#its just insane bc like theres so much to criticize abt octopaths writing

[larnax]

[TRAGIC! this gamer has just read reviews of a series he enjoys] guys. the stories in octopath don't tie into each other because it's episodic. the stories are supposed to stand on their own. that's why it's called "octopath" and not "a story with eight main characters" it's because there are eight paths you can go down that are all meant to be their own story. you're supposed to be able to mix and match party members as you want and be able to choose your protagonist yourself. in that vein the actual story not reacting to your party members is a concession to the fact that having different versions of every story beat accounting for every possible combination of party members and accounting for the fact that you can switch party members during story events would be proposing that the devs make at that point hundreds of different versions of a story if they weren't going to just have your dudes standing in the background doing nothing which is stupid, and would ultimately limit the kind of stories they can tell. if octopath had all the stories be the same story and you had to have certain party members at certain times and you had to do all the events in a certain order it again would not be octopath it would just be a normal jrpg. octopath's worst writing is when it gets too attached to the postgame and sacrifices the strength of individual stories to have everything tie into the game's big bad. if the game were less episodic their story would be worse.