The latest issue of Famitsu features Producer Masashi Takahashi from Square Enix, and Director Keisuke Miyauchi from Acquire coming together to talk about Project Octopath Traveler. We get a lot of insight on the project, which you can see a breakdown of below.
- the biggest theme of this game is ‘the journey’
- the world is ripe for exploration with any of the eight characters
- the project was started by Takahashi and producer Tomoya Asano, who headed the Bravely series
- Acquire was chosen as development partner thanks to their work on the What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? serie
- Miyauchi recalls Takahashi and Asano coming together and suggesting, “What would this look like with rich-looking pixel art enhanced by modern technology, instead of just normal pixel art?”
- it took a long while to perfect the HD-2D look
- at first, they didn’t add enough depth to the view, and it was uninteresting
- another time, they went too far on the resolution and saturation, losing the appeal of pixel art
- it was tough to balance things, such as whether water should be pixel or photorealistic
- sprites looked lonely and simple in the context of a larger screen
- the development team increased the density of tile variations and colors to create an altogether richer view
- devs decided on having 8 characters: four male, and four female
- in order to have different experiences with each character, they took care to differentiate each character’s storyline
- all the characters have different classes, and more info will be released later
- character classes verge on the realistic side, being based on different occupations in Medieval Europe
- field commands were devised based on the classes
- Olberic is popular with the Square Enix side staff thanks to being the first created character
- the man on the very left of the key art, reading a book, is popular with female staff
- on the Acquire side, the man with the muffler and the woman with the hat are popular
- Olberic and Primrose were chosen to be the demo protagonists as their stories started in a similar place
- the developers wanted people to be able to recruit the other character after beating the story
- Asano and Takahashi requested that the battle system be something that everyone can enjoy, even if it is old school
- Takahashi further elaborated, stating that the action RPGs that are the current trend are hard for him
- a simple turn-based battle system wouldn’t be turning any heads, so the Command Boost and Break systems were added
- in order to add to the fun of the game, the guard points are displayed, showing how many attacks under a Break occurs
- battle difficulty in the game is based on area, and not by character level
from GoNintendo
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