Tales of Arise is an upcoming title for PC and home consoles that opts to change the battle system and other aspects to the known series. However, producer Yuusuke Tomizawa buds in to tell gamers and fans what Arise has in store gameplay and story wise thanks to a Famitsu interview.
If you want to read highlights from the Famitsu article regarding Tales of Arise, keep on reading. If you want a video summary on everything that lies below, YouTuber Jay RPG has you covered:
Firstly, the protagonist lives on the planet Dahna, and the planet that floats in the sky above is Rena where the heroine is from.
Dahna is a naturally rich planet and is like the Middle Ages in cultural. Rena is deep into science and magical arts and invaded Dahna 300 years before the events of Tales of Arise. With the latter overwhelming and enslaving the people of the former, both planets remained in this state for 300 years.
The protagonist wants to help his people — one direction the story takes — but when he teams up with the heroine, she and the protagonist are not very good friends (at the start), and their relationship (same goes for the two planets) leads to “great drama.”
Besides story stuff, development on this game is said to be considerably “challenging,” causing the devs to rethink what the Tales Of series is and what it should be.
On the topic of development, the Tales of Arise project started long before Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition. For context that was about a year ago.
Furthermore, the team’s goal is “succession and evolution,” but they noticed many parts needed to evolve in order to maintain and expand the brand from here on out to catch the eyes of the young. However, there’s no telling how this “goal” will affect the overall game and its design.
As you may know already, the devs behind Tales of Arise have done away with its old engine and created a new dedicated engine to vaunt rich lighting and atmospheric designs as well as unique watercolor-like graphics with approachable character models. The engine in question is based on the Unreal Engine 4 and features the team’s very own shaders and the like.
Tomizawa also emphasizes on making the game “a highly immersive experience.” Aside from the devs further enhancing the performance and actions to make the game more appealing, models of characters have been increased to “look more human.”
We also learn that a particular amount of effort has gone into motions meaning that clicking and snapping isn’t a thing, but smooth transitions between animations and other actions will be present.
2D anime elements are still important to the series according to Tomizawa, and plays a part in the balance that is “succession and evolution.”
Although veteran devs who worked on Tales of Phantasia, and Tales of Berseria are still around, Bandai Namco Studios is working with new talent to make the forthcoming title. The aforesaid are working on the battle system where players can unleash various actions depending on the situation while elements that raise the skill level are in the game, too.
Tomizawa also claims that they’re upping the intimidation of enemy designs to give players a great feeling of accomplishment after defeating a threat. Tomizawa says that although some female players may not like that it’s an important step for RPG battles to evoke a “sense of accomplishment” when battling a daunting enemy.
Tales of Arise is set to hit PC via Steam, PS4, and Xbox One sometime in 2020. If you haven’t had the chance to watch the official E3 reveal trailer, you can check it out below:
