In Octopath Traveler, you follow the lives of 8 different characters, hence Octo & Path. Their fates aren’t intertwined so it’s kind of like playing through 8 different stories in one game. Strange enough, I wasn’t really bothered by the lack of party interaction.
Out of my dopaminergic nature, I give praise to any game that captures my attention for more than 30 hours since I have no problem not finishing a game if I get bored of it. I dropped 80 hours easily on Octopath.
It’s funny that in the beginning, I was pretty turned off by this game’s trailers from the graphics, artwork, gameplay and even the title. I’m not usually a big fan of turn based RPGs, but on a whim I tried the demo and fell in love playing the first 3 hours. Turns out I love the artwork. I love their normal JRPG turn based battle system with a little twist and I love the story writing. And lastly, the music just ties everything together and whisks you into it’s world.
Each character’s story is deeply interesting, but one’s journey really stood out to me.
Warning – I’m going to spoil the end of Tressa’s story and only Tressa’s, so if you don’t want to know, please skip below to “Spoilers End”.
SPOILERS START
Tressa the merchant sets out on an adventure following the logs in a notebook of a traveling apothecary. Through her travels, she discovers a luxurious gem and at one point of journey, she enters an auction where each merchant presents a treasure for the sick daughter of a billionaire to choose, in exchange for enough money for a lifetime. At the last minute, Tressa decides to auction her notebook of adventure logs instead of her gem and ends up winning. For someone who was too sick to travel the world but could buy anything, the notebook was a priceless treasure.
What’s beautiful about her story is that it emphasizes the spirit of adventure rather than the material things.
Even if you don’t plan on playing the game, I highly recommend watching through the final chapter cutscenes of Tressa’s story. It is easily one of my favorite video game cutscenes ever. Plus, like I said above, the music makes it 1000000000x more emotional.
SPOILERS END
The Life Lesson
“There can only be one truly precious treasure in someone’s life” and that is the journey of life. We are made by the paths we travel. We see people who are successful and seem like they have their shit together and we strive to have that. But even they probably endured countless hardships, pain, failure, heartache, anxiety and more just to get to where they are today.
We are molded by our pain, sadness and mistakes, but also our happiness and successes. I think a lot back to the stressful times I’ve had, the toxic people I let in my life, the hardships and loneliness I faced and I would so easily love to be able to say and think “I regret all of those times and would erase it if I could”, but that just ends with me holding onto regret. Instead, I try to think that every thing that I’ve gone through—good or bad, large or small—has shaped me to be who I am today. I can’t say that I would have the same principles and morals if not for my journey. Yeah, I may be a little less jaded, but I’d also be a lot less empathetic and probably would never have cared about mental health as much as I do today.
So I implore you—whether you’re feeling down, insecure, stressed, blinded, happy, grateful, reminiscient of a friendship, a relationship, a career, ANYTHING—to take a step back and reflect on how you got there. With the same exact result, it’s always more satisfying if you got the result through hard work and perseverance, rather than handed to you on a silver platter.
As Miley Cyrus once wisely said, “it’s the climb”.