Octarians! Our sworn enemies in Splatoon,
but we don't know much about them. Various parchment rolls in the story modes
of Splatoon and Splatoon 2 give us some
clues about their past and the conflict between the two peoples,
yet some aspects are still in the dark and many of
them are under scrutiny. In this video,
with the help of my friend Argorok, we are going to review Octarians' history.
We will also try to uncover
all the hidden mysteries of this mythology.
According to what we are told, Inklings
are an evolved form of squids whereas Octarians are octopuses.
Years and years of evolution and a sudden rise of the oceans brought them
out of water and made them handle ink, as well as Inklings.
At first, everything was great between the two peoples, but new
rising waters triggered a conflict between Inklings and Octarians,
who started to fight for territories. This era
is best known as The Great Turf War !
On the one hand, there are unstable
and playfull Inklings led by Cp'n Cuttlefish,
on the other hand, there are Octarians, a technologically advanced,
very serious people under DJ Octavio's command.
You can read in the game that the
Octarian machines had been turned off beacause of a simple mistake
which led to defeat, because of a single plug.
Today, more than a hundred years later,
Octarians are cut off from the rest of the world
in underground domes. This scenario
is quite reminiscent of Wolrd War II,
not really from the European perspective, but more similar to what
Japan experienced at the time. You may know
that in 1945, Japan refused to sign
a treaty aknowledging Japanese surrender and the US victory,
so the USA responded by bombing the island and dropped
two nuclear bombs over the country. Well, you got it,
World War II clearly
is a painfull memory for the Japanese and this is
what Nintendo developpers put in the game.
In the Splatoon story mode, Inklings embody
Americans and Octarians, the Japanese. Ones with
a military cap, the others with a Samurai helmet...
a great war between the two peoples and many
innocent casualties... all the clues were there.
You got it, Nintendo used some real life facts
to buils a story for their game. And more generally,
Splatoon is somehow a mirror version of our own world.
They live in cities, got phones, cars,
planes... and all the parchments give many hints of a historical past
pretty similar to ours : biblical characters,
Ancient Egypt and World War can be found. But Nintendo
has also based their Inklings and Octarians
on other elements besides historical ones :
they used biological facts to create the two peoples, for instance they spit
ink. It is obivous, but squids and octopuses
are part of the only species able to drop ink,
mostly to defend themselves from predators. This element fits
perfectlythe battles of Splatoon.
But this is not the only biological fact that inspired
developpers. You probably noticed already,
but we can find several types of Octarians in Splatoon. The most famous
one is the Octolings – these are Octarians who can switch
from their octopus form to their humanoid form, as well as Inklings and their squid form.
According to what we can see in the game, Octolings are
only women. In fact, the remaining types
are mostly octopus tentacles
with a face and legs. The Octarian technology
transformed some of these Octarians into cybernetic
creatures. But these are basically
tentacles with legs, and this is quite peculiar.
We don't know much in the games, but the official Splatoon
art-book unveils a very interesting element.
When yo cut one tentacle from an Octarian, this tentacle comes
to life and gives birth to a brand new Octarian (and as far as we know,
this is the only way of reproduction). This actually explains why
almost all the enemies of the Story mode are
in fact living tentacles ! And this particular element of the story
has its origin in a biological fact :
when you cut a tentacles from an octopus,
it keeps on moving for a while once cut. Developpers kept this in mind
to introduce it cleverly in the game.
We can assume then, that almost all Octarians are
in fact born from some Octolings.
Yet, one mystery remains.
Why are Octolings almost exclusively women ?
And if I say « almost », it's only because DJ Octavio
must be considered an Octoling himself.
In the story mode, we can only see him as an octopus,
but we can see him the parchments as a young DJ Octavio,
before the Great Turf War,
peacefully talking to Cuttlefish.
We can easily recognize the two characters thanks to their hats
that they still have on their head in the story mode. This simple picture tends
to prove that DJ Octavio has a humanoid form too,
so we can naturally think that he is an Octoling too.
Maybe he is unable to turn into human form today,
but, after all, in the art-book we are told that Cap'n Cuttlefish is still alive even
though his old age thanks to a drying technique of his body
that may prevent him from turning into a squid again,
we may assume that DJ Octavio, who must be
from the same generation as Cuttlefish, is trying to delay his death
abd uses an opposit technique preventing him
from turning into a humanoid again. DJ Octavio is the only male
Octoling as far as we know. Were the others
killed during the Great Turf War ? On the Inkling side, we know that
boys and girls were fighting side by side during this war.
No such things as sexism on the Inkling side,
is that so on the Octoling side ? It might explain
why there are no male Octolings. All the male ones could have died during the Great war,
leaving ripped-off tentacles on the battlefield
that would have given birth to a brand new legged strain of Octarian.
The mystery remains since we don't have any picture of the battles during the Great War
and we have no visual clue about the Octarian fighters,
Were they Octolings ? Male ones ? Female ones ? Or even tentacle-shaped ones ? A mix of both ?
We don't really know...
About that war, we do know for sure that Octarians
fought with the help of their gigantic war machines
best known as Great Octoweapons ! We can fight against
them in the story modes of Splatoon 1 and 2 ; these huge
piles of scrap are in fact controlled by an Octarian,
as we can see in the presentation scenes at the beginning of each fight,
and also with the visible tentacle out of the metal structure.
So basically, The Great Octoweapons are machines controlled by an Octarian
made of flesh and ink. Well, in the story mode,
a very specific being is in charge. During
all the bosses battles in Splatoon 1 and 2, you
are actually fighting against only one character : DJ Octavio.
We can figure it out on each t
tentacle you have to beat because it wears a specific green scar
that belongs to Octavio. We can see during
the final fight that he's got this
very same scar on his left forefront tentacle, and it is
clearly highlighted in the game.
This very same point is also suggested in one of the Splatoon 2 parchments,
on which a layout explains how an Octarian
is injected in the Great Octoweapons. The Octarian depicted here
is DJ Octavio and the Octoweapon
is one from Splatoon 1
and Splatoon 2. Was he also
the only one to control the Great Octoweapons during the Great Turf War ?
We can't know for sure, no. But as for
the story mode, it's DJ Octavio indeed who's controlling them.
Maybe male Octolings were in charge during the Great War,
and with them gone, DJ Octavio is now taking care of it himself ?
We don't know.
In Splatoon, Octarians are depicted as enemies.
But, what if it was more complicated than that ?
To end this video, we are going to share with you the following theory in which all
the Octarians are not enemies. You may have noticed it already
but in Splatoon 2, some worlds of the story mode take
place above Octarian cities. You can see quiet buildings
with lights which let us think that the city is
calm and peaceful.
We are far from a very revengefull, bloodthirsty
Octarian people. In fact, during Splatoon 2 Splatfests,
we are sent to fight in arenas located in the Octarian world. Would Inklings
be allowed to party in there if Octarians were still our enemies ?
And what if the Octarian people had accepted
their defeat since the Great Turf War
and had decided to live their own life, at peace
with the Inkling people ? ... Of course, there is the energy
problem that led them to steal zapfishes...
but, isn't it an isolated move from an old war captain
who still has resentment for his defeat ? So far, we don't know for sure
that we are fighting against all the Octarians.
Also, DJ Octavio could have created a sort of side army,
independent, in order to take revenge, but these actions
are not representative of what the Octarian people want.
In Splatoon 2, we know that DJ Octavio takes over Callie
thanks to hypnotic glasses and these glasses look very similar
to those worn by Octolings in the game.
We may assume that DJ Octavio, in a frenzy,
and following his defeat, wanted to fight back
but, with his people unwilling to do so, he hod
no other choice than hypnotize his best soldiers, the Octolings,
in order to have a real army. We also know that
tentacle-Octarians are less clever than Octolings,
so it is pretty obvious that Octavio didn't have
to hypnotize them to make them foolishly follow him.
So, Octavio and his army are the enemies in the game,
but the Octarian people in general aren't.
This theory reinforces the fact that he embodies
every bosses of the game,
and it would be a perfect justification to the drawings in the credits
in Splatoon 1 in which we can see Inklings and Octolings
alltogether. What about Marina, right ?
Well, according to a Splatoon 2 parchmen, we know that she fought
alongside Octavio during the first game's events, because
in a parchment we can see her watching the final battle
between agents 1, 2, 3 and Octavio. Is she
Octavio's daughter or granddaughter ? She ends up
a DH herself in Splatoon 2, so we may jump up to that conclusion...
Anyway, on this picture, we can see her without any glasses.
Maybe the first generation of hypnotic glasses didn't work properly,
so she was fully herself again ?
Once she was her true self again, she may have left Octavio's army
and may have contacted the Inkling people,
so that she could create the band Off the Hook with Pearl,
which would have given birth to some sort of alliance between Inklings and Octarians
by proposing Octarian areas for the Inkling Splatfests.
All this elements seem pretty solid, but it remains our personal interpretation
of the game. And in Splatoon, most of
the hints in this story are only implied and not
explicitly expressed. So feel free to have
some theories of your own ! We hope you enjoyed
our explanations and theories. This was Argorok and EvilSquid speaking,
see you soon in a next video !
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