More Personal Storytelling
The most unique thing about Octopath Traveler, surprisingly, was its low-stakes storytelling. In Octopath there’s no world-ending horror for the most part, at least not in the main story. Instead the game weaves eight separate stories that have personal stakes for each character.
Olberic has to find a reason to wield his blade again, Alfyn works to find his place in the world, and Primrose strives to get the revenge she’s been waiting years for. Octopath may not have the best storytelling, but it’s personal tales are refreshing against all the world-saving JRPGs out there.
Bravely Default 2 doesn’t need to adopt the same eight-story structure, but it could easily take some cues in terms of themes and scope. Not every JRPG needs to have world-ending stakes, and it’d be fascinating to see a more personal Final Fantasy-esque story that still involves crystals and all that.
NPC Recruitment
Certain party members in Octopath could recruit NPCs, bringing them to help in battle or using their skills to remove obstacles. It was novel, but a bit limited in use.
It’d be great to see Bravely Default 2 takes this idea even further, letting you recruit NPCs across the world to help in combat, maybe even flesh out your party at times.
Most Final Fantasy games have guest characters at some point, and an NPC recruitment system would be a smart way of taking the classic feature even further.
The last two Bravely games also had small city-building minigames, and recruitment could factor into this as well, helping to enhance your town.
Unique Character Abilities
While Primrose and Ophelia could recruit NPCs, all of the other characters had their own unique Path Actions, like how Therion could pickpocket or how Cyrus could scrutinize characters to learn information.
Bravely Default 2 will, no doubt, feature a smaller cast of main characters, but that allows for more variation of character’s abilities.
One of the best parts of Octopath was reading the descriptions on NPCs and their daily lives, and it’d be fantastic to see that same level of detail carry over to Bravely Default 2.
It would also present unique ways to advance the story or solve puzzles. Bravely Default 2 would hugely benefit from branching design. Maybe you could pickpocket a key to make it into a dungeon, or get information out of NPCs that lets you find a hidden route.
One of the criticisms weighed against the first Bravely Default was how repetitive the latter half of the game was, and providing alternate options would be a good way to combat that worry again.
The Break System
Bravely Default helped pave the way for the fantastic battle system of Octopath Traveler, and now it’s only right that the cycle continues.
In Bravely Default you have the option to Default (defend and store up points) then use Brave to stack actions. Octopath is similar with its boost system, but characters gain a point at the end of each turn.
Where things get different, however, is with the break system in Octopath Traveler, where you need to exploit enemy’s weaknesses in order to put them in a “break” state. This meant you’d always want to keep a diversified party so that you could cover all the bases, and exploit enemy weaknesses. Past that, many boss battles would have enemies that constantly changed their weaknesses throughout the fight.
Bravely Default 2’s combat system will need to evolve in some way, and introducing Octopath’s break system could be a small part of that. It would also encourage experimentation on the player’s part, leading you to discover new mixes of jobs, abilities, and weapons.
Octopath is the most refined that style of turn-based combat has been yet, so it’ll be interesting to see how the team improves it.
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