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It seems that no one is prepared for the town-building system in Octopath Traveler 0 once it releases December 4 – not even its devs, apparently. Game director Yasuhiro Kidera himself was surprised.
Was it really supposed to be so elaborate? "The development team asked Suzuki numerous times if, 'We'll really be taking it this far?' But his stance was: 'absolutely,'" Kidera recalls in an interview with Automaton, talking about producer Hirohito Suzuki. "So we carried on with development as is."
Suzuki maintains that he had his reasons. He explains to Automaton that Octopath Traveler 0 will allow players to place buildings, decor, and flora because, well, "I thought it would be only logical to make it like that."
"We took the rather unconventional step to make Zero into a full-priced mainline installment while basing it on Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, a mobile game," he continues. "Town Building is especially meant to be a representative feature of the game, so I believed it should be refined down to the last detail."
During our Octopath Traveler 0 preview, GamesRadar+ deputy news editor Catherine Lewis was able to get so immersed in the new feature, she "had to be reminded that there was still a whole RPG for me to dive into for the rest of the preview session. Whoops."
Suzuki would likely be able to empathize. "Now that I look at Octopath Traveler 0 once again," he says, "I feel like it kind of ended up being a blend of two different games in one – an RPG and a slow life simulator."
