¿Confirmado? Tales of Vesperia para XBOX 360

Japan's most popular non-Square-Enix RPG series comes to Xbox 360
Article writ by Nick Des Barres


"On a freezing, rainy day in January, play editors Nick Des Barres and Dai Kohama were invited to Namco Bandai's Tokyo offices for an exclusive glimpse at a top-secret new project, the existence of which had only been made known two weeks before: Tales of Vesperia. A stunning 720p teaser trailer released to the net on the last day of 2007 confirmed that Japan's third-most popular RPG series was going gloriously next-gen, with an aesthetic that can only be describe as "living anime". The trailer made it clear we were dealing with a high-def game, and to paraphrase a statement made by director Yosh[ito] Higuchi in the days following the teaser's release, "that can only mean one of two systems."

Imagine our surprise when we entered a Namco Bandai conference room to find an elaborate shrine-like display of the Tales series's past triumphs...and a lone Xbox 360. The company has been famously high on Microsoft's 'box of late, blessing it with games like Beautiful Katamari, Ace Combat 6, and Eternal Sonata, but the Tales series represents what is arguably the most valuable non-anime brand the company controls in Japan. And it goes without saying, Japan hasn't been too hot on 360. While the revelation of platform proved a shock, so did the quality of the game-but for completely different reasons. Tales of Vesperia manages to trump Ubisoft's Naruto and Namco's own Japan-only iDOLM@STER visually, with jaw-dropping next-gen cel shading and huge, expansive background vistas that seem straight out of a Studio Ghibli film. Best realtime 3-D anime visuals ever? Take a look at these screens and get back to me.

What can we expect from the game itself? More trademark RPG excellence from Team Symphonia (responsible for Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube, and Tales of the Abyss on Playstation 2), with instantly-likeable characters, cunning puzzle dungeons, and, of course, frenetic, pyrotechnic, fighting game-inspired realtime action battles. Vesperia will mark the series's tenth anniversary in North America, and Namco is promising for the first time ever to put real muscle behind its English release. Both Symphonia and Abyss are generally considered to be among the finest J-RPG localizations of all time, so it would seem safe to assume this game will be just as good, if not better. As to when this role-playing animextravaganza might be spinning in our Xboxen, the teaser trailer touted only a release date of "2008" (Namco's lips are sealed on the matter, but the smart money for the initial Japanese release would seem to be fourth quarter).

We wish we were able to tell you more about Tales of Vesperia, but play necessarily walked into Namco Bandai's lair as information virgins, armed only with what we could clean from watching the one minute, fifty-second teaser for hours on end. Although director Higuchi and producer Tsutomu Gouda were unforthcoming with many details (such as the names of any characters besides protagonist Yuri and apparent antagonist Flynn), they were surprisingly candid about other aspects, including the reality of the Xbox 360's current situation in Japan and the perception of the Tales series around the world. It was clear they are very excited about their new baby, and it was impossible not to get swept up by their enthusiasm."


"This magnificent city would seem to be hero Yuri's home town, protected from monsters that run rampant beyond its borders by a huge, translucent barrier visible in the sky overhead."


"Tales of the Abyss's popular "FR-LMBS" battle system has evolved into "EFR-LMBS": Appropriately enough, "Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System"."


"Vesperia's cast of protagonists revealed so far. The hero is dark-haired Yuri, described as an "empathetic" youth with a "fully-formed personality" (to contrast with the traditionally immature heroes of previous Tales)."

Interview
Yosh[ito] Higuchi, Director and Tsutomu Gouda, Producer
Interview by Nick Des Barres & Dai Kohama / Transcribed by Dai Kohama
Translated by Nick Des Barres

play: Thanks for sitting down with us today. Can you first tell us about your role in the Tales series so far?
Yosh[ito] Higuchi: I wasn't an original member of the Tales team. I began in planning on the original Soulcalibur for arcade and Dreamcast, and eventually joined Tales after a number of other projects. My first was Tales of Symphonia on GameCube, followed by the overseas versions, and a PlayStation 2 port which was only released in Japan. Most recently I directed Tales of the Abyss, and now I'm directing Tales of Vesperia.

Is Vesperia being developed by the same team as Symphonia and Abyss?
YH: Mostly, yes. We originally called ourselves "Team Symphonia"-you could say 90% of us are working on Vesperia today, myself and the scenario writer included. All of the core staff remain the same.

Unusually for a Tales, this game hasn't even been officially announced in Japan yet. We don't have much information at all-can you introduce the project for us?
YH: Well, we've set our target age range for Vesperia a little higher than previous games. Tales is usually aimed at middle and high school students-teenagers. With this game being on HD hardware, we want to cater to the high school/university student age range and higher. Tales games are usually stories about the main character's growth, but you could say our main character for Vesperia, Yuri, already has a fully-formed personality. His narrative purpose is really to spur growth in the friends he meets along his journey. This is one of the two key through lines of our story.

And the other?
YH: This will take some explaining, but Yuri is a very empathetic person. He cares deeply about his friends and family, though he doesn't have any blood relatives of his own. As an example, let's say he's faced with two problems: On one hand there's someone in a lot of trouble-let's say this person is starving and penniless. At the same time some faction or other may be trying to perpetrate much larger crimes. Yuri is the kind of person who would judge the larger crime to be out of his reach, and he'd try to save the starving person first. In contrast to that, we have another character, Flynn, who Yuri grew up with. Like Yuri, he has a strong sense of justice and wants to better the world, but he wants to do it from within the establishment. Flynn's looking at the bigger picture, trying to use politics to better his country. The conflict and contrast between Yuri and Flynn is our other main through line.

Would you say they're like rivals?
YH: in a way, yes. It's not as if they're necessarily at odds with one another, though over the course of the game their differences in ideology will cause them to clash. By the way, in the short teaser trailer you can see on the net, Yuri is the character with long black hair, and Flynn the one in white armor.

I watched the teaser so many times (laughs). The visuals made it obvious this game would be HD, but I have to admit I was very surprised to discover just minutes ago that Vesperia is for Xbox 360.
YH: Oh? Why is that? (laughs)

I wondered if you were aiming directly at the Western markets.
YH: No, it's not like that at all-we're not that bigheaded yet (laughs). Like always, I think that our Japanese fans understand Tales the best. But does that mean Tales can't succeed in the West? Of course not-Symphonia proved that there are plenty of Western gamers who appreciate the very Japanese sense Tales has. Our goal is to make this game for everyone who appreciates that sort of aesthetic, so, no we're not aiming directly at the Western market.

We love the 360, but it hasn't been doing very well in Japan.
YH: I suppose you want to ask, "why 360?" (laughs) We had actually begun research into HD hardware while still working on Abyss. When Abyss was finished, it was very well-received, and we had to decide where we were going next. There were many possibilities-at the time, we could certainly have done another game on PS2. But we felt there was a need to go HD. Logic would dictate we'd have to do it eventually, so why not now? That left two choices. When we started this project, the 360 had the more complete development environment.

Was that the only reason?
YH: Well, even thought the West isn't our main target, I knew we had to cater to our overseas fans as well, so that's another reason. But this doesn't mean we're not going to work on PS3 or other hardware-just that Tales is coming to the 360 first.

Can you see Vesperia getting ported to PS3 some time in the future, like Eternal Sonata?
YH: Yes, I won't deny the possibility. But we're not thinking about it yet-there are so many other things to concentrate on first.