Octopath Traveler 1's Protagonist Selection

Octopath Traveler 1 makes a very big deal about being a collaborative venture between its 8 protagonists.  Each is on her or his own individual journey, and the spotlight of the story’s narrative shines so exclusively upon them, that the game doesn’t so much have an ending as it simply has no more significant narration once all 8 main characters’ journeys are complete.  Sure, there IS a final quest and last boss that unlocks only after that point, but it feels more like 1 of those post-game ventures that take place after a game’s ending, even if there IS no ending for it to follow.

And the game generally does quite well with this iteration of the Romancing SaGa and Canterbury Tales formula of distinct travelers sharing their path and stories with one another.  But I do have to say...Octopath Traveler 1 could’ve done a lot better when it comes to the matter of actually choosing which of these 8 fellows will be your protagonist.

See, the problem goes like this: you have to choose who you want to be the protagonist, the central figure who unites the rest and is the constant in all of their adventures, right at the start of the game, before you know any of them past the tiny blurb the game gives you.  If you’re the type that thinks a party’s figurehead should have a cheerful, can-do attitude and a story that balances self-reflection with a yearning for doing good, you’re not gonna know yet that Alfyn is your man.  If your favorite flavor of leader is the cause-less soldier trying to rediscover what it is to be honorable, you won’t be sure this early that Olberic’s who you’ll want at the helm of the game.  And if you just prefer to have the best character with the best story as your protagonist, there’s no way of knowing right off the bat that Primrose is the right answer.

“The solution to this is obvious, RPGenius, you dithering numbnuts,” you point out, of course, cruel yet rational as ever.  “Just start a new game for each character and play through their prologue, then when you’ve picked your favorite, just continue playing with that save file.”

And that’s usually the simplest and most effective solution with this sort of situation.  That’s how you do it to figure out who you like best as hero of Romancing SaGa 1.  It’s how you figure out, in Dragon Age 1, that the best background for The Warden is to be the City Elf.  It’s how you determine in Trials of Mana that it doesn’t really matter who’s protagonist because they’re actually all pretty boring.  Hell, it’s what Live-A-Live basically forces you to do; 7/9ths of that game just plain IS the protagonists’ prologue auditions.

But OT1 is set up a little differently than most choose-your-hero deals, because your playthrough of the game necessarily requires you to go through every party member’s introduction story, regardless of who you chose at the beginning.  Even if you decide to go with H’aanit as your heroine, you’re still gonna play through Therion’s opening story, and Tressa’s, and those of all the rest.  Whereas in Dragon Age 1 and RPGs like it, you only see the origins of the protagonist you choose, and continue on with the main narrative once that’s over, the normal playthrough of Octopath Traveler 1 is to take you through ALL of its characters’ openings, regardless of who you selected.  The only way you’d avoid such a thing is to not recruit the associated character altogether, which would be silly and counterproductive to the intent of, y’know, experiencing the game that you’re playing.

So you’re stuck with 3 possible scenarios here.  
A: You happen to hit that lucky 12.5% chance and pick the protagonist you’d like best anyway, right from the get-go.
B: You’re stuck with the rest of us 87.5% schmucks, selecting a protagonist who seems the coolest and best initially (H’aanit), only to discover, multiple hours into the game, that the fourth main character you encounter has a way more compelling story and personality (Primrose) that demands that you start over because you just can’t see the game ever feeling right without her being the driving force connecting the rest together, which costs you all the time and effort you’d spent on it until that point.
C: You anticipate the possibility of B and attempt to get ahead by doing the play-each-prologue-first strategy discussed above that you’d employed against games like RS1 and DA1 and such...only to discover, after you finally get your real playthrough going, that you’re going to be playing through ALL those prologues AGAIN, meaning that you’ll be wasting even more time than Scenario B did as you retread them all!

I feel like it would’ve been so easy to find a solution to this problem, one where you’d be able to choose your protagonist for the rest of the game with confidence and knowledge of the cast, but still incorporate all of their openings into the full playthrough.  Just off the top of my head?  Instead of having each member be encountered during the travels of the others, start the game in a tavern, where each of the 8 heroes have stopped to rest during their individual journeys.  The player can control a waitress or bartender who’s serving them, and with each stop, the protagonist candidate is invited to share their story with the rest of the tavern, which translates to the player taking control and playing that character’s first chapter as usual.  Once all 8 are finished with, then the player is given the choice of who the primary hero of the game will be, and with that selection made, said hero makes the suggestion to the others that perhaps they should travel together, as each could help the others accomplish their goals.  At this point, the game starts up properly, and you’re left to your own devices on whose second chapter to pursue first, where to explore, etc.

That’s a simple fix, and I feel like it would actually be a better storytelling approach--I think that the Chaucerian feel of the combined stories is better served if they all meet while already travelers, rather than getting stuck onto an ever-growing adventurer party like some bizarre narrative Katamari Damacy.  Plus, the first chapter of each character’s story clearly feels entirely and fully like an endeavor undertaken by that person alone, without backup, and OT1’s setup where all but the first protagonist will actually be aided by allies as they go through their origin story always felt off, so with my tavern story-sharing scenario, the opening stories get to keep the single-person situation that they were clearly written to be.

Oh, or what about an opening in which the 8 heroes are gathered at an inn or tavern or whatever, and a local disaster drives them all to cooperate as heroic strangers to save the day?  Over the course of this opening adventure, each character’s talents are a necessary tool to their success, and as each talent is displayed, you get a “flashback” to the hero’s opening story to play through.  When all flashbacks have been played through and the day has been saved, the travelers return to the inn/tavern/whatever, and the player selects the protagonist who will be the one to suggest that they all band together, as they’ve all demonstrated how useful they could be to one another, and that they’re the kind of helping souls who would want to assist the rest.  It’s a little more complicated than just swapping stories at the pub, but it’s another good way to establish the characters, band them together in a way that feels authentic to both the intended solitary nature of their origins and the band-of-travelers-on-each-others’-journeys feel of the game as a whole, and give believable cause for them to seek each other’s assistance--more than just “Well, you’re the first adventurer band to pass by, so I guess I’ll just follow the path of least resistance and join up,” at least.

Look, Octopath Traveler 1 is unmistakably a solid RPG, 1 of the rare (and always getting rarer) occasions when SquareEnix accidentally published something worth playing, and this situation is a minor problem that does not take away from the title’s virtue in any noticeable way.  But at the same time, the way the game handles protagonist selection means that any player who really invests him/herself into the characters and their stories is probably gonna waste a lot of his/her time early on with the process of picking the preferred protagonist.  And sure, you can very reasonably argue that maybe it’s the fault of such players as myself that we get ourselves worked up over something that ultimately has very little consequence...but I contend that an audience caring that much about the actors of a character-based plot should be seen as a good thing.  Isn’t that kind of emotional investment from an audience a writer’s goal, after all?  So it’s just a bit of a shame that Octopath Traveler 1’s set up in a way that the more engrossed you are with it from the start, the more likely you’ll be to have to waste time repeating origin stories as you figure out the right protagonist for you.