Namco Bandai Games' Europe Youtube Channel released the second part of Hideo Baba's interview about the Tales of Series. Questions covered include how they create their characters and story in the early stages of development, if the company is focusing on Tales of games for the current generation of consoles or if they'll be waiting for the next-gen consoles to be revealed, and if they'll be using more playable animal characters such as Repede.You can watch the full interview here:
Highlights of this part of the interview include:
- When asked what the most fun thing about making the games is? Everything.
- Tales games are never inspired from real life movies or novels. Mr. Baba insists all of their work is original.
- About designing characters: The character's background, such as his life up until the game's time, the environment he grew up in, his age, his height and weight are all worked on before passing the information to the character designers. They can then use their imagination to work on a character that will fit the data. They do get asked to tweak a few things here and there.
- Though it usually depends on the title, the first step in the creation of a Tales game (after thinking up of the game theme, I think) is actually the creation of the hero and his heroine as well as the game setting. Since the hero and heroine will be closely intertwined with the world they will journey in, both hero/heroine and game setting are worked on simultaneously.
- When asked whether we will be having new Tales games for existing hardware or whether it'll be for the next gen, currently, Mr. Baba answered that they're focusing on making better Tales games for current existing hardware. Once the next gen consoles are out though, they'll be sure to make Tales games for them as well.
- When asked about character customization, he answers that the most we would be getting is changing the characters' clothes and attachments. Changing the physical appearance however would be something that would only hinder the designs of heroes and heroines in main Tales games, and given the nature of the series, it would be something unnecessary.
- When asked if we will be having more animal characters like Repede: He really couldn't say since it would depend on the setting entirely, and whether adding a mascot character would help in expressing what they want. Some games will have them, some games will not. In the end, Mr. Baba says he really can't promise anything at the moment.
Throughout the interview, Baba shows off more Tales merchandise including a one of a kind picture drawn by Ufotable (company responsible for the Symhponia OVA and Xillia anime cutscenes) that was sent to him as a gift in November last year.
The interview also doesn't conclude here. It seems there will be a part 3 after... or even more! They're really doing their best to answer most of our questions.
