Octopath Traveler was a big yet welcome surprise once it was announced, with a unique HD-2D system being employed to bring a sprite-based RPG that evoked the classic SNES RPGs into a 3D environment. Its success was well-deserved, I feel, and long may it continue. While it sold over 1 million units on the Nintendo Switch as an exclusive title for the platform, it’s perhaps understandable that Square Enix has wanted to expand the audience of this game beyond Nintendo platforms. A new title in the same engine was announced exclusively for mobile devices and, in a since-deleted blog post, Square Enix has confirmed that the original Octopath Traveler experience will now launch on PC.
The complete experience will soon be made available for PC owners, meaning that the story of the game’s 8 heroes in the world of Osterra will be made accessible to those who don’t own a Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, no trailer or further information is known regarding whether Square Enix has made any enhancements for the title on PC, meaning we will need to wait just a little bit longer before we know for certain, but if I were honest, I’d be surprised if any additional story content was added to this new release of the game.
Not that that in any way makes this rerelease anything other than welcome news. It allows more people to experience this game and the release on a platform like PC possibly allows for things such as an improved display resolution. With the game being sprite-based by design, the visuals would scale relatively easily to higher or lower resolutions than those offered on the Nintendo Switch release, and the possibility of seeing the game’s pixel- and sprite-based artwork in higher resolutions is a tantalizing prospect that I desperately hope this PC port is able to achieve.
With the blog post on Square Enix’s website having been swiftly deleted we will need to wait a little longer to learn the specifics on Octopath Traveler’s PC release, although we do know that the game will launch on Steam on June 7.