Tales of Arise, The latest title in Bandai Entertainment’s hit “Tales of” franchise has been a grand step up for the series, incorporating new graphics and an updated battle system, and leading it to become the fastest selling title in the entire series, having shipped more than 2 million units worldwide. It was not an RPG title that was just successful, but also embraces a very distinctive visual identity that is worthy of attention, and 4gamer did not miss this chance to have a talk with with main art director and character designer of the game: Mr. Minoru Iwamoto.
Mr Minoru Iwamoto took the stage and talked about the hardships of character design in this work, and according to him, there was a long road to completion, including a “Dark Souls”-like design during development. This is a summarized version that includes only the important points from the discussion, translated by the author of the article.
Entrusted Feelings and a Dark Atmosphere
- Mr Iwamoto started his career after joining Namco with “Tales of Legendia”. He was in charge of background design and modeling, and also studied lighting, motion, and effects.
- His teacher was Mr Daigo Okumura, the character designer for Tales of Xillia.
- He backed up various titles in the series, and even supported the God Eater team for a while.
- He wanted Tales of Arise to convey the same feeling of excitement as Symphonia when it was first released. A bright and energetic 3D work which was first for the series at the time, and also add the coolness of Tales of Phantasia.
- Another cornerstone was that the team thought it would be a good idea to have a dark and gloomy atmosphere such as the Dark Souls series, but that would have meant loosing the essence of made “Tales of” the way it is, with its manga and anime like expressiveness.
Tales of Arise Early Drafts
- The character designs, world view and the game project all develop and progress at the same time.
- There is a first rough draft that is drawn by art directors and character designers at the start of any project. It is for checking what weapons to use and what height will they be when they are lined up.
- At the start, Mr Iwamoto listens to the scenarios and battle plans, and would draw pictures beside the meeting and share it with the team, saying: “This is how I envisioned it”.
- It was stated that Zephyr was intended to be a playable character at first, as shown in the rough designs.
- Shion was supposed to be stronger than how she was portrayed as fitting for a lord candidate, then she was adjusted according to her background and her Renan heritage and gave her an aristocratic look that was typical of the Renan people.
- The setting to make Shion stubborn and keep her distance was decided from the beginning, but Mr Iwamoto wanted to express her personality visually, so he incorporated asymmetrical designs and spikes, and later adopted the idea of the “Thorn’s curse”, though it was just an underlying symbolic theme at first.
- The setting ended up being Medieval European, and each character in Tales of Arise was based on an animal. Shion is a rabbit who would die if she were alone. Law has the image of a Monkey because he was a friend of animals with his father Zephyr. His design was more dignified and Chinese, but later changed to make it similar to a Loyal dog who supports Alphen.
- Law’s father, Zephyr has the motif of a Wolf. Rinwell was more traditional and suited to the “Tales of” series regular designs. The main animal was the image of a Morpho butterfly, and other elements to add the feelings of her being a witch or a spellcaster.
- Kisara’s design concept was pretty much decided from the beginning. She was supposed to have the role of a Tank Macho character like other JRPGs, but they thought it would be interesting to make her a woman this time, and a strong female leader that is uncommon in the Tales of series so far. The armor is also a mix from Renan and Dhanen material.
- Kisara’s back was also made up this way to support her motif: “This is the resolution to not show my back to the enemy.” It proves the designs are not also for show, but has a textual flavor to them, and the characters themselves make comments about the clothes and other stuff during their journey, and it shows that they are very aware of the player’s feelings.
- Kisara is a lioness. She is very caring and hardworking, and acts like the mother of the party. The fans used to describe her as 「Hello mom」「My mother」on twitter and social media.
- Characters kept changing due to the influence of the writers and even the acting of the voice actors. Just like Edna in Zesteria who was originally a character who couldn’t speak much, Dohalim was the same. He had a bow at first but it was changed to make it more fitting with his silhouette. The rest of the initial design was the same, An ancient king who has an attribute of Earth, as there are different Kings/Lords too, so he was associated with Stones and Pyramids.
- He was made to look like Renans, yet different from them. Also it fitted the concept of making the party seem multinational. The animal motif is a One-Winged Bird. It fits his mindset of wanting to play music, but unable to break free from his responsibilities as a lord. That’s why he wears a cloak on one side.
- His design was inspired by works such as “Tokyo Babylon”, “CLAMP School Detectives”, and “Magic Knight Rayearth”.
- The final and most important one is Alphen. Mr. Iwamoto was asked to do the initial design in a dark and mature atmosphere like “DARK SOULS” and “Game of Thrones”, but incorporate it into the “Tales of” setting. Tales of” characters are basically created by pushing (exaggerating) their personalities, but in Alphen’s case, instead of exaggerating, they gave him a sense of reality and decided clearly what kind of background he has and why he fights.
- In the initial setting, he was supposed to be a character with much hidden violence inside, which turns later into inner strength. That’s why his motif is a dragon, transcendental thing that is not human.
- The female staff didn’t like the design too much and opinions were divided. It seems Alphen’s acceptance by customers was due to the efforts of the promotion, and that the mask was cracked early on in the game to show his real face and make players love him more.
- The blue cloth was a memento of his mother’s in Iwamoto’s mind. Alphen’s mother came with her son to Calaglia to help him escape, but died soon after they arrived. He thought that the blue cloth wrapped around her at that time was something that Alphen treasured ……. However, this is just an image from the initial setting, so the actual image is different.
- Alphen was a quite character in early planning stages, as his emotions was supposed to be controlled by amnesia, but later changed to a kind person who can’t feel the pain of others as if it were his own, but because he still don’t know what to do with this, they made Zephyr guide him through the way.
Other elements are also referenced in the closure words such as the beautiful UI that does not take away from the experience of immersion, and how they made sure the player could feel emotions in every dungeon and corner through the owl mechanism and other design choices. The aim in the end it see the world through the feelings of the characters. That’s the aim for Tales of Arise, and for other future games.