- "What good fortune you have, to be present for this moment in history! Now feast your eyes upon the One True Magic!" —To Osvald
Harvey is a character in Octopath Traveler II. He is the main antagonist and final boss of Osvald's story.
A scholar of magic on par with Osvald, Harvey betrayed his former colleague by murdering his family and stole his research for his own gain. He then continued his studies into the One True Magic, pursuing a "seventh source" which differs from the six known elements of fire, ice, lightning, wind, light, and darkness.
Profile[]
Appearance[]
Harvey wears a large black cloak with a long cape. He has a goatee and a red combover drooping down one side of his face.
Personality[]
When he first met Osvald, Harvey presented himself as an intelligent, cultured scholar eager to debate ideas regarding magic with him. In reality, he is a brutal and narcissistic man, having no qualms with manipulating and killing innocent people for his own gain. He is also quite sadistic, taking immense joy in taunting Osvald during their final battle along with Ori mentioning in her notes that he gleefully tortured the animal that became the Darkling.
His main motivation is a sheer, unquenchable inferiority complex towards Osvald. As the only man who was able to stand as an equal to him in the pursuit of the One True Magic, Harvey became obsessed with surpassing him to prove his superiority. He is willing to go to any lengths just to beat him, ranging from murdering an innocent woman and child to trick Osvald into thinking his family had been killed to even bribing the judge responsible for Osvald's trial to change his sentence to life imprisonment instead of death just so Osvald could witness him mastering the One True Magic before he could.
Story[]
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(I don't think this is where I should be going at the moment...) The following section contains potential story spoilers! |
Prior to Story[]
Harvey is a professor in Montwise who long studied Gratton's Hypothesis to uncover the One True Magic, his research involved studying monsters for their ability to use innate magic. One day, he was commissioned by Oboro of the Moonshade Order to recreate the Book of Demons for them. He also acted on the Moonshade Order's demands to experiment on a captured Toto'haha animal that Ochette didn’t choose as her companion and mutate it into the Darkling of the Sorrowful Moon.
Five years prior to the events of the story, Harvey was holding a lecture in Montwise before he met Osvald V. Vanstein and, amazed by his own research into the "One True Magic”, decided to form a partnership with him. However, it was a cover as Harvey was really after Osvald's wife Rita Lumina, one of the surviving members of the Lumina bloodline, and their daughter Elena, due to their blood being key to his research. After killing two people matching their general appearance, Harvey abducted Osvald's family and burned the latter's home to the ground, making it look like Osvald committed the deed. As he taunted Osvald over the supposed deaths of his wife and daughter, Captain Stenvar comes to arrest Osvald as a murderer, having been bribed by Harvey to do so. He also bribed the judge that oversaw Osvald’s trial into giving him a life sentence on Frigit Isle instead of the death penalty, as he was counting on Osvald ultimately escaping the prison so that the vengeful man could live to see the results of Harvey’s studies.
During the following five years, Harvey used Osvald's research notes to deduce that the monsters' innate magic is derived from their blood, and he began to create chimeras in secret. He killed Rita after using her blood to create the Grieving Golem, though he deemed the creature a failure despite it manifesting a bit of the Shadow magic he sought. Harvey also brainwashed Elena into believing he is her father so that she is more compliant to his whims.
Story[]
Five years later, Osvald eventually escaped prison as Harvey counted on, and was confronted by the man once he arrived his underground laboratory under the library in Montwise. Harvey taunted Osvald about his stolen research and made it his own, only to be amused when Osvald demanded to know why he took his family from him. Harvey then told Osvald to he should be able to figure it out as he called the Grieving Golem, which horrified Osvald with the truth that he his family's deaths were faked and Rita was used in one of Harvey's experiments to create the monster. Osvald is then forced to kill the Grieving Golem, after which Harvey admitted he killed Rita to use her blood to create the monster and that, as a member of the Lumina family, her blood is essential to obtain the what he considers to be the One True Magic: Shadow. Harvey further tormented Osvald by telling him that he placed Elena, who is revealed to still be alive, under a memory-modifying spell and that he intended to sacrifice her to fully harness Shadow magic before both Elena and Harvey departed for Gravell.
Once in Gravell, he stirred up a mysterious black fog within the Duskruin Shrine, creating a number of black crystals that possessed the townspeople worshiping nearby. Harvey proceeded to desecrate the resting place of D’arqest within the shrine to complete the Book of Demons before beginning a ritual to transfer Elena's blood into the book, stabbing Elena moments after Osvald arrived to gain the ability to harness Shadow magic through the tome. Harvey used this moment to admit that he long envied Osvald as he unleashed a blast of Shadow magic in a display of power. But Osvald's resolve to protect the still-living Elena combined with his photographic memory of his research notes allowed him to manifest the actual One True Magic and defeat Harvey on equal footing. Despite his defeat, Harvey refused to surrender the book as he attempted to draw more power in a final attempt to destroy Osvald, only to annihilate himself in a tremendous blast of Shadow power.
However, according to one of Ori's journal fragments found in the Fellsun Ruins, Harvey somehow survived and escaped after his battle with Osvald.[note 1]
Battle[]
Quotes[]
Gallery[]
Etymology[]
"Harvey" is derived from the Old Breton name "Haerviu," which means "battle-worthy" or "worthy of a battle." This name reflects Harvey's obsessive rivalry with Osvald and desire to outmatch him in power.
Harvey may also be named after the English physicist William Harvey (1578-1657), the first scientist to realize that blood circulation flows through the human body by way of a single system of arteries and veins. The historical Harvey's study of blood parallels the Octopath's groundbreaking attempts to derive magic from the blood of monsters and humans.
Trivia[]
- Harvey's battle style is similar to that of the Magic Master from Final Fantasy VI as both bosses are heavy magic users and with Ultimate Magic being similar to the Ultima magic spell that the Magic Master casts when his health runs out.
- However, unlike Magic Master, Harvey can be defeated before he uses Ultimate Magic if he is broken or runs out of health before he can start charging for the attack.
- Harvey is one of only three bosses/main antagonists to not be killed in the main character's respective final chapters, the others being Dolcinaea and Roque.
- Unlike the latter two, however, Harvey's survival is not revealed until the game's true final chapter through Ori's journal fragments found in Fellsun Ruins, though he makes no further appearances in the game after his battle with Osvald. It should be noted that the Japanese script does not say that Harvey survived his battle with Osvald, and his survival in the English script may be a mistranslation or that Ori mistook what she saw as Harvey's survival instead of his demise.
- Another note in Osvald's quest journal "The One True Magic, Defeated" states that Harvey "lost control of his magic and was eventually consumed by it, with his and Osvald's friendly discussions now a thing of the past", thereby further supporting the possible claim of Harvey's demise.
- Harvey shares his seiyu with Dio Brando from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and one of his battle poses mimics one of Dio's poses. It should be noted that Harvey is extremely cruel to Osvald and his family, similar to how Dio is extremely cruel to Jonathan Joestar, the first of the titular "Jojos," and his descendants. Much how like Dio's cruelty towards the Joestars is driven by a desire to one-up them, Harvey's cruelty towards Osvald and his family stems from his desire to one-up Osvald.
- One of Professor Harvey’s attacks, Elemental Distortion, uses the three elements that the scholar skill Elemental Barrage does not use: Wind, Light, and Dark.
- Harvey addresses D'arqest's corpse by intoning, "O great ancestor," implying he may be descended from the Archmage. Shortly afterward Harvey claims that "My covenant with him shall be fulfilled," though the covenant and the "him" to which he refers are unclear.
- According to Osvald, Harvey kept a black crystal in his lab. Similar black crystals possessed the worshipers at the Path to the Duskruin Shrine, and Osvald also notes in his final chapter that Harvey used a black crystal to control the Grieving Golem. These dark crystals presumably relate to the Shadow, but they are not mentioned or explained outside of Osvald's final chapter.
- Yasunori Nishiki composed the theme "Torrent of Evil" while watching one of Harvey's event scenes.[1]
- In addition to experimenting on monsters, Harvey may specialize in monster-taming, as evidenced by his chimeras (blended from Frost Bears, Salamanders, Manticores, and Kingfishers) and the monsters that appear in Osvald's Ch. 4 and 5 dungeons, which may belong to him.
Notes[]
- ↑ This, however, is not noted in the Japanese version, making this note in the English version likely a translation error.