Project Octopath Traveler devs on the early silence, development progress, more

Square Enix held a special session for Project Octopath Traveler at the Tokyo Game Show last week. Nothing new was on display as only the demo was shown, but developers were on hand to speak about the game.

Among what was discussed was why it took so long for Project Octopath Traveler to resurface following the announcement in January, where the game is at in terms of development, and more. You can find the full rundown below, courtesy of Reddit’s scottwo.

• They had been quiet since January because they wanted to release the demo worldwide simultaneously. So, unfortunately, they had to hold a lot of information in until that was ready. They really wanted to to the demo because they wanted everyone to be able to see what the visuals looked like running on the switch to increase interest.
• Hard to put the current development progress into a single number percentage, but, as we’ve seen in the demo, they’ve got combat, dialog, exploration, etc in the game and working. They’re also still refining the visuals.
• Interviewer was told by his boss not to play the demo so that he could be playing it for the first time during the interview today. He was super pissed that he couldn’t play it. Haha.
• Hopefully, there will be plenty of Switches when the game launches so everyone that wants to play it will be able to.
• When the Japanese say “Octopath” オクトパス they pronounce it the same as octopus. Interviewer thought it had something to do with octopus until they explained the name. Laughs all around.
• Told interviewer to use Obleric to show off the battles.
• They really discussed and tested voice acting, but decided to put it in to be a little more immersive.
• It will have English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Italian text on launch. Sounds like they’ll have one version worldwide.
• Door openings are their best use of HD Rumble. They originally had it rumble with every footstep and it was way too much, so they took it out.
• Asked a Producer if he liked Romance Saga. He said yes. Interviewer said he was relieved, then. It’s in good hands.
• Developers explain that they intend the flow of battle to be: Find weakness -> Break -> Hit hard with Boost. It’s simple, but it can get complex.

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