What is the big deal with Octopath Traveler?

[CriticalGaming]

*raises hand*. Am I the only one who unironically thinks the dub is downright superb? Because I do think that. Also I don?t get the complaint. She calls the bishop Your Excellency...I don?t get it. The voice acting is good and it?s a sign of respect from a character who probably still feels a little bit like an outsider to her adopted family. What?s the big deal?

Nope you're not the only one, the voice acting is fine.

Most of the general consensus I've seen is that the dub is very good.

There is very little wrong with the dub, music, art, or graphics. It's the story and the gameplay that have problems.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

*raises hand*. Am I the only one who unironically thinks the dub is downright superb? Because I do think that. Also I don?t get the complaint. She calls the bishop Your Excellency...I don?t get it. The voice acting is good and it?s a sign of respect from a character who probably still feels a little bit like an outsider to her adopted family. What?s the big deal?

Yeah, I think it's great too.

Literally only Alphyn and one or two of the minor NPCs have irked me so far, everyone else is gravy.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Sorry for the delay, I was working and enjoying GenCon (AKA the best 4 days in gaming).

A lot of movies are made "backwards" as well. Hayao Miyazaki doesn't even write scripts and usually flies by the seat of his pants. Shaun of the Dead apparently had its plot and dialoge just scribled on a blackboard. A lot of movies already start location scouting and pre production before the script is finished. Movies, videogames, and TV show generally aren't crafted in a logical sequence.

Because a game's story is more than just its written word. You keep saying 'primarily for the story', but story isn't just what's written. You don't watch a movie primarily for the writing either. You watch it for the combination of visual, sound, music, acting, and dialoge, which combined shape the storytelling to be either good or bad (or something you like or dislike). Even games with bad writing can still deliver a good story experience, because the visuals, sound design, and music come together to make you believe in what you're seeing/playing. As much as the dialoge in Resident Evil 2 sucks, the police station becomes a character on its own because of how well the visual and sound design make it work, and this adds to the narrative. And the fact that you as the player are allowed to interact with it adds even more.

There's no one way of making art in any medium and every creator has their own idiosyncrasies in how they create. The main thing is that everyone has to be working together to create that singular vision, which rarely happens in video game development. You can watch Shaun of the Dead over and over again see that every single line, scene, camera cut, camera framing, etc is all extremely purposeful. I don't know where you got Shaun of the Dead was scribbled together as this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue3EA4RTD5M] exists. I have no clue on Miyazaki. Sure location scouting may happen before the script is finished because certain scenes are basically locked in as being part of the movie. With video games, you rarely even have the gameplay in place for a singular vision let alone the writing aspects. It's quite telling when you play a game like an Ubisoft open world game or even Witcher 3 where you have gameplay elements just there because other games in said genre have them vs them being "right" for the game. Then, you have a game like ICO that was meticulously pruned to deliver a very specific experience and you can check out a documentary of how it was made and see how different its development was vs say an Uncharted.

I agree that the writing is not just the writing and everything needs to come together from visuals to voice acting. However, writing quality does dictate a lot of how good a story or characters are. The voice actors can only elevate an average or shitty script so the writers do have quite a huge say in how good the story/characters are. And the video game medium has very little writing talent compared to books, movies, TV. As I just said above, games aren't really developed in a manner for everything to come together to form a cohesive whole. It's a rare thing for a writer to have much say in the video game's development like how John Gonzalez was able to work with Guerilla Games making Horizon and say that horses need to go because it doesn't make sense. Whereas in say TV, writers have basically all the power.

There's probably like maybe 10 video games whose writing would be on par with TV shows/movies I'd consider 7/10 good.

Please name them (if not here, in another thread). I really want to play the games you consider having the best writing in gaming so far.

I'm going to include games that I feel have greatly entertaining B-movie cheese and camp and not just serious writing. Just going through my trophy list (so pre-PS3 gens will be very much under represented), I'd rate the following games of having at least...

Spoiler: 7/10 writing or better

-What Remains of Edith Finch
-Witcher 3
-Life is Strange
-Wolfenstein: The New Order
-FarCry 3 Blood Dragon
-The Last of Us
-Binary Domain
-The Walking Dead: Season 1
-Batman: Arkham City
-Portal 2
-Bayonetta
-Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
-At least 1 MGS game

Maybes: Mass Effect (lots of good stuff in there but of course the ending), Uncharted 2 (series high point), and some fun cheese and camp like Borderlands 2, Vanquish (funniest reverse polarity scene ever), Lollipop Chainsaw.

Special mention: Team ICO games as they do great storytelling but very limited actual writing.

 

[CaitSeith]

I'm going to include games that I feel have greatly entertaining B-movie cheese and camp and not just serious writing. Just going through my trophy list (so pre-PS3 gens will be very much under represented), I'd rate the following games of having at least...

Spoiler: 7/10 writing or better

-What Remains of Edith Finch
-Witcher 3
-Life is Strange
-Wolfenstein: The New Order
-FarCry 3 Blood Dragon
-The Last of Us
-Binary Domain
-The Walking Dead: Season 1
-Batman: Arkham City
-Portal 2
-Bayonetta
-Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
-At least 1 MGS game

Maybes: Mass Effect (lots of good stuff in there but of course the ending), Uncharted 2 (series high point), and some fun cheese and camp like Borderlands 2, Vanquish (funniest reverse polarity scene ever), Lollipop Chainsaw.

Special mention: Team ICO games as they do great storytelling but very limited actual writing.

Thanks.