that everybody, even criminals and the poor, are entitled to quality healthcare because it is inconsistent with their values. Knowing they must complete it to access content they care a lot about seeing might make them more open to this story however, and could potentially influence them. I can’t say if this has happened or to what extent it works, but it is worth considering. While in this review I focused intently on how narrative and choice related, other aspects of the game like its phenomenal turn based combat, art or music are all reasons Octopath Traveler is a game worth playing. The reason I focuses so much on the story thought is because few games I’ve played that were strong those elements also made me think and care as much as this game did. Do yourself a favour and spend your next 80 hours in a story and world you won’t soon forget.