Octopath Traveler: How Not To Build A Story

THIS BLOG HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BOOKS ANYMORE

THIS IS NOT A BOOK

Octopath Traveler is an RPG video game that released for the Nintendo Switch in mid-2018. It caused a lot of stir when it first released and garnered a lot of fanfare, though I didn't really pay attention to it very much. I was vaguely aware of what the game concerned; it was an open-ended RPG game where you could pick one of eight paths. My girlfriend ended up getting it, in order to play it during a 6-and-a-half-hour car trip we were taking. She never played it during the trip because she got violently car sick, which meant that a couple of weeks later she insisted we play it together. So here I am.

Alright so I'm going to primarily (read: only) complain about the game's story structure and writing. Before I do that, I just want to say that the game is really fun. Mechanically and graphically, I really like this game. I'm actually part of a project at the moment working on a retro-style RPG (yes it is a very original fucking project, I know) and the game's graphics gave us a lot of food for thought. I'm actually impressed with the graphical techniques employed in the game.

This is a screenshot of Octopath Traveler. What you'll immediately notice is the game is using a mix of 3-D and 2-D art, which by itself isn't anything new or unique. But what I was really interested by was the way the game blends the two mediums and how it does its shadows. Your characters are 2-D pixel sprites, but they have dynamic shadows. The shadows, to the best my eyes can tell, are not sprites. I've seen sprite shadows done before and they're a fairly simple technique to make work, even if the shadow dynamically moves with a character (you just build the shadow into the character's sprite, or make the shadow a separate sprite that merely animates in tandem with the character's movements), but it looks like to me as if what Octopath did was make 3-D models for all of the characters and then alpha the model out and put a sprite over top of it, which is a very convoluted method, but it achieves a really nice effect. I like it.

The game is, very blatantly, heavily modeled after Final Fantasy 6. From the style of the character sprites to the story structure to the game's official artwork.

 

Pictured above is official artwork of the Octopath Traveler characters, followed by official artwork of some of the Final Fantasy 6 characters. You can see both games employ this sort of detailed-minimalist kind of style, especially in the faces. While Final Fantasy 6 is a little more over the top and almost outright psychedelic in comparison (seriously, the art looks like it was painted in water color using the piss of an overdosed LSD addict), the similarities are very obvious. 

Gameplay wise, I found the game really fun. I grew up on RPG games as a kid, but as an adult I've started to find them more tedious to play. The turn based combat, while always a classic, isn't something I find myself having fun with now that I've played about a dozen different RPGs through my life. Octopath Traveler, however, surprised me with its combat. By adding a few simple gimmicks into the generic RPG combat formula, I found involved combat that made me consider how I was going to make not only my next move, but my next several moves in advance. Which is something I really love about turn based combat; it's all about playing ahead of the game. Like chess, just with more talking animals and 16 year olds dressed like cage fighting prostitutes. 

So I was enthralled at the game's graphics and the combat made fighting pretty fun. People praise the soundtrack but honestly, I didn't find any of it very stand-out. The music was okay, but it was seriously only just okay. I seriously couldn't, in my head, recall what any of the tracks sounded like. Still, graphically and mechanically, I found the game wonderful.

What I didn't enjoy was the game's story.

The story fucking sucks. Not only is it not well written, but it's not even well put together. It's a mess that suffered from an out-of-the-box concept that was not done right. The storytelling gimmick in Octopath Traveler is that you can choose which of the eight different characters you want to begin the story with, and then play through the story starting with them. This is a cool idea, and I love a good open-ended story, but the writer(s) behind the game did not do a good job with their concept. First of all, I don't think the writing in general is really any good, I did not enjoy the story. However, where the worst of the writing really happens is when you're still collecting all the characters.

See, in general there's two ways to tell a story. You can tell a Linear story that happens in a straight, cohesive line. This is the normal, basic format for storytelling that most books/movies/games/whatever follow. You can also tell an open-ended story, where the tale is not set in a linear fashion. This is like a Choose Your Own Adventure story or an Open World game. Like Fable or Red Dead Redemption. In a good Open Ended story, no matter what route or decisions you make, you always reach some sort of satisfying and well crafted conclusion to the story. Even if you miss something or choose a different route at some point in time, the choices and paths you take will lead to its own fully fleshed out story.

You can tell your story in a Linear fashion, or in an Open Ended fashion. Octopath Traveler does neither of these. When we played, we started with the Warrior (one of the eight playable characters along with the Thief, Dancer, Apothecary, Scholar, Hunter, Cleric and Merchant). The Warrior's story is pretty boiler plate generic stuff, which normally I wouldn't complain about but the awful (i.e. nonexistent) story structure the game has really bothered me. 

So, Olberic the Warrior is this super badass ultra mega COOL AWESOME SUPER BADASS knight who serves a king during a war. However, Olberic finds himself betrayed by his own best friend, another COOL AWESOME SUPER BADASS knight who murders their king. Olberic sets out on a personal quest to find his ex-bestie. So far, so cliche. But then the story really hit me with a curveball, one that it would continue to strike me with throughout the rest of the story. Olberic comes to a small village and serves it as a hired blade, defending the village from bandits and whatever. How do I know this? Because Olberic, the great guy that he is, was nice enough to stand in one place and give me a big exposition dump about literally fucking everything. Seriously, he monologues like three god damn paragraphs about what happened to him (which is unhelpful, because I literally just saw what happened to him when his buddy went full-Benedict and sliced up their own king). 

Okay, look. Lesson time: Exposition is bad. Sometimes it's necessary to give, but you want to avoid doing it. Because just barfing up a bunch of exposition onto someone is not storytelling. Exposition is for textbooks, not storybooks. Olberic standing up on a podium and professing his life story and all of his problems to me isn't telling a story, it's pretentious whining. Shut up, you whiny little video game sprite! 

Here's what an acceptable exposition looks like;

Olberic: (In dialogue with another character, once prompted somehow to describe a little bit about himself) I am Olberic, I seek only to follow the trail of a man who killed my king...

Note that in my version, we don't open Olberic's story with a dream flashback that tells us everything that happened. Because that's also exceedingly fucking boring. In Final Fantasy 6, we were intrigued by the character of Terra because she had a clouded and sordid past with unanswered questions. With Olberic, there's no intrigue. I already know what makes him tick and I never want to, or need to, learn more about him. That's no fun. But anyways, look at my example. If Olberic cryptically simply tells us his objective is to find the man who killed his king, we are indirectly told several things about him. This is way, way, way funner and more involved than us just sitting in the corner and watching a flashback.

First, we know Olberic served (or at least had) a king. Was he a knight? A soldier? A prince? Who killed the king? Why does Olberic take it upon himself to find the killer? It gives us an explanation while creating more answers, and we find ourselves drawn into Olberic. We wanna know more about him. Where he came from, what happened to him, where his story began and where it's going.

Here's how you don't do exposition;

Olberic: (Standing alone in a room, nothing prompts him to say anything about any of this and we've also literally just watched his entire story's setup in a flashback sequence) I AM OLBERIC I SAW MY BEST FRIEND KILL MY KING HE WAS MY BEST FRIEND BUT NOW HE'S NOT MY BEST FRIEND I AM A LONE TRAVELER NOW I AM ONLY AS GOOD AS THE SWORD ON MY SIDE I HAVE NO HOME ANYMORE BECAUSE MY BEST FRIEND KILLED MY KING, WELL, NO- MY EX-BEST FRIEND KILLED MY KING. HE IS NOT MY FRIEND ANYMORE, BECAUSE HE KILLED MY KING. MY KING, WHO WAS KILLED BY MY EX-BEST FRIEND...

If you have to have your character literally stand alone in a fucking room and just monologue shit at you, then you are not writing a good story. Sadly, this was not a one-off issue (though Olberic was at least the worst offender). Every character's story is told in exposition/flashback-heavy diatribes that leave you with no questions about them and, by effect, in no way leaves you wondering what will come next for them. But this isn't the worst part about Octopath Traveler's storytelling.

In an RPG, I want the characters to feel like they're a group. They're all a bunch of different people, with different stories and different ultimate objectives who- as fate would dictate it- all end up together on a greater, more single-minded goal (like saving the world from Sephiroth or whatever). Octopath Traveler does not do this. It does not do this at all. 

So, you get to start with whatever of the 8 dudes you wanna start with. Well, when you encounter a new character, you're given a prompt to play through their intro story or to skip it. This is one of the most laughably terrible things I've ever seen in a story. That is some rank-and-file amateur shit right there. It's inorganic as fuck and breaks the flow of the story's narrative (or world, if the story had any greater narrative during the section of the game where you collect your characters- which it doesn't and this is another problem all together).

But what's worse about this is the rest of your characters have absolutely nothing to do with a new character's story. This is unacceptably not good writing. For instance, the second character we picked up after starting with Olberic was the Thief. The Thief had his own little story (also told largely in flashback and exposition). Guess how much Olberic had to do with it? Absolutely nothing. In fact, when we walked up to the Thief he literally says "Oh? You wanna help me, huh? Sure." That was it. That was fucking it. Then, Olberic stands in a corner and the Thief just has his story happen and Olberic is there, but doesn't say or do anything. The third character we got was the Apothecary, and it was the same thing. We walked up to him in his town, he literally says "Huh, you guys wanna help me? Cool." then he has his own little story where he goes to a cave to fight a monster snake to get venom to cure a little girl. Olberic and the Thief didn't do or say anything. 

Why are these three guys together? Why do they care about each other? Why do they help each other? What are any of them working towards by being together? They all have their own specific objectives, Olberic wants to find his ex-BFF, the Thief needs to collect some magical gems and the Apothecary "wants to help people all over the world". What do any of them gain by having each other as company? Fuck if I know, because they don't talk to each other or say anything or do anything. 

In a better written game, I'd have started with Olberic. I would've run into the Thief and, because the writer(s) put hundreds of hours into working on the script so that no matter which combination of characters you played the game with, and no matter what order you went in, a complete story is somehow told no matter what. In a more traditional RPG story, for instance, you have your main character. Your main character meets other main characters and they interact with each other in a way that moves the story along and into different directions. 

I'm writing an RPG right now. Part of the scripting process is making sure that no matter what characters are currently in your party at a given time, someone always says or does something. Even if it's as simple as a character just commenting on something, or you talking to them. Everyone has dialogue or speaking roles for every conceivable situation and scene, so no matter who happens to be in your party at a given time, everyone will always say something. Even if they just say something, that's all I'm asking for. If Olberic or the Thief just piped up and added some generic line of dialogue like "Yeah, we saved the day!" or "The fight was well fought," or something when I helped save the little girl with the Apothecary, at least it'd feel like the other characters had some semblance of story presence. 

But they don't say anything. They don't do anything. There's absolutely zero interaction between the characters, and thus there is no bonding or development between them. They're literally just a random group of people walking around and doing random battles with each other. It's as much character development as you have with the people you ride the subway with on your way to work every day. I'm left with questions, but they're not good questions. Why the hell do my characters help the other characters? Why did Olberic agree to help the Thief? Why did they agree to help the Apothecary? 

Octopath Traveler is not eight stories happening in tandem. It was eight individual, stand-alone stories that you play through in whatever order you choose. The characters are given no development with each other. I'm left with nothing. What am I supposed to be feeling? Does Olberic like the Apothecary? What does the Dancer think about the Merchant? Do they lock eyes with each other when they circlejerk? No one has any character presence with anyone else. No ones story involves the other characters, it's just "Hey guys, it's my turn to have the spotlight, you all shut up and hide behind that rock while I do this stuff". I'm not compelled by anyone's stories because none of them are very good and because none of them interact with each other and are just kind of standing around together, I'm never given any greater sense of purpose. I'm just bored to fucking tears by eight cliche tales that simply happen in whatever order I do them in.

You wanna tell a Linear Story? Great. You wanna tell an Open Ended one? Great. But you don't tell eight random stories with little-to-no connection and then chop them up and scatter them around so you walk through them in whatever order and then sit back and say "Yeaup, ya did good, Octopath writing staff. Ya did good."

Octopath Traveler is a great game. The combat is fun. The sprite work is beautiful. Octopath Traveler is an awful story. The writing is dry. The characters are flat. The story? It's basically nonexistent. This is a litmus test in how you don't tell a story. It's a litmus test in how you don't construct an Open World story. Exposition dumping isn't storytelling. Characters being present together during battles is not character development. Octopath Traveler isn't a story. It's a list of objectives that one person at a time walks through while the others shit themselves behind a tree.

At first I was shocked at how horribly done the story was. I mean, it's not just bad. It's downright incorrectly undertaken. This game was developed by Square Enix. A company that, while they haven't been known for their story telling for the last 15 years or so, can at least construct something that works. Octopath simply doesn't even work. In fact, the more I look at it and think about it, the more this game looks like it was an indie project. Which, as it turns out, it sort of is. 

I dunno how much Square Enix had to do with the game. They apparently did develop it in some way, but it seems like the game was primarily developed by a smaller Japanese studio by the name of Acquire Corp. I've never heard of Acquire's other games, but most of them apparently are kind of mediocre and many received mixed to negative reactions for their writing. I get the feeling that Acquire went through a rough patch and hired a bunch of fresh blood, and what we got with Octopath was basically the handiwork of some literal amateurs; at least with the writing. It feels like a team of creative developers decided "let's make an open world game, it'll be an RPG but you can start with whatever character you want and the story will unfold different ways!", but that idea was eventually shaved down to "we have 8 characters with 8 stories, you can do them in any order you want and it doesn't matter because the characters don't talk to each other", once they realized what a monumental task a Choose Your Own Adventure story is to write, on top of the fact they were going to do it with eight different fucking character narratives. 

So they fell back on using exposition in order to clean up telling the story. They cut out characters talking with each other because it would've been hard to write so much dynamic dialogue. They took the lazy way out, and it fucking shows. 

FINAL POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE:

10/10 Gameplay

10/10 Graphics

Literally 0/10 Story

FINAL POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE (ADJUSTED TO ADD ALL SCORES TOGETHER):

10/10

A great game with a shit story is still a great game. What can I say?