Rumor: A new mainline "Tales of .." game to be revealed at Summer Game Fest

Probably another remake/remaster of an older title. Seems a bit too early for a completely new Tales game. Fans want an Abyss remaster/remake.
 
Probably another remake/remaster of an older title. Seems a bit too early for a completely new Tales game. Fans want an Abyss remaster/remake.

The last new Tales game came out 4 years ago. Announcement now with a release at the end of the year, or next year, seems fine to me.
 
It's sure they'll be revealing a new remaster this month, maybe they'll reveal a new entry an SGF too.
 
Just to keep expectations in check, it could be 'Tales of the Borderlands' or 'Tales of Kenzera Zau 2'.

Also it looks like it's leak week, which means I'll be staying put in certain threads and not browsing much until thursday.
 
Dude, I'm day 0 on this shit. I did not love Takes of Arise and felt it was missing some of the charm and pacing I was looking for....but...

but...let me tell yall about Tales of Graces F. ELITE! If you like Suikoden II remake, you fucking up by not having at least a look. If you lost your love for JRPG and don't remember why you love them, Tales of Graces F is the game for you.

Vesperia, Symphonia, Abyss. All legends mate. Pure legends.
 
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Arise was released 4 years ago and announced 6 years ago.

The last new Tales game came out 4 years ago. Announcement now with a release at the end of the year, or next year, seems fine to me.
I am aware. It's just that with Arise, I thought that Tales games are now "big projects" inside Bamco, taking their time. But it would be cool if they had a new mainline title ready.

That being said, I am still waiting on Ace Combat 8 and Code Vein 2....
 
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I loved arise but they screwed up in two areas that need addressed in the next game.


1: Bosses: Arises bosses were damage sponges that you couldn't break at all and it made them feel insanely OP compared to the rest of the enemies u faced which made for a frustrating time. Not being able to break them until half there healthbar was gone felt like a mistake.


2: Fix the pacing issues with the next story. In arise i felt like the back half of the story got sped up wayyyy too much and things that needed explained more or needed more context fell by the wayside. An example of this is vholran. He literally has little to no backstory like 90% of the game and then bam here's some backstory that's a mess.
 
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The last new Tales game came out 4 years ago. Announcement now with a release at the end of the year, or next year, seems fine to me.
Yep, it's about time.

Arise was the fastest selling and I think highest selling, but I'd be surprised if it didn't cap out at 3 million. Just something missing there.

but...let me tell yall about Tales of Graces F. ELITE!
They still haven't made as good a cast or combat system as Graces F. I hope they're focused on doing something special with this next one.
 
i just remembered tales of arise still unopened new on my cabinet lol
 
It's about time.
Hopefully it's good. Arise was a bit underwhelming, I enjoyed the combat and visuals but the story and pacing were pretty bad.


I loved arise but they screwed up in two areas that need addressed in the next game.
1: Bosses: Arises bosses were damage sponges that you couldn't break at all and it made them feel insanely OP compared to the rest of the enemies u faced which made for a frustrating time. Not being able to break them until half there healthbar was gone felt like a mistake.

Yeah the bosses sucked because they went against the core mechanics of the combat system.
The game focuses on spongy enemies because the idea was to build up combos and insta kill them with boost strikes. But you can't do that with bosses, and you couldn't even perform long combos on them because you could't break their stance. So it just feels like hitting a wall for 15 minutes.
 
Can't be worse than Arise I guess

Sure it can, they just have to follow FFXVI's lead. Take away control of all party members, remove parties entirely, remove all RPG systems, leave in all the MMO fetch quests and bad story.

There it's worse.
 
It's about time.
Hopefully it's good. Arise was a bit underwhelming, I enjoyed the combat and visuals but the story and pacing were pretty bad.




Yeah the bosses sucked because they went against the core mechanics of the combat system.
The game focuses on spongy enemies because the idea was to build up combos and insta kill them with boost strikes. But you can't do that with bosses, and you couldn't even perform long combos on them because you could't break their stance. So it just feels like hitting a wall for 15 minutes.

The bosses just weren't fun at all and they dragged the game down alot. I also didn't like that the CP pool was used by the entire party and not attached to the individual characters themselves. It made CP a pain in the butt to manage during boss fights.
 
I hope so, I've been enjoying all Tales Of games and really liked Arise (except for that extremely boring and clearly rushed last segment)
 
A new game would be nice, but if it's another remaster... Xillia 1 and 2 probably need it more than most. Both were great games, but saddled with the Playstation 3's baggage.
 
I loved arise but they screwed up in two areas that need addressed in the next game.


1: Bosses: Arises bosses were damage sponges that you couldn't break at all and it made them feel insanely OP compared to the rest of the enemies u faced which made for a frustrating time. Not being able to break them until half there healthbar was gone felt like a mistake.


2: Fix the pacing issues with the next story. In arise i felt like the back half of the story got sped up wayyyy too much and things that needed explained more or needed more context fell by the wayside. An example of this is vholran. He literally has little to no backstory like 90% of the game and then bam here's some backstory that's a mess.

I had a bunch of other issues:

1) Removing AI combat direction. This was a big one. In past games, you could direct your party members to attack different targets from you, for instance. Not in Arise, and my teammates were constantly interrupting my combos.
2) No individual sound sliders. Pretty boggling for such a major release. There were no separate sliders for music, SFX, and voices. Just one generic volume slider. Compounded onto this was the music was mixed to be very quiet compared to the rest of the game's sound. Arise has one of Sakuraba's better OSTs but it's so quiet most of the time.
3) Tossing out the hand drawn portraits for skits. The anime style drawings lent so much more personality to skits than awkwardly forcing the in-game models into the comic book style used in Arise. Also doesn't help that a lot of the skits kinda sucked.

Ironically regarding your second point, I felt the game slowed to a crawl (how many hours of exposition in a row were there near the end?) while simultaneously giving very little of value. Tales games usually have shit villains though and the latest entries usually shit the bed by the end, so this isn't out of character anyway, except for how much exposition there is. God.
 
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Plot twist it's just Keighley's announcement for the commercial break in the middle, game's called Tales of my ass Switch 2 exclusive but only for people who preordered the Switch introduction game. Legit successor to Life of black tiger
 
Maybe I'm just crazy but I Really liked Tales of Symphonia 2, at least the combat and story parts of it. I wouldn't mind if they brought that one back.
 
Dude, I'm day 0 on this shit. I did not love Takes of Arise and felt it was missing some of the charm and pacing I was looking for....but...

but...let me tell yall about Tales of Graces F. ELITE! If you like Suikoden II remake, you fucking up by not having at least a look. If you lost your love for JRPG and don't remember why you love them, Tales of Graces F is the game for you.

Vesperia, Symphonia, Abyss. All legends mate. Pure legends.

Yes Vesperia has been my favorite so far but I haven't played them all. Zesteria I dropped on the last boss. Just not a good game but I was so desperate for a JRPG I just kept going. Berseria was much better but about midway I didn't like where the story went and it got a bit boring. w
 
Was one of my 2025 gaming predictions that we'd get a new mainline Tales announced. Hoping for it, it's been a little while.
 
I had a bunch of other issues:

1) Removing AI combat direction. This was a big one. In past games, you could direct your party members to attack different targets from you, for instance. Not in Arise, and my teammates were constantly interrupting my combos.
2) No individual sound sliders. Pretty boggling for such a major release. There were no separate sliders for music, SFX, and voices. Just one generic volume slider. Compounded onto this was the music was mixed to be very quiet compared to the rest of the game's sound. Arise has one of Sakuraba's better OSTs but it's so quiet most of the time.
3) Tossing out the hand drawn portraits for skits. The anime style drawings lent so much more personality to skits than awkwardly forcing the in-game models into the comic book style used in Arise. Also doesn't help that a lot of the skits kinda sucked.

Ironically regarding your second point, I felt the game slowed to a crawl (how many hours of exposition in a row were there near the end?) while simultaneously giving very little of value. Tales games usually have shit villains though and the latest entries usually shit the bed by the end, so this isn't out of character anyway, except for how much exposition there is. God.

Your partner a.i in the game is absolute garbage and some of the worst i've experienced in a game in a long long long time. My teammates would just rush the boss and not dodge any of the bosses attacks which would result in them dying in like 10 seconds and then i'd have to resurrect them or try healing them nonstop which in turn screwed me because all my healing items would be gone instantly. It was insanely frustrating to deal with and made boss fights even harder then they already were.


I agree on the sound sliders and the skits as well. The skits in particular were jarring and sometimes boring. Kisara had all of her skits be about her brother who you never see essentially, and law's were about his dead dad who didn't have alot of development. Then towards the end of the game they started spamming skit after skit endlessly at you to the point that you'd go 15 to 20 minutes straight of just skits. Less is more and spamming alot of filler skits that added nothing to the story was obnoxious 'owl skits as well'.
 
Imagine if they can use generative AI to produce infinite skits.

Like any time you open a chest, walk past some tree, peruse the item store, ANYTHING, you can push a button and your party will discuss it and react to it at length.

The possibilities are endless. It's time for a true next gen Tales Of experience.
 
Always like jRPGs but found the Tales series to be underwhelming. Going to be hard for them after Expedition 33 unless they make the next game a lot better than Arise.
 
I want a Abyss sequel

Abyss is still my favorite Tales
I have a love hate relationship with Abyss. I do fucking hate Luke during the first parts of the game. But I also know that he's deliberately written like that, and it makes for a better payoff. But damn, it is quite annoying to play through the first parts of the game...

Edit: But I do have mad respect for Bamco to actually do something like this. That being said, and I know this might be sacrilege, I do have a soft spot for Zestiria and I would really like a remake of it based on the original concepts before Baba fucked it up, just so he could get with the voice actress.
 
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What's the story behind that?
As far as I know, Bamco basically set up Alisha as the main heroine of Zestiria in the marketing and PR. In the release version of the game, she's not really present. Even not in the party for most of it. Instead, another female party member, Rose, was quite prominent. She even got her own DLC. And it turned out that the reason for this is that Baba ordered to rewrite the story and cut the game in a way such that Rose had much more screen time because he wanted to get with Rose's voice actress. And it didn't help that the accompanying mobile game at the time directly called Alisha the main heroine of Zestiria. Baba, of course, tried to smooth things over by saying that Zestiria was advertised in a wrong way etc. but people in Japan were fucking furious. It also didn't help that Baba was inconsistent with his reasonings in different interviews about the whole situation. It ended with him and the voice actress of Rose standing on a stage and publicly apologizing.
The mobile game and Zestiria didn't do well and that contributed to him losing his position as "brand manager" of the Tales games. As I understand, Bamco tried to "course correct" by giving Alisha a lot of screen time in the Anime and making her a lesbian who gets with Rose, so that Rose is still present. But I haven't seen it.

Baba then went on to join another company and was tasked with working on the Sakura Wars mobile game, which failed (in fact, it failed so hard that it probably soured Sega on the IP). And people who worked on that project with him came out saying that he's apparently a total dickhead. Then he went on to form another company to work with Square Enix on a JRPG (Project Prelude Rune), which was cancelled.

Edit: I should mention that the marketing had me fooled as well. I never was big into Tales. Essentially only played Abyss and was in the mood for a new JRPG at the time that wasn't FF or Dragon Quest. And I thought the setting, the protagonist and the obvious love interest seemed like it could be a solid game. Nothing ground-breaking but a solid story. Well... the game turned out like it did, and the whole premise of the story turned out to be wrong. In fact, I found Rose actually really annoying, tbh. And I remember thinking even back then, without being aware of the drama, that it felt weird how Alisha was pretty much shafted for most of the game. It didn't feel natural to the story at all.
Then I lost interest in the Tales franchise again until Arise. My only criticism with Arise is that the skits feel cheap.
 
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I hope one day they can remaster the PS2 TOD Director's cut, though it's probably impossible since 3D is the main stream now.
 
On one hand, it's about time, but on the other hand... I still have three games to complete. Zestiria, Berseria, and Arise.
 
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