Famitsupublisheda long interview withTales of Ariseproducer Yusuke Tomizawa. Our comrades atGame’s Talkpublished a summary of the interview, making my task much faster. Here are the main tidbits and new information we learned.
Tales of Arise’s development began long before theTales of Vesperia Remasterwas announced in June 2018.
As already mentioned,Tales of Ariseis a challenge for the development team, with a huge boost in graphics, and new evolutions while keeping the series' traditions and touch. This is to keepTales ofSeriesgoing forward and bringing in new fans to the franchise. With that said, older fans shouldn’t worry, as while the first trailer looks quite different from the rest of the series,Tales of Ariseis definitely aTales of Seriesgame through and through.
Tales of Ariseuses a new engine based on Unreal Engine 4 that allows far more beautiful graphics, such as better light effect, or better shaders for the character models.Tales of Ariseaims to be as immersive as possible and aims to make the player feel as if the characters are truly alive. This will be expressed through many details, such as how the characters move. For example, if you run and make a sharp turn, they turn around realistically, not instantly like in most video games.
Tales of Arise’s main character designer and art director is Minoru Iwamoto. It’s the first time for a mainTales of Seriesgame that both of these positions are held by the same person. This allows reflecting the cultures ofTales of Arise’s planets Dahna and Rena through the characters' designs and clothing, making the game even more immersive. MInoru Iwamoto previously worked on the character designs ofTales of Vesperia, Tales of ZestiriaandTales of Berseria.
The graphics for the characters' facial animations and the various camera work aims to look as good as recent 3DCG anime. However,Tales of Arisewill also feature 2D animated sequences like in otherTales of Seriesgames.
Tales of Ariseis developed internally at Bandai Namco. Part of the staff on it previously worked on the very first game in the series,Tales of Phantasia, and some others were on the latest game,Tales of Berseria.This mix of old and new staff will allowTales of Ariseto bring forth new evolution to the series while keeping its traditions.
Who is handlingTales of Arise’s OST will be revealed at a later date. The game will also have an opening theme song. Producer Yusuke Tomizawa keeps mentioning “tradition”, so it’s just my personal guess but it’ll probably be Motoi Sakuraba doing the OST, coupled with Go Shiina, because of Producer Tomizawa also beingGod EaterandCode Vein’s producer.
One of the stories' themes will be standing up for change, as the main character is from Dahna, and Dahna’s people are being enslaved by those of planet Rena. The main character wears a mask and armor because of a certain reason related to his body. And he will change armors and clothes depending on certain situations, which will be reflected visually as well.
The female main character shown in the trailer is a cool, strong-willed woman from planet Rena. Both characters don’t get along when they first meet, seeing the relationship between their planets, but they will slowly learn to know each other beyond their prejudiced beliefs.
Tales of Arise’s battle system, which will be detailed at a later date, is designed to be exhilarating even for those who never played the series. It’s speedy and intuitive. A lot of monsters were designed to be scary and menacing. Some developers might think that making the monsters scary in a series with a massive female player fanbase such asTales ofmight be a bad move, thinking that women would feel intimidated.Tales of Arise’s development team thankfully didn’t think that way and made the enemies super scary to give players a sense of accomplishment when defeating them. It’s not like the game has no cute monsters though.
The development team is currently going through all the staples of theTales of Serieslike the action battles and the skits, thinking “why is it popular?” and “how can it be improved and evolved?”, to include them inTales of Arise. SoTales of Ariseshould have Skits but they’ll probably look different.
Seeing it has been a few years since the lastTales ofgame, (many were skeptical whether a new game was actually in development or not), Producer Tomoziwa mentioned they’ll give regular updates on social media to show howTales of Arise’sdevelopment is progressing. There’s also a new category forTales of Arisedevelopment updates on theTales Channel official blog. He can’t guarantee it, but he’d also like us to be able to try outTales of Arisebefore launch too, hinting at a demo.
“Arise” was the game’s early code name, and it indicates how they’re trying to elevate the series to new heights, that’s why they kept that name even if there’s already aTOA,Tales of the Abyss. As such, to avoid overlapping withTales of the Abyss,Tales of Ariseis shortened toTOARISEorアライズinstead ofTOA.
Lastly, when asked about around whenTales of Arisemight release, Producer Tomizawa mentioned that the game’s development is well advanced, but they still wish to brush it up. There are also multiple elements still under development, like the battle system and story parts.
Tales of Arisewill launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC via Steam in 2020. Bandai Namco revealedTales of Ariseat E3 2019. you may read about the story, check out the first trailer, screenshots and more comments from Tomizawa inour previous article.
More info onTales of Arisewill be coming at Tales of Festival 2019 on June 15.
