Octopath Traveler II Narrative Flowchart
Welcome to the Octopath Traveler II narrative flowchart! This was an exercise I did in my free time to study video game narrative—more specifically, how a video game's narrative intersects with its gameplay. It took, literally, hundreds of hours. The intent of this flowchart is to illustrate how player input pushes the story from one plot point to the next.
Understanding the format
I've taken a lot of inspiration from this Earthbound narrative flowchart. Each cell is split into three parts: situation, solution, and conclusion. The situation is the problem presented by the game's story, the solution is the player action required to resolve the problem, and the conclusion is the result of the player action as it impacts the story.
Yellow text indicates a path action, talent, etc., and red text indicates an area with enemy encounters
Why did I do this?
Because it was fun.
No, really. I love video games, and I love thinking about them as a storytelling device and art form. This is fun for me.
It also helped reshape the way I thought about video game stories, since I was really struggling with writing my own (yeah, I'm working on a game lol...). I highly recommend doing a study like this if you're working on your own game, or just want to gain a better understanding of game narrative and game design!
Other Notes
- Sometimes, the player will explore half of a dungeon, receive some sort of cutscene, and then must explore the remaining half for another cutscene. I have noted these events as two separate "blocks"
- Some of the wording is changed around later on in the chart, because I decided to start writing directly from the quest prompt
- I tried not to go too into depth with any narrative bits that aren't directly connected by gameplay (Octopath Traveler II has a LOT of cutscenes that are like this, so you won't see them here)
- If you notice any problems with the chart or have any questions, feel free to reach out on any of my social media!
The flowchart!
This flowchart was made using draw.io. In case you don't want to use the on-screen UI for navigation...If you're on a PC, you can CTRL+SCROLL to zoom in and out, and navigate the zoomed-in chart by clicking and dragging. Mobile users should be able to pinch to zoom and drag to navigate. All characters (and the final chapter) are in their own separate tabs