Dark Souls, heist movies, and samurai epics converge in Octopath 2

It had its faults but I loved it. Octopath Traveler. The braid story, which featured eight characters who traveled around the continent in search of adventure and a new world with them was both ambitious and redundant. It started on a high note with compelling origin stories and grew in intensity as the plots merged. However, it eventually fell apart. They became more repetitive. The braid fell out.

Still, it represented the best of what I consider a compelling but painfully overlooked format: the “short story collection” video game. Cyberpunk is a genre that focuses on one storyline, which makes most games stale. Norse mythology Greek epics!), Octopath Traveler It swung for the fence and tried almost all. Sure, its design conceits fell into a neat genre — the turn-based JRPG — but its narrative ambitions were all over the map. Messy? Sure. Fun as hell? Absolutely.

Image by Polygon: Acquire/Square Enix/Square Enix

I’ve only recruited five playable characters in Octopath Traveler 2, but it’s already clear that developer Acquire wanted to push this variety further in the sequel. I chose Osvald the scholar as my starting character, and his prison-break-meets-revenge-tale of a first chapter is basically Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo If it was in the north frozen, However, once I traveled south, I met the cleric Temenos, whose role as a courier of the “Sacred Flame” has Dark Souls written all over it. As an inquisitor, the man sets out to investigate a murder of a church official. It was linked to rituals that involved ancient gods, demon beasts, and a plan to extinguish this sacred flame. As a result, I turned southwest and entered New Delstra. It was a Parisian doppelganger complete with catacombs, jazzy music, exactly as an heist went sideways. Throné, the potential successor to the leaders of a murderous thieves guild, encounters no fewer than five betrayals in the first 20 minutes of her story.

Even with the multitude of story genres, this plot is already tighter than its predecessor. The characters are each investigating their own story, solving their own problems, or seeking their revenge. However, every chapter of their stories is more exciting than the previous one. Acquire isn’t just jumping between gameplay conceits (Temenos’ quests often involve investigations, while Throné’s are more about infiltration), it’s also deftly balancing storytelling genres. It’s entirely possible that Octopath 2As with the first game it will become stale. But I’m completely committed to finding out.

I wish this format wasn’t so rare. Last year’s remake of the 1994 JRPG Enjoy a Living LifeThe final chapter, even with the many stumbles it made, was a graceful leap from Imperial China and Edo Japan to America’s Wild West. It was a time-hopping epic Chrono Trigger It was both a commercial and critical success in 1995. This further established the reputations of Yuji Horii and Hironobu Sakaguchi. TimeSplitters, a first-person shooter series, used the same short-story format for three games. There is also rumours of a fourth entry.

It is important to note that this format offers developers enough control to stay focused and enough flexibility to go wild. I’m heartened to see the formula already evolving in Octopath Traveler 2. And here’s hoping more developers brush up on their Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Karen Russell, George Saunders, Jennifer Egan, and Denis Johnson in the meantime.