How Life Is Strange Inspired By Tales Of Arise

On By Garmin Philip


This month, Game Informer’s The RPG issue featured Tales of Arise on the cover, and we were able to sit down with Bandai Namco to find out how he was reinventing the long-running franchise for a modern audience. It led to some interesting tidbits, from putting more strategy into combat to make players feel more in the action to having better puzzle implementation in dungeons. Bandai Namco never shied away from discussing the importance of this entry.

“This is a huge revival after 25 years of the Tales series, and we really wanted to take a Tales title to the next level,” producer Yusuke Tomizawa told us at the time. “We wanted to rise up and push the limits. [To do that,] We wanted to focus on really improving the quality, making sure it’s polished. And also, for the concept of the game, we want it to be really exciting for both new players and existing fans, preserving what everyone has loved about Tales, but also attracting a new audience. “

With various improvements to the formula, we were curious about the games and media that inspired the team when they created this new entry in the beloved franchise. Director Hirokazu Kagawa couldn’t point to anything in particular, but said that he was performing a lot of Dark Souls in his spare time. While art director and character designer Minoru Iwamoto said he looked at art from around the world and referred to various mediums such as manga, American cartoons and other role-playing games for inspiration.

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Tomizawa took the opportunity to mention Life is Strange and the impact it had on him. “We started developing Tales of Arise in 2016,” he recalled. “Initially, when we were considering what kind of art style and direction we wanted to take in this game, at the time, I was playing Life is Strange a lot. He was a huge fan due to the art direction, which was a very good balance between photorealism and [animation]. It was very shocking. And Life is Strange is an adventure game with a very beautiful story, and that story really inspired me to deliver that same level of beauty and quality in the Tales of Arise story. So I have to say that Life is Strange was a huge influence and inspiration in the planning and development of Tales of Arise. “

One of the first things fans noticed when Tales of Arise was revealed was its more mature style, which had more of a balance between the series’ classic anime style and photorealistic art. Although realism was a broader approach, Iwamoto said the team worked hard to still “preserve Tales’s signature style,” referring to its popular 3D anime art style. It’s not hard to see how Life is Strange could have gotten into the conversation here, but it also made us remember another place where it may have had some influence.

Later in our interview, Tomizawa mentioned how Tales of Arise takes the characters in a more mature direction. “We wanted the characters to feel very real and very human,” he said. “One thing that changed from previous Tales Of titles is that kind of reality, the human aspect of [Tales of Arise]. We try to achieve this by actually investigating how [characters] speak, their gestures and how they react to certain situations … That is practically the difference between the Tales of the past [entries] and [Tales of Arise]. The characters are a little more human, more real and they are a little more mature in terms of the design of the characters and how we portray them. ”

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Tales of Arise launches September 10 for PS5, Xbox Series X / S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Be sure to click our hub below to learn more about the game!


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