Tales (video game series)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Tales series has shipped more than 30 million copies as of 2024, and plenty of English-speaking players have still never heard of it. It is a family of fantasy role-playing games published by Bandai Namco, begun in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom. Seventeen main titles later, the series is treated as a niche taste in the West, while in Japan it counts among the most important franchises of its kind. How did one game on the Super Famicom grow into that? Why do its battles play like a brawler instead of a menu? And why did one of its producers say his team did not think of these games as role-playing games at all?

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• 2. A Troubled Debut

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  Before it became a game, Tales was a novel that nobody published. Yoshiharu Gotanda wrote Tale Phantasia, and when production began on Tales of Phantasia he served as both scenario writer and lead programmer. Several elements of the novel were dropped or changed as the story took shape.

  The game came from Wolf Team, an independent studio founded in 1986. Some of its staff had bad experiences at their previous employer, Telenet Japan, so they went looking for an independent publisher. A pitch to Enix was unsuccessful. They signed a publishing contract with Namco, which later became part of Bandai Namco.

  The original Super Famicom version had a troubled development, with many creative disagreements between Wolf Team and Namco. Most of the Wolf Team staff left once the game was done and started a new company, tri-Ace. That company went on to make the Star Ocean series. The members who stayed kept making Tales games.

  Wolf Team stayed independent until 2003, when Bandai Namco acquired it and renamed it Namco Tales Studio. Its shares were divided among Bandai Namco, Telenet Japan and the series director, Eiji Kikuchi. In 2006 Namco bought Telenet's shares, and later Kikuchi's, which gave it full control.

  A financial report in mid 2011 showed the studio in serious trouble, with a debt of 21 million dollars and a loss for the previous financial year. In November of that year, its absorption into the parent company was formally announced. Hideo Baba, the former series brand manager, became series producer. He had earlier produced the original version of Hearts. Alongside him, the chief series producer is Makoto Yoshizumi, whose earlier credits include Destiny and Innocence.

  The engines for Tales games are generally built in-house, because outsourced development had caused problems. Until Vesperia, the team made new tools and a new engine for every installment. Rising costs changed that once easier-to-use software engines became available. The studio had been split into Team Destiny, which handled 2D titles, and Team Symphonia, which handled 3D ones. Namco Tales made most of the mainline games until 2011. The exceptions were Legendia, built by an internal Bandai Namco staff group, and Innocence, built by Alfa System. Alfa System also developed many of the portable spin-offs. After the absorption, the staff moved into a new in-house group called Bandai Namco Studios. The teams were smaller and their main divisions were merged. Production became leaner, but the studio could now work on only one game at a time, where before it had handled two.

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• 3. Real-Time Combat

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  When Tales of Phantasia appeared in 1995, most role-playing games still settled their fights with turn-based menus. Phantasia introduced the Linear Motion Battle System, or LMBS, a real-time fighting system closer to a brawler. It became the building block of every main entry, though each installment alters it a little.

  The Destiny entry added a feature called Chain Capacity, which limits how many skills a character can perform. It also brought in a multiplayer option, even though players can usually control only one character. Both returned in later games. Some features proved popular enough to stay, such as Free Running, which lets a character roam the battlefield freely. Characters fight with Artes, special attacks that they perform in battle. The battle system for Legendia was deliberately made to resemble a brawler, because the team wanted to join brawler combat with the story and leveling of a Tales game.

  Each game gives its battle system a descriptive name. Graces used a Style Shift system, in which characters move between two types of Artes. Zestiria used a Fusionic-Chain system, in which a human character merges briefly with a magical one to deal greater damage. The game calls this Armatization. Characters also earn Titles, nicknames that sometimes grant battle benefits when assigned. Zestiria changed something larger. In most earlier games an enemy encounter jumped to a separate battle screen, but from Zestiria onwards combat happened in the same space as exploration.

  Tales of Destiny also introduced skits, side conversations between characters that can be dramatic or comedic. They appear as character portraits with text along the bottom of the screen, and most were cut from the English release. The original English GameCube release of Symphonia dropped the voice track for skits. Its HD re-release restored them through the Japanese voice track. Developers blamed time constraints for the missing English skit voices in Symphonia and Abyss. Vesperia was the first to include English voiced skits.

  A Cooking system is another recurring feature, in which characters learn dishes that restore health and grant forms of experience points. Tales of Crestoria broke the pattern with a turn-based combat system, a very rare choice for the series.

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• 4. Themes And Heroes

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  The ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia inspired scenario writer Hiramatsu Masaki when he worked on Tales of Rebirth, a game that extensively explores racism. Coexistence between different races is the prominent narrative theme of the series. Other stories revolve around ideas such as justice or faith.

  The series producer chooses each entry's theme based on current world events. That choice shapes the title. Once the theme is set, the team searches through various languages for a word that represents it. Writers are hired project by project, a mix of freelancers and in-house story writers. Takumi Miyajima wrote for both Symphonia and Abyss, and Naoki Yamamoto wrote for Hearts, Xillia and Zestiria. In a 2008 interview, Gamasutra described the narratives as very typical. The interviewers suggested that Western fans, less familiar with Japanese culture, might see the stories as similar to one another.

  Very few mainline games share a setting. Symphonia takes place along the same time axis as Phantasia. Zestiria and Berseria occupy the same world at different periods. The settings are mostly high fantasy, since the producers chose not to use dark or science fiction worlds. Xillia 2 was the exception, set mostly in a modern period with darker themes than usual, and it was confirmed as a one-off experiment.

  The heroes carry each theme. For Abyss, the team took a risk and wrote an unorthodox protagonist who is unlikable at first. For Vesperia, they raised the age of the target audience, and the protagonist is a more mature type. Xillia gave the series its first female main protagonist, Milla Maxwell, alongside the male protagonist Jude Mathis. At the time, no solid plans existed for a game with a single female lead. Berseria eventually made Velvet its sole main female character. How the characters interact is a core part of each design, and a priority is that players see a part of themselves in them.

  In 2007, Yoshizumi announced two classes of Tales games. "Mothership" titles are the main series, and "Escort" titles are spin-offs. Internally, Escort games draw on the most popular elements of the main entries but do not feed ideas back into them. He also explained a naming habit. The team did not see the series as role-playing but as a "Character Playing Game", in which players learn about characters and watch them grow instead of using them as avatars. So each game gets a "Characteristic Genre Name", a short subtitle outlining its theme, though English releases largely drop these. Remakes and ports carry letters too. In Hearts R, the R stands for "remake" or "Re-imagination", and in Graces f the f stood for "future", a nod to its extra story. In 2020 a new internal scheme was announced, with "Original" for new stories and their sequels, and "Crossover" for games that gather characters and worlds from past titles.

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• 5. Art And Sound

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  Kōsuke Fujishima, a manga artist, was first brought in to design the characters of Phantasia. He has since designed for several entries, including Abyss and Xillia. Mutsumi Inomata began with Destiny and later contributed to Eternia, Rebirth and Xillia. Daigo Okumura designed characters for Vesperia, Xillia 2 and Dawn of the New World. Other designers include Kazuto Nakazawa for Legendia, Kouichi Kimura for Xillia 2 and Minoru Iwamoto for Zestiria.

  According to Baba, character designs begin only after the team has settled a main character's story, personality and environment. After that, the artist can use their imagination, although they may be asked to change details such as costumes and facial expressions. The results range from the cel-shaded anime look of Vesperia to the more realistic style of Xillia 2. Skit portraits take direct inspiration from anime art as well.

  Destiny was the first game with anime cutscenes, animated by Production I.G, which supplied them for the series until Xillia. The team treats these scenes as a primary focus because they shape a player's first impression. For Xillia, hoping to show a new artistic direction, the studio Ufotable took over. On the Nintendo DS, Hearts shipped in two identical versions as an experiment. One had traditional anime animation by Production I.G, and the other had computer-generated cutscenes by Shirogumi Ltd. Fans preferred the anime style. For Tales of Arise, the world design went darker, both to push the series forward and to appeal to the Western market. Ufotable produced its anime sequences, and 2D cutscenes remained planned despite the heavy focus on 3D graphics.

  Motoi Sakuraba has been the regular main composer since Phantasia, working as a freelancer on nearly every main entry. He often collaborates with Shinji Tamura. Go Shiina, an in-house composer, scored Legendia, and Kazuhiro Nakamura scored Innocence. Sakuraba and Shiina shared the score for Zestiria. Many titles use licensed theme songs from Japanese artists, among them Garnet Crow for Eternia, Kokia for Innocence, Ayumi Hamasaki for Xillia and Xillia 2, and FLOW for Berseria. Deen sang for Destiny and Hearts. Early Western releases often removed the Japanese theme song, and Symphonia swapped its song for an orchestral version. Vesperia was the first Western release to keep the song used in Japan.

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• 6. Lost In Translation

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  Speaking in 2013, Baba said that localization priority went to the main series over spin-offs. The localization team was limited, so the company had to "pick and choose" which games to bring west. Tales of Phantasia reached the West only in 2006, on the Game Boy Advance. Rebirth and Innocence never left Japan, and Legendia was released only in North America.

  The first Tales title to reach North America was Destiny, in 1997. When Eternia crossed the ocean in 2001 it was renamed Destiny 2, because of a possible trademark conflict and the wish to exploit Destiny's popularity. This caused a confusing overlap, since the true sequel to Destiny, also called Tales of Destiny 2, appeared on the PlayStation 2 only in Asian territories. The 2006 PSP port of Eternia kept its original name.

  Tales of Symphonia was the first entry released in Europe, via its GameCube version. Fans who could not wait took matters into their own hands, producing fan localizations of the original versions of Phantasia and Innocence. Fans have also heavily requested the Japanese voice tracks for Western releases, but licensing issues have mostly kept Bandai Namco from providing them. Mobile titles sit at the bottom of the list, partly because they are co-developed with Japan-based mobile companies.

  The delays of Xillia and its sequel in the West drew a reaction from Western fans, and it helped decide the approach for Zestiria. Bandai Namco planned to try releasing it in the West in the same year as Japan. The game reached Japan in January 2015 and the rest of the world in October of that year.

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• 7. Sales And Standing

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  In 2007, the sales distribution of the Tales series was 87% in Japan, 8% in North America, 3% in Europe and 2% in mainland Asia. The best-selling titles, not counting mobile or online games, were Tales of Symphonia at 1.6 million copies, Destiny at 1.534 million, Phantasia at 1.431 million, Eternia at 1.271 million and Destiny 2 at 1.106 million. Vesperia, Xillia, Berseria and Arise have also sold over a million copies worldwide. By March 2023, the series had shipped over 29.29 million copies.

  Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com called Tales the third biggest RPG series in Japan in 2006, behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. IGN's Anoop Gantayat likewise described it as the third biggest Japanese role-playing series by sales. Brandon Sheffield of Gamasutra said the series lacks the cultural cache that Final Fantasy has in the West or Dragon Quest has in Japan, but remains a very popular brand worldwide.

  Critics have praised the fighting more than the writing. Destiny and Legendia have been favorably compared with fighting games and brawlers, especially Street Fighter. GameTrailers ranked the Linear Motion Battle System, with particular reference to Graces, among the top five JRPG battle systems. Western critics responded to stories and characters in a more mixed way. Opinions on Legendia, Abyss and Xillia were mixed to positive, while Symphonia, Graces and Xillia 2 were criticized. The main complaint was that stories were predictable or cliché. Graphics drew mixed responses for Destiny, Eternia, Graces and Xillia.

  In 2013, ahead of Tales of Symphonia Chronicles, Baba called Symphonia the series' most successful title in the West so far. He added that the main target audience was still in Japan. The positive reaction of American players to Symphonia influenced how the teams developed later games. In 2014, production manager Denis Lee said the series had grown more popular since Symphonia's release, and Bandai Namco was pushing more entries into Western territories. Much of its research now comes from direct conversations with fans at gaming conventions and special events.

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• 8. Spin-Offs And Remasters

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  Tales of the Tempest, a Nintendo DS game from 2006, was first treated as a main entry. In 2007 it was reclassified as a spin-off, possibly because of its poor reception. Spin-offs are numerous. Three direct sequels exist: Destiny 2, Xillia 2 and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Eternia gained an MMORPG spin-off for Windows called Tales of Eternia Online. The main spin-off subseries, Tales of the World, has grown to ten games, beginning with Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon on the Game Boy Color in 2000. Only Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology reached the West. A second subseries, Tales of Fandom, has two puzzle-adventure games from 2002 and 2007. Two PlayStation Portable titles appeared in Japan, Tales of VS. in 2009 and Tales of the Heroes: Twin Brave in 2012.

  Mobile Tales games have often had short lives. Tales of Kizna launched on the 22nd of November 2011 and ended service on the 25th of September 2014. Tales of Link reached Japan on iOS on the 3rd of March 2014 and ended on the 28th of March 2018. The next day, Bandai Namco announced that the global version of Tales of the Rays would close on the 29th of May 2018. Rays had launched in Japan on the 28th of February 2017, and its Japanese version lasted until the 23rd of July 2024. Tales of Crestoria ran from the 16th of July 2020 to the 7th of February 2022. Tales of Luminaria, released on the 3rd of November 2021, was discontinued on the 19th of July 2022.

  The series also spread into anime and audio. The Symphonia OVA came out in three parts between 2007 and 2011, then as a single collection in 2013. Abyss became a 26-episode TV series between October 2008 and March 2009. The first theatrical film, Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike, was a prequel released in 2009 in Japan and 2012 in North America. For the 20th anniversary of Zestiria, a television anime called Dawn of the Shepherd was packed onto the game disc. A full Zestiria series began airing in July 2016. Phantasia received several CD dramas, including four collected into anthologies in January and March 2000, and Symphonia received seven audio dramas. Legendia had two CD dramas, in August and September 2005. Abyss received three manga adaptations.

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