Good news for Tales fans: Tales of Xillia, immediate successor to Namco Bandai’s JRPG Tales of Graces F is finally on its way.
Playstation Blog recently had an interview with producer Hideo Baba to find out what fans should expect. The following is what we’ve learned about how Xillia will bring a number of significant innovations to the much-loved franchise.
Hideo Baba mentions improvements to the battle system, and explains how the portrayal of the game world, characters & atmosphere is on a much larger scale than Tales past:
“In the previous games the characters were very deformed – they were much shorter – but with Xillia the team has tried to show the characters in realistic proportions so that we can really convey the huge size of the world more effectively. The player can really feel how large the world is now.”
He also explains how the game is split between two protagonists, and how this affects the size of the game:
“There are two main characters in the game – if you play through the story from both points of view it will take you more than 100 hours to finish.”
Tales games have always had this annoying habit of taking ages to become localized, if at all. Hideo Baba offers his insight into the matter:
“I recognise how important it is to release a Western version as soon as possible after the Japanese release but sometimes some scenes prove difficult to describe in different languages. It’s very challenging to localise and properly convey the right sentiments to Western players. I would like to start a new method of localisation though – perhaps we could make the cinematic sequences in parallel with language translation to shorten the waiting time.”
Lastly, he talks about one of the most requested features when localizing Tales:
“I receive so many requests from foreign players for Japanese voice tracks in the Western version! However, there are some difficulties with the company and the voice actors. That said, I will be considering the feasibility of it.”
Tales of Xillia is on its way exclusively to the PlayStation 3 in 2013.
