Tales of Arise ‘Battle System and Characters’ developer diary

Bandai Namco has released the second official developer diary for Tales of Arise, which discusses the game’s battle system and characters with producer Yusuke Tomizawa, director Hirokazu Kagawa, and art director Minoru Iwamoto.

Tales of Arise is due out for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam on September 10 worldwide. It will launch for consoles on September 9 in Japan.

Get the developer diary and full transcript below.

English

■ Transcript

Yusuke Tomizawa, Producer: “I am Yusuke Tomizawa, the producer of Tales of Arise. Today, I would like to introduce how we have taken the theme of “Inheritance and Evolution” and applied it to the iconic battles and character expressions often seen in the Tales of series.”

Hirokazu Kagawa, Director: “I am Hirokazu Kagawa, the project director. For each installment of the Tales of series, we have always challenged past battle systems, and have committed to improving and delivering new battle system elements and an overall experience to the ‘action battles.’ However, as the history of battle systems build up, the system has the tendency to become more and more complex.

“In this game, our goal was to create ‘an action RPG that can be enjoyed by everybody,’ so we have revisited the complexities and the balance of attacks and evasion, and have implemented a ‘Counter Edge’ feature that provides satisfaction when performing counter attacks.

“We have also added new systems called ‘Boost Attack’ and ‘Boost Strike.’ This obviously has the purpose of providing a good tempo to the battle as it is easy to execute during combos, leading to a satisfying final move, but the most important aspect of Tales of are the battles that emphasize each character’s ‘specialty,’ as well as the comfort of fighting with your team members. This was always in our mind when we were designing this.

“I personally really enjoy battles in Tales of games, and that the controls were evolving to be instinctive for the player. I plan to continue fine tuning this area to the very end.”

Tomizawa: “The battle sequences just mentioned by Kagawa-san are not the only areas where the liveliness and characteristics of the characters can be felt. The movie scenes and field areas are also areas where players can feel close attachment to the characters.”

Minoru Iwamoto, Art Director: “I am Minori Iwamoto, the art director. We have especially put emphasis towards the face and body movements by using facial capture and high-quality motion capture technologies to rely on the character emotions of Tales of Arise. We have expressed subtle changes in emotion of the characters through careful mouth movements, movement of the eyebrows, and facial angles, so that the emotions can be expressed with body movements.

“In addition, Tales of has been committed to not just good-looking visuals, but expressing the characters from different angles. Therefore, we have strived to show character personality in simple idle motions as well as movements during fast-paced battles. I have designed the characters centered around the six main characters constantly keeping in mind the types of movements that I wanted the characters to act out.

“As development progresses, I have always felt the importance of applying love and detail into the characters as they gradually take life… I hope this can be felt by the players as well.”

Tomizawa: “We were only able to show you a little bit in this footage, but I look forward to players experiencing the game for themselves. I plan to roll out more and more new information about the game. We have a little bit more time until the release of the game, and I hope everybody looks forward to playing.”

Japanese