Work on Tales of Xillia 2 is in its final phases, Tales series producer Hideo Baba told Famitsu.com during an interview at the Comic-Con event in San Diego this past weekend. The major elements are already in the game, said Baba.
Famitsu's interview was mostly about Namco Bandai's international plans for the series. Baba noted that he'd just visited Europe, where he'd toured England, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. He gave presentations on Tales of Graces F, and also announced Tales of Xillia for European release. Fans at the Japan Expo in Paris, where the game was announced, were thrilled, said Baba.
The site asked if Namco Bandai has plans to make a Tales game that matches the tastes of overseas fans. This will not happen, said Baba. They plan on continuing their current approach -- make and deliver Tales games to Japanese users first, and then take the resulting game as is to overseas users.
Baba does hope to make one change, though: he wants to increase the opportunity to bring the games to overseas fans.
Back on Xillia 2, the site asked Baba if all his time spent overseas for events like Comic-Con would take away from the sequel's development. He assured that this was not the case. While the time difference makes things difficult, he receives reports from his staff daily, and gives back instructions.
So can international players look forward to a release for the sequel outside of Japan? There are no plans at present, said Baba. However, since they're releasing Xillia, fans would be disappointed if they did not release the sequel, so they would like to release Xillia 2 if at all possible.