Octopath Traveler HYPE thread, 8/10 AA in Gamespot

When games come out, they always have their hype. But over the decades, I can quickly tell when a game will stumble. If a developer says this new game will establish a ‘new franchise’, I know the game is doomed (customers buy games, not ‘franchises’). I knew Metroid: Other M was doomed when Sakamoto said what was memorable about Super Metroid was Samus’s ‘maternal instincts’ (What!?).

History is a powerful guide to seeing the future of video games. Use the crystal ball well.

Let’s look at Octopath in that regard.

First Trailer:

This is a very unusual trailer. There is no bombast (such as the final Breath of the Wild trailer), no screams, no explosions (except for that fire spell).

The game is really showcasing our eight protagonists sitting in a tavern showing off the camaraderie. It is extremely unusual. Aside from some 16-bit JRPGs, the Ultima party has that ‘protagonists sitting in a tavern’ that I know about.

It’s striking that this game is clearly going for that medieval FEELING. There is no strange sci-fi Star Wars stuff here… at least not yet. While this game may be a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy 6, FF6 was loaded with high technology. I don’t see it yet in Octopath. Octopath is very renaissance era style. I’m thinking more Ultima 4, 5, and 6ish.

Let’s look at another trailer:

This trailer tells us, clearly, that there are EIGHT stories going on here. So instead of everyone joining together to fight the BIG BAD MONSTER, this game looks like it will be breaking that mold. We’ll see how this goes.

Some interesting quotes from this trailer:

“Explore the world as you see fit” (Open World?)

“Eight lands… eight stories to be told” (Is this 8 RPGs stacked on top of each other? It may be.)

“So tell me friend, what path will you tread?” (This is a genius sales line. Narrator talks to the viewer like you are in a tavern, and his question ASSUMES THE SALE. The question is put to you not whether you will play the game but what character you will be. No, scrath that. Not character, but PATH. Apparently, you can do good and evil with these characters?)

“Embark on an adventure all your own.” (Sounds like you are in control.)

“Embark on your story through TRUE ROLEPLAYING.” (The last time I’ve heard of role playing defined this way was Ultima series.)

First Demo

I know a game means serious business when they put out a demo before the game is launched. They gain valuable feedback from the demo. PC games used to do this all the time. The demo not only did great marketing, it did great feedback to tune up the game.

Multiple ways to solve quests and problems

I don’t remember Final Fantasy 6 giving us multiple ways to solve quests and problems. This is a JRPG trying to be Open World. Are they trying to ‘evolve’ the JRPG by giving it a dose of Ultima Open World?

Mix and Match Skills

The Job system will give this game ridiculous replay value. “How you build your character is entirely in your hands…” Again, emphasis is on you being in control.

This one emphasis 8 stories that you are mixing and matching. So it really does seem to be 8 RPGs intertwined. It’s… different. But is there a climax? A final boss?

Second Demo

The second demo allows you to play the prologue of any of the characters but only from 3 hours and have your save carry over to the full game. I didn’t do this one, but this is shrewd marketing. You already become invested in the game.

Limited Edition

I got this as soon as it went online. I see that not only is it all sold out, it seems to be selling twice of the original price!?

The Limited Edition is telling us more about this game.

The included CD is there because, of course, the music is incredible. We know this game has great music.

It comes with a replica coin to mimic the currency of the game. Why? This is suspiciously like the trinket found in an Ultima game (such as the medallion in Ultima V).

There is a cloth map!!!!! (It says cloth map on the Nintendo site.) When was the last time a video game was released with a cloth map? Let me interrupt my post to find out. Excuse me, reader…

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OK, the list I see from Giant Bomb shows some games. I think it is hilarious how that list stops at Ultima VII. It should stop at Ultima II since that is where cloth maps began.

Some RPGs put them in like Wasteland 2 and Skyrim. They, of course, are replicating Ultima’s use of them.

Now, what is really interesting about Octopath Traveler’s cloth map is that it is DOUBLE SIDED. Why is that? Doesn’t that hint at a RUINED WORLD such as in Final Fantasy 6 (whose paper map was double sided to show the World of Balance and World of Ruin).

Here is what I think is going on here. Final Fantasy 6 was characters coming together to go fight big bad evil (Kefka). But a significant part of Final Fantasy 6 was the individual character stories. In the Ruined World, you even go on distinct adventures with those characters to complete their story.

While Final Fantasy 6 had the main plot as the main dish and the character plots as the side, I think Octopath is reversing this. The character plots are the main dish, and the main plot is on the side.

We’ll see if Octopath can pull this off.

9/10 ..getting this on release day...my Ranger character is waiting. :P

I'm also thinking 9/10! This game looks so great

Has anyone tried the demo for this game?

Solid 8.

10/10 HYPE!!!!!!!

Very hyped for this game, wish I was quick enough to get the Limited Edition. Only one week left to go.

I’ll say that it gets a 9/10.

I missed out on it too....

I like the game a lot but and I played the demo and was amazed by the production value but, I am not very confident on the dev. They never made a critical hit game this past decade but hopefully this game gets scored well!

Im buying it if it gets 8/10 or better

9/10 (8 on GS)

10/10 hype ff6's successor

It was so expensive though... I wanted it too at first, but I applied the technique of waiting 10 minutes (doing something else) before considering it again. And it was too expensive for me. (100 euro's as opposed to 50 euro's.)

It's available on Amazon right now.. https://www.amazon.com/Octopath-Traveler-Wayfarers-Nintendo-Switch/dp/B07BC326XK/ref=sr_1_2?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1530872645&sr=1-2&keywords=octopath%2Btraveler&th=1

@SolidGame_basic: -____-;;; OK I'll buy one.

8path will score 8 at 8spot.

@FireEmblem_Man: I'm hype for Octopath because I enjoyed the demo and it's the kind of game I'm gonna be heavy invested when I'm on the go :)

9/10 GS for me.

9/10. Demo was awesome.
The visual style is so good. Nostalgic yet modern. Gameplay is of course heavily inspired by Bravely Default, a game I really enjoyed.

@KungfuKitten: lol

A game I wish it wasn't exclusive... Well, that's life for you

You should get yourself a Switch, it's a worthy purchase :)

@davillain-: I'll down the road, right now I'm saving money to pay for my MBA

@recloud: That's fair. Switch has a lot to offer.

@recloud: why cant this game come to ps4 doesn't make sense imagine full trophy support and everything sony needs to get at this dev

@ProtossRushX: probably because this is a deal between square enix and Nintendo, I bet is funded by Nintendo, even, which is fair.

The game I'm looking forward to most this year. Wayfarer's edition pre-ordered

MY BODY IS REGGIE.

This game is pretty damn hype! 8/10.

Although...

Aside from some 16-bit JRPGs, the Ultima party has that ‘protagonists sitting in a tavern’ that I know about.

What?

Nitpicking aside, this games like this is what jRPGs need. I love the SaGa series, but they always felt like they needed a bit more polish.

i think itll be an 8/10 here.

looking forward to it myself.

Crap... I was supposed to do the hype thread for this game... took forever to come out that I forgot about it. Oh well...

Yeah, I'm going to say it'll be a solid 9.

8 out of 10, probably a 9 depending of the reviewer but i'll go with an 8.

This game looks awesome! Definitely plan on picking up a Switch sometime this year; once I clear up my backlog a bit...lol.

I think this game will be fantastic, but who knows if it'll have enough steam for a full 80 hour game.

I'm thinking 8/10.

I wreckon 8/10 due to "lack of story focus" which seems to be thier gripe on the gamespot preview.

This is the only Switch game i was looking forward to since the day of its announcement. A rent for few days will be ok.

8/10 i say

This game is definitely not going to be as good as you were lead to believe. It's no FF6.

The game that could get me to buy a Switch.

It will be a 9/10 on GameSpot, but a 10/10 in my heart. For sure.

“I have the review copy of Octopath. It is no Final Fantasy VI. I say the game is flim flam. And since I am Glorious Game Reviewer, my opinion matters. Let me tell you more of what the game is not… (blah blah blah)”

Oh, gee then, Mr. Reviewer. I shall cancel my pre=order immediately!

I had no idea Octopath Traveler would not be…

…a FPS…

…a platformer…

…a 4x game…

And on and on the Mr. Reviewer goes! Octopath Traveler is NOT many things. So why not review the game on what it actually is?

But no one cares about reviews of Octopath Traveler. Do you know why, dear reader? It is because of the demos. If you like the demos, you will like the game.

Why do we need reviews? To stop the ‘bait and switch’ of games. But there is no ‘bait and switch’ of Octopath. The game has been shown to you in nearly every way it can. The reviews will be entirely irrelevant. Besides, the reviews won’t come out until a day before the game does.

One thing I have noticed over my many years of being Malstrom is that F.U.D. ramps up against particular Nintendo exclusives especially if there is fear of them doing well (FUD= Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). FUD is something viral marketers use. Microsoft is famous for deploying it against competitors during the 1990s.

Remember before Breath of The Wild came out? Sure, the E3 demo was brilliant, great. “But are there any towns at all? Nothing has been shown of any town. OMG! There are no towns in this Zelda!!!” This is how it works.

The FUD against Octopath is quite hilarious (guys, we have the DEMOS. We know how this game will play out).

“The graphics are terrible! 16-bit Sprites!”

The FUD users were doing this until they realized that people got more excited over ’16-bit’ sprites! hahaha.

“This is budget game! Not worth $60!”

This one they like to use a lot. Many people, such as myself, are spending $100 for it. If it is an 80 hour game, it sounds $60 is worth it especially with no dreaded ‘DLC’.

“The characters will not talk to each other or interact with each other!”

Pre-order cancelled! hahaha. As if a game will put in 8 x 8 combinations of dialogue just because you have them in your party at that time?

“The writing is terrible!”

What RPG has great writing? Someone tell me that. This isn’t a fucking book. Besides, we know this already because of the demos.

“The game is broken! Look at this video! You can kill the bosses in one shot!”

Much of this is using some unique trait of a character (such as H’aanit) and getting a rare creature (which has limited uses). These FUD users are so lame, they become entertaining.

I wonder what else they will say as we get closer to release. “There are too many items in this game! That means ‘bad game design’! Cancel your pre-orders now!’ hahahaha.

I remember when New Super Mario Brothers Wii came out. The FUD was out of this world. Nintendo’s competitors do not really say much about 3d Mario or Zelda or even Metroid because they know those games cannot create massive markets. They just create the standard Nintendo market. IGN had meltdowns over NSMB Wii’s success.

The point is that the FUD against poor Octopath Traveler is proof, to me, that the game will do just fine. The more a game is loved, the more it is hated. Since the game is exclusive to Switch, the competitors are out in force.

Makes me want to buy a Switch for this

Day 1.

According to people that already have a review copy the game is like any other JRPG and won't be a retake of WRPG's or Ultima like the TC is speculating on the OP, even GS already made a video and pointed this out. You simply have 8 main characters to play, with basically 8 different origin stories(somewhat like Dragon Age Origins) that you can play in whatever order you want and if you want to challenge yourself you can even ignore them, so no recruitment and you miss on their abilities in battle and outside. After that you start playing missions that involve a main plot and can then play a secondary individual character plot that fleshes out the backstory of each character. The thing is that so far there seems to be no connection between the different arcs so you just play a self contained plot quest and then you jump to another and nobody will acknowledge what you did on another story arc, so typical JRPG stuff, just fight the battles, see the dialogues, see the events, move on to the next, no consequences from your actions just see what happens next in the story.

Leaving that possible misconception aside this seems to be at least a solid JRPG. The combat seems to be really good. The graphics look great. Hopefully the full thing will shape up nicely.

Really unique looking game, definitely one I'd get if I could. Don't have the funds for a switch right now but this type of originality really does interest me.

“I have the review copy of Octopath. It is no Final Fantasy VI. I say the game is flim flam. And since I am Glorious Game Reviewer, my opinion matters. Let me tell you more of what the game is not… (blah blah blah)”

See above

How are you gonna rent out a switch?

You can do that here. But for this one most probably ill be playing with a friend that owns a Switch and we play often games together.

I still am in shock that this and one of my all time favorite games come out on switch the same day!

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker! WAHOO!!

Google tells me that it got an 8/10 here on Gamespot.

I wonder whether the review uploaded early, and is just currently hidden?

I think it'll get an 8/10

As for the limited version, it does not seem all that limited so far. It was at amazon a few days ago and still available at gamestop.

It does but that's the user review. One user already gave it an 8 :P

I want this game

The review is out. It scored an 8, as expected.

The reviewer basically said that the game was excellent besides the story. It's a bunch of short stories that didn't draw the reviewer in, rather than a single cohesive story like most RPGs.

Hey, I'm still hyped. I wish it would load already - it's not too far off midnight here in Australia.