This article contains spoilers for Ochette's introduction in Octopath Traveler 2.
Creators spend a lot of time thinking about beginnings. It could be how to begin a novel so that the reader doesn't move on to the next book on the Barnes & Noble shelf. It could be how to open a movie to get the audience invested as quickly as possible (or, on a smaller scale, how to do the same thing with a YouTube video). It could be whether to place the most well-known single at the beginning of an album so listeners begin with something they already like, or to save it until the end and send them out on a high note.
Whatever craft an artist is practicing, beginnings are important. It's your first chance to hook the audience and if you don't do it right, you may lose them before you get the chance. That’s why I think 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Octopath Traveler 2, which lets you choose between eight different characters with entirely different openings, is pretty frickin' ballsy. The opening hour of a game often gets extra attention for a few reasons: a) for good or bad, it will form the player's first impression, and b) it's the time when players will be tutorialized on the game's key mechanics. It lays the story and gameplay foundation for everything the game will do later on.
A good beginning isn't enough to make a good game. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:BioShock Infinite 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:isn't good, but the i🐲ntr൲oduction to Columbia is one of my favorite openings ever. But, if the beginning is bad — if it fails to set up who the protagonist is, what their motivations are, or the key ways they will interact with their world — it can have huge ramifications for the rest of the game. And, though it's not the case in Octopath, in most games, choosing one character means that you will see their introduction and none of the others, meaning that the developer has to make that much more content which players won't see unless they replay the game.
Octopath Traveler 2 offering eight starting points multiplies the ways that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Square Enix and Acquire could screw up by eight. I picked Ochette, a young hunter who lives on the island of Toto'haha, because I like tropical vibes and an island region seemed like the best place to soak up the sun. It was a good start. After a brief prologue in which a child Ochette picks an animal companion who will aid her in battle, the game flashes forward ten years. Ochette, now in her late teens or early twenties, is a hunter chasing a massive iguana through the jungle. Starting you off with a fight against a giant monster helps the game to feel more exciting than a battle against a low-level slime would, and the opening cinematic following Ochette as she sprints after the iguana is fast-paced and exciting. When the fight breaks out, you find that the owl you chose has become a valuable ally who can be summoned in these fights and this first battle teaches you one of the game's key mechanics: weaken your opponent until they break and then, once they're in their broken state, deal out increased damage.
After completing a quest to help Juvah, the Aslan-like lion who is your village’s wise elder, he reveals a prophecy to her and she sets off on a quest that will take her out of the village. Since I completed Ochette's opening, I've gone onto play through the introductions for Throné, Temenos, and the first chapter of Osvald's two-parter, as well. Though some, like Osvald's prison escape, are especially exciting, they all do a good job of setting up who the characters are and what they want. Each intro hooks you early, and sends you off with a desire to see what happens next. Given that there are eight stories being told, and that you feel invested in each of the characters, that means that there's rarely a dull moment.
I've only played those four introductions, so I can't speak to how well Octopath Traveler 2 does the others (though 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:our review indicates that all four stories are well told), but each so far has worked for me. These intros do a great job balancing story and mechanics and getting you invested in both quickly, incorporating conversations and battles in roughly equal measure. And now Octopath Traveler 2 has accomplished the best thing this kind of introduction can accomplish: I'm excited to see everything else it has to offer.