Video: Octopath Traveler Earns Digital Foundry’s Respect For Blending Old With New

I haven't watched the video, but I'm sure some sacrifice or cost will be involved with the graphics on a Switch game...

It's only 720p but it still looks great on a 1080p screen, and it's art style doesn't really need a high resolution anyway when most of the image blurs into the background.

It would be nice if they fixed the frame pacing issues though, it's not a major issue but it stands out when running through towns.

The game definitely needs alot of sharpening when played on a 4K screen. On the other hand, it's hard to say that the effects of it's real-time lighting (esp. areas like caves), it's particle system in combat and some particular surroundings that take effect of those systems as well, like scenes with water or snowy areas, don't look absolutely gorgeous.

It's definitely a rather unique use of the UE. Although a native 1080p UI and a fix for those occassional frame pacing issues would have been appreciated (maybe they can still patch some of this), it's not a game that will disappoint visually - or which look will be easily forgotten. Kudos to SE for trying something new of sorts.

I really like the game even if it doesn't deserve clearly a 9/10 lol

It's a nice 7/10 for the moment but saying that the game is beautiful it's true and not at the same time.

That blurring is really bad, it's over exagerate and I personally would like to have the choice to activate or not that "disgusting effect" that ruin the artstyle (for me).

Otherwise, 30fps for a game like that, espacially when it's not in 1080p, that's really dumb.

But the most important is to enjoy the game and that's my case. Not an awesome game, just a nice new IP really fun to play.

It’s a beautiful game, I hope they keep the same visual style for any potential sequels. As a kid from the snes era there’s a lot of nostalgia from my chronotrigger days.

I’m playing on a 55inch 4K TV and it looks gorgeous. I didn’t even know it doesn’t run at 1080p...

@Cobalt A turn based game doesn’t need anything more than 30fps. What would add 60fps to it? Nothing in my opinion.

And that blur effect is anything but “disgusting”. It’s what makes the game special with its tilt shift or miniature effect. The game looks like a diorama and that’s awesome.

I'm really delighted to see developers coming up with smart ways of making games beautiful through unorthodox means. I don't see why anyone would need 60 fps in a turn based game, unless someone is just mindlessly repeating what other people say.
It's a great title, easily an 9/10 to anyone who actually likes the genre and I'm looking forward to more games from the same team, not necessarily in the same art style, though.

@GrailUK Sacrifices are always made in games. You think the Playstation 4/Xbox one don’t have them opposite the PC version? However, this is a Switch exclusive and its custom built for it. History has shown that exclusive games tend to get the best out of a syatem.

@Cobalt

Eh? Why 60fps on a turn based rpg...
jeez, everything is about fps and P’s these days.
Boring game? It’s 60fps! I will definitely play that game! 60fps? Goty!!!

@maruse

60 fps not for the basic characters frames animation but for the global displacement. It gives more dynamic, the huge majority of games in the 16/32bits era were 60fps.

About the blurring effect, it's personal. I understand that some people like it, just that they could/should give the choice to the players.

@maruse The game is about a relatively slow adventure of 8 characters. The events are presented in the static "characters in the form of sprites take turns to talk" way, with no action whatsover and then come people arguing 60 fps would make the game more dynamic... Sometimes I'm baffled about stuff people spout without thinking.

@Preposterous

Did you ever play on a SNES, on a PS1, on a Saturn... ?
Some people are really incredible. There is nothing bad to ask something that we already had 30/20 years ago... lol

@maruse exactly. Spot on

@Cobalt
I see.
But why would that make the game better? I really can’t understand the complaint. Why 60fps in this game would change your experience for the better. Fast movin platform game, yes. But this?

@Cobalt Games on those systems either didn't have the modern effects like OT (shadows and particles) or didn't run in 60 fps in the first place. Not to mention 60 fps would be potentially visible only in slightly smoother walking animation, while also wastefully eating more processing power, so it's a simple matter of efficiency.
Please watch the video this article is about and/or refrain from making uneducated comments in the future.

Digital foundry should have the tagline “we mainly praise the switch for it’s accomplishments” from now on. According to them all switch games are huge feats. Not that I disagree.

@Skalgrim

The point of Octopath is to mimic and modernise the glorious past of the 16/32 bits RPGs era.

So why is it a problem to ask something that was "normal" back then ? 60 fps is about smoothness, is about the dynamic, is about a confort too.

It was just to explain that they could go further with what Squarenix did. It's not that the game is unplayable, goshhh nooo, but with a 720p resolution DOCKED, it wasn't insane to wish a 60fps like in the good old time.

This game could run at 15 or 20fps and I wouldn't know any different. For me only fast paced first person games should run at a minimum of 60fps.

The frame rate issues are pretty evident in towns and kind of shocking. My sense is it's n64 era graphics with some neat effects layered over the top, even if the blur is a bit overdone.

My sense is after completing 6 of 8 chapter 1s is the game is more a 7 or 8 than a 9. Some of the stories are great and others not so much... Same goes for characters. But my big problem is I'm 12 hours in and have really yet to be challenged by enemies or bosses.

Is anybody else driven to distraction by the constant hexagon lens flares?

@FarkyValentine

I'm totally agree with you, same feeling !

kind of crazy that even pushing a bunch of blocky assets they still needed to drop resolution. It is not even Dynamic.

I guess a glimpse of why DQ is nowhere to be seen on Switch.

I don't think any system before has seen this much use of rendering separate parts of the image at different resolutions.

Fascinating how 3D per-pixel calculations keep growing in number and complexity, and frame buffer constraints keep being an issue, but full-screen image scaling has become so cost effective that you can layer full-res UI on top of lower res 3D before it goes to the buffer.

Really love the art style in this game. Brings back all the memories of games like the Ogre series, Final Fantasy Tactics, the SaGa series, and many of the great RPGs of the 16-Bit/32-Bit era.

@Ralek85 I think that may be your problem of playing a game from a system that caps at 1080p on a 4k TV.

I wouldnt tell people to not play a Wii or PS3 game on a 1080p TV because itll look bad as a fault of the game.

@Knuckles-Fajita It depends on a lot of factors, but generally speaking 1080p content is not an issue. In fact, in motion and from a normal viewing distance it's often enough hard to tell whether you are running 1080p or 2160p content - esp. for folks who are not 'looking for' issues, but are just watching and certainly for any set under 65".

Ocotpath Traveler running it's unique '16-bit-look @720p is always going to be a challenge, but it's not really a problem, after all, sharpening exists for a reason. The game - for my taste - needs a fair bit of tweaking to look it's best on my set, but in the end it does look really good. I mean, let's not kid outselves, OLED makes anything look good I just mentioned it, because it's really the only game I've played so far, where I really felt the need to tinker with my settings to some extent (like it's the absolutey only game so far, where I actually decided to play in HDR Effect Mode) and also the only one, where I really felt a real need to add sharpness at all, to make the game look compelling.

I would always recommend to play any game on the best display you can find and Ocotpath - after some tweaking - looks worlds better on TV than on the built-in screen, but again, that is true for everything. Image quality is more than just resolution after all

Didn't even know the game ran at 720p before watching this video. Shows how well-stylized visuals can upscale.

I am glad people are enjoying it but this is really just fan service for Squaresoft and JRPG fans.

@FarkyValentine Looks like you haven't even finished the tutorial part of the game, so no wonder you would think that.

If it weren't for the video I wouldn't have known the game was 720p docked. But of course now that the information is out there people will use it as ammunition in "arguments" on the internet.

@Preposterous then can we dock the score for having a 14 hour tutorial?

This game should be 100% 1080p/720p, there is no excuse!
And no, it's not about the graphics, it's about the principle.

@FarkyValentine I don't see why anyone would do that to a 70-80 hour JRPG, but be my guest.

Best game for the Switch so far.. enjoying it more than any that came before.

@Kimyonaakuma

Don't need high resolution really because any aliasing will look like it's just part of the pixellated graphics.

@Dezzy

Except that "pixelated graphics" have never existed in the 8/16/32 bits eras because we all used CRT TVs.

That's only the kids of today who think that the games were pixelated the way they see an old game on their flat TV...

@Cobalt Realistically you wouldn’t notice a difference if it was 60 FPS; most of the sprite based animations are probably around 4-24 FPS and considering how slow the characters move across the frame mixed with the lower resolution it would just be a wasteful use of processing power. If there were more pixels to render maaaaybe you would notice silkier movement at 60 FPS.

I can literally see the pixels in this game. Preorder canceled!!!

Don't feed the (Cobal)troll...

I think this game looks and performs fantastic! In my opinion one of the most memorable JRPGs in a long time.

@Cobalt You really need to go and attend a classroom about aesthetics. You really lack of it.

I don’t care about these technical discussions. To me Octopath is the best thing produced by Square since DQVIII. A brilliant game with charming visuals, excellent music, an attractive and deep battle system, and charming little stories that dont pretend to be anything grand or Tolstoy like. All in all, this game is about walking slowly in the “Stillsnow” and enjoying the beautiful sight, excellent music, and that dark little story about sexual underworld. Pls save these FPS and RES debates for your Dooms and Wolfensteins.

@Cosats haha.

@Level_Up

Explain me a stuff then.

How come the same kind of games on the SNES with lower resolution are smoother ? Maybe because they run at 60fps... isn't it ?

@Cosats

As a developer myself, I have everything I need on that subject. ^^

I never say that the game is bad or ugly or unplayable.
I just mentioned that for a game that mimics the old glories of the 16/32 bit era RPGs, it's really a shame that Octopath doesn't deliver what was a normal thing back then, a 60fps.

That's all.

@Agramonte can’t find the article well really didn’t look very hard but read that the devs were basically waiting for the UE 4 update which is here now hopefully the switch does get some extra content and it comes out this decade I really wanna get the switch version played 1300 hours DQ9 cuz it was mobile

@Cobalt most games don’t deliver what was the norm back then

@Cobalt sorry but c’mon; SNES games run at a MAX resolution of around 512x448, even at 60 FPS or higher, such a small res means it will never run as “smooth” as Octopath. Think about it, at 512x448 the SNES pixels are so large the slightest movement is still a massive and choppy shift per frame. Sure some SNES games may run at 60 FPS but you’ll never actually see it because there aren’t enough pixels to actually render such subtle movements.

@Level_Up

LOL ! You really don't know what you're talking about !

Do you know what is the PPU ?
Do you know what is a V_Blank ?
Do you know how the CPU access the memory banks ?

God, saying what you just said it the most ridiculous thing I've heard since 10 years at least !

@Cobalt yeah, I realize 60 FPS would force the game to run twice as fast; but do you honestly think that would make a difference in a turn based battle system? It won’t. The only thing left to speculate on is graphics and my point was: resolution > frame rate in terms of smoothness. How smooth do you think a game 60 FPS game would run at a 32x32 resolution? Graphically, in this context, “smoothness” is restrained by pixel size. Must have been a slow 10 years ...

@Level_Up

You're mixing two different stuffs !
I dont have the time to explain in details but I'm gonna stay extremely basic to make it as clear as possible.

There is the framerate : the number of frames displayed in 1 second which is in fact how many time a instance is gonna run in 1 second.

There is the speed in the game : which is, to be ultra basic, a variable.

basically you can have a game which runs at 60 fps where the player moves slower than another game which runs at 30 fps where the player moves faster.

To make it even more simple to understand, if you make a game with a framerate of 60 fps, you can declare a variable (for example var_speed = 1) and then, you can play with that variable inside of your code. For exemple, you can set "var_speed = 0.5"

By doing that, your game is running at 60 fps and your player moves 2 times slower.

It's really basic but I admit that I dunno how to explain better to a non programmer.

@Cobalt I understand completely. The code loops 60 times each second rather then 30, simple. What I don’t understand is how you claim that a SNES game, and I’m quoting you: runs “smoother” then Octopath Traveler? What do you mean by smoother because that’s not a technical term. I would never describe a SNES game as smooth.

Example A. 60 FPS:
Every loop: add 1 to x position
(In one second the example would move 60 pixels)

Example B. 30 FPS:
Every loop add 1 to x position
(In one second the example would move 30 pixels)

Ex A. Will move twice as fast as Ex B. UNLESS there are twice as many pixels (higher resolution) and you will get smooth movement.

Now SNES games run at a lower resolution then what Octopath is running. To compensate, Example A. Should only then add 0.5 to X position, however you can’t really display 0.5 of a pixel so what’s the point?

@Level_Up

Gosh, I have at least 12 hours of graphic design behind me and you're asking me something that need to be explain in several points. :/

Excuse me if I stay basic again but, here in France, it's 02:50 AM and I need to rest a little...

I'm gonna answer by a kind of mind game.

Take a writting pad, draw an animation of a character who walk from left to right.
You have to draw 60 images to create the animation.
Bend the writting pad an look at the animation...

Now, tear away 1 image on 2 and bend again the writting pad during the same lenght of time an look at the animation...

This was for the "concept" but there are other stuffs to take in consideration too... like the bleedings on a CRT for example but I swear, I need to sleep a little now...

Hope you'll get the point.

@Cobalt in the spirit of basic; a SNES game would be like drawing a 60 frame animation with a big fat marker on a tiny sticky note.

Octopaths 30 frame animation is drawn with a fine tip pen on a full size note pad.

My point is that you wont even notice the smooth animations drawn with the marker because the canvas is too small for that amount of detail.

Pixels are even more restricted because they are arranged on a grid. When the SNES does run at 60 FPS most of those frames are rendered as duplicates anyway.

@Level_Up

Erfff, I'm gonna stop because you say so much nonsense that it becomes kind of annoying.

RESOLUTION is not equal to DEFINITION !

A SNES game will use an image as "full image" while Octopath UPSCALE 921 600 pixels to 2 073 600 pixels ! Do you get it ?

Another thing, you talk about image produced by the SNES and drawn on a CRT in the same way you do with an image from the Switch to a flat screen ! That's wrong.

Basically pixels "don't really exist" back then on a CRT. Sure, the image produced by the SNES deliver pixels but it's more about "how the information is treated and rendered on a CRT", totally different than flatscreen.
I know that's probably clumsy to say it like that but I dunno how to say it better (My English level is rather low).

@Imsoruthy yeah, i remember something about different versions. That said, not really waiting myself. I have "preferred" games but not systems. Ill make the time to play it this September, ill take vacation time if I have to 😂

Hopefully you get it on switch at some point soon.