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Chris: Hello Fukaya-san, first off we would like to introduce ourselves. We, that being Piko and Chris, are representing the german Tales community website Tales-of-Pikohan.de. We are happy to welcome you here in Germany and would like to thank you for being given the opportunity to do this interview.
Fukaya-san (happy): I’m the one who has to thank you, it’s thanks to communities like yours that the Tales Series is growing in the west. It’s also the first time for me to speak directly to representatives of the community outside of Japan.
Chris: As already mentioned, it’s a big honor for us to be able to direct the questions our community came up with directly at the series‘ producer, previously Hideo Baba, now you. Us fans are very interested in the development of the games we all like to play so much.
Fukaya-san: Thank you.
Chris: Without further ado, let’s get right to our first question:
As you’ve already shown off in your presentation, the pirate ship „Van Eltia“ will play a bigger role in Tales of Berseria. Based off the previously shown trailers for the game, which hints at a pirate inspired setting, including travel by ship, we were wondering whether the aforementioned Van Eltia will directly influence gameplay, as in if it will be directly controllable or handle the quick travel, or if it will just have relevance as a part of the plot?
Fukaya-san: Right off the bat I can say: You will not be able to reach every place with the ship, meaning it will not be directly controllable by the player. Its purpose is to travel the world and is going to be able to navigate from one port to the next. Additionally the Van Eltia is going to play a key role in the plot and will serve as an important location. On top of that, the game will offer a large amount of ports and worlds (islands) to visit. Thanks to all that, the player will definitely have the feeling of being a part of a grand adventure.
Chris: We are excited to see how the ship has been integrated into the game and can’t wait to go on this great voyage ourselves.
Fukaya-san: The ship will be of special importance to the character Eizen. Naturally I cannot tell you what I mean by that just yet (smiles), but I already hope you will have a lot of fun discovering these secrets.
Chris: We are already very excited to meet the characters in Tales of Berseria, particularly the character you mentioned, Eizen, and his possible connection to Tales of Zestiria is very interesting to us. In that game, assuming the characters in both games are one and the same person, he already appeared as a dragon. But we also like the rest of the cast from what we’ve seen so far. We are very interested in Velvet, the series‘ first sole female protagonist and are excited to see how this character will be presented.
Fukaya-san: When we revealed the first images and graphics about Eizen in Japan, there was a lot of guessing and rumors about him there as well. Especially with the knowledge that there are connections between Tales of Berseria and Tales of Zestiria. However I can’t share any more details about that topic with you at this time (smiles mischievously). Velvet is indeed a sole, female protagonist this time around, differently from Tales of Xillia, where the player could choose between a male (Jude) and a female (Milla) protagonist. At any rate Velvet is portrayed as a lot gloomier than previous protagonists and is being led to her goals by her feelings. Because she is the only protagonist in this game, we could concentrate entirely on her and we can promise you, that the player will be able to identify with her completely, or at least will be able to understand why she feels the way she does.
Chris: Another big aspect that interests us and the community is the question whether Tales of Berseria will have some kind of decision system, like the one in Tales of Xillia 2. Particularly since the premise of Tales of Berseria seems to largely be concerned with the fight between emotions and rationality that would lend itself well to the game.
Fukaya-san: Tales of Berseria will not feature the decision system that was prominent in Tales of Xillia 2. That was not what we had in mind for the game.
Chris: Before we get to our next question, we would like to praise the monster designers that designed the enemies in Tales of Zestiria. We really enjoyed the selection of classic, well known foes with the numerous new, very creative designs, like for example small kobolds riding mobile ballistas and fork-wielding pig-farmers. Now we would like to know if you have planned more of these creative new designs for Tales of Berseria as well?
Fukaya-san (laughs): Since the monsters in Tales of Berseria are being designed by the exact same people that are responsible for the enemy designs in Tales of Zestiria, you can look forward to more fun new enemies. And thank you for the praise.
Chris: Our next question will refer to the skits in Tales of Berseria. We and the community are very interested if these sequences, which are known to deliver a sense of cohesion among the character group to the player, are going to make more appearances than in Tales of Zestiria again. In that game the skits were sadly only viewable around save points, inns and rarely in unusual locations. That was something that sadly had a rather negative effect on character development and the player’s understanding of each individual character’s personality and motivation.
Fukaya-san: As a reassurance: Compared to Tales of Zestiria, Tales of Berseria will feature much more skits. On top of that, skits will show up in regular intervals again instead of only appearing at save points and inns. We are very invested in letting the player find out as much as possible about the characters, facilitated by a lot of interaction between the characters themselves.
Chris: Fukaya-san, for our final question, we would like you to tell us if the unsolved mysteries from Tales of Zestiria, like the origin of Zaveid’s weapon, are possibly going to find a reveal in Berseria. Of course, no pressure for details, a tendency either way would be good enough.
Fukaya-san (laughs): The game will definitely, this much I can tell you, hint at a lot of characters and events Berseria-style. I can’t give you more details regarding this topic at this time, except that you can be excited for it.
Chris: We’d like to thank you very much for taking the time to give us this interview and are eager to play the finished game at the beginning of next year.
