Tales of Xillia Interview: Namco’s RPG Series Gets Bigger and Bigger

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Tales of Xillia Interview: Namco’s RPG Series Gets Bigger and Bigger

Lead screen Xillia

Good news for anyone who’s been enjoying Namco Bandai’s enormous JRPG Tales of Graces F since its launch back in August: its immediate successor, Tales of Xillia, is on its way exclusively to PlayStation 3 in 2013.

We’ve struggled our way through an hour or so of the original Japanese version, which launched overseas back in 2011, and the 13th entry in the long-running series brings with it a number of significant new innovations for the much-loved franchise. Duly, we took the time to check in with producer Hideo Baba while in Tokyo last month to find out exactly what fans should expect.

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PlayStation Blog: What are the key new additions to the Tales formula since Tales of Graces?
Hideo Baba, Producer: There are many unique features in Xillia but I’d like to emphasise that the battle system is very unique and much improved over the previous title. Also, the portrayal of the game world and its atmosphere has also changed a lot too. 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.

PSB: Can you put that into real terms? Just how big is Tales of Xillia?
HB: Well, that depends on the player. 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.

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PSB: Xillia originally launched in Japan over a year ago, while Tales of Graces F took 18 months to make it to Europe. Do you hope to reduce the localisation time for future Tales titles?
HB: 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.

PSB: Many members of the PlayStation community would like to see an option to play the game with the original Japanese voice track. Is this something you’ve considered including?
HB: 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.

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63 Comments

  • “PSB: Many members of the PlayStation community would like to see an option to play the game with the original Japanese voice track. Is this something you’ve considered including?

    HB: 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.”

    thanks for asking the question :D

    and yeah almost all of Namco games have dual audio.

    Tekken series(granted everyone is mixed) Soul Calibur Series(every game to date) upcoming Ni No Kuni etc.

    so do your best to include it Namco!!!!!!!

  • @51 more Namco games have dual audio:

    Dragon Ball Z Budokai HD Collection, Eternal Sonata, Naruto games, One Piece: Pirate Warriors (No English Dub lol) et cetera

  • Thank you for the Q&A, I’m very happy to see the collaboration between Sony and Nacmo Bandai trying to advertise Tales Of Xillia. This is perhaps my most anticipated game of 2013, will definitely pick this up on release. Although it won’t stop me from picking this up but having a dual language option will definitely be great. Looking forward to any other future interviews on the Playstation Blog.

  • finished GracesF and I can’t wait for this!
    There is just something about the Tales Of Series that just keeps me interested and not a lot of games do that for me.

  • @52 not giving the One Piece game english dubbing was just lazy on their part. I do hope that DBZ HD Collection is available on psn though.

  • @30
    Indeed ;)
    Dodging the dual audio question again? Getting kind of old–I expect it from Square-Enix since they hate their fans. I have a solution, stop wasting money on dubbing the game and we can get the game much quicker. If small companies like NISA can afford to have dual audio on almost every single title they have released all the way back to their first on PS2 in 2003, than I think a big company like Namco-Bandai can….

    Not complaining, just stating a fact. Release it as DLC, charge for it, people will buy it. The fact is that selling games with dual audio increases your profits significantly. Tales games have an average of 250K-500K sales per game in the US, imagine 200K of those spending $10 on DLC for Japanese audio?

    When you’re cryptic, your fans don’t believe you, tell us the real reason rather than dodging the question.

    Either way, looking forward to this!

    @28
    Really, Symphonia was your favorite–it’s story was pretty lame? Now Vesperia had a good story, and great battle system.

  • Is it ok if I actually feel like we could get dual audio?

    I have nothing against English VAs (in fact I quite like Jade and Tear from Abyss and Pascal/Asbel from Graces) but I can’t thinkg of any VA that can deliver a solid Milla.

    Getting this day one, regardless.

  • To bad we didn’t get Tales of Vesperia DC Version, that would be cool.

    Any word on getting Tales of Destiny, and Tales of Destiny II (Tales of Eternia in Japan) on the PSN Store?

  • Cant wait for this to come to U.S. Been waiting for this since Tales of grace and even before that. Hope fully they bring Xillia2 over as well.

  • Day one buy, skipped on Graces F because of that “bleh” art. But it looks like a return to the Abyss/Vesperia art design, stoked for next year. And don’t listen to these kiddos complaining about voice acting, there’s a generation gap between people who grew up with dub anime in the 90s and those newer kids who only watch subs in 2000s.

  • well for all you guys who are hoping and wishing TALES Of XILLIA 2 is coming to AMERICA well it IS just as TALES OF XILLIA is coming here too (first duh) i hate ppl who are soooooo NEGATIVEo i cant wait to play both ive got my JAP XILLIA COMING IN 3 to 4 DAYS YEA!

  • @Maveruck81PL You should probably wait for a North American release date before you buy in entire system over a game. I’m sure you’ll find games you like on the system though.

  • A lot of the questions people in this comment section are ask we already have answers for. Japanese audio use has Licensing fees to pay and Tales games have way more dialogue to voice than other JRPG series and games like the Naruto and DBZ fighters have WAY LESS VOICE ACTING.

    The reason the games take so long to localize is because Namco never decides that they will localize the game until after its come out already in Japan. Vesperia was the only case where dual localization was planned and Microsoft was paying for that.

    Considering Tales of Vesperia came out 4 years ago, I don’t know why people are still asking for it. Namco has already decided they won’t and are moving on with newer games. Why localize a game that came out 4 years ago when they would be better off with the new game?

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