Tales of Xillia (pronounce it “ex-cillia”) is the latest in Namco Bandai’s Tales RPG series, one successful enough that they’re officially celebrating its 15th birthday by releasing it next year. For producer Hideo Baba, however, this isn’t just his team going through the motions again — the way he sees it, Xillia (the first Tales game developed for the PlayStation 3 from the outset) is his chance to kick off a whole new era for the franchise.
“Our goal here is to pool all the know-how we’ve built over the past 15 years and show off a new frontier in the Tales series,” Baba told Famitsu magazine in this week’s issue. “That’s all there is to it. You might see that even now in the graphics, which are meant to be a contrast in light and shadow. Tales of Vesperia was always meant to have anime-like graphics, so everything’s incredibly bright and colorful. With Xillia, on the other hand, we’re deliberately placing light sources to play up the size of a room and the feeling that the characters are really there.”
“We’re also using the experience we built with the watercolor-like visuals in Tales of Graces here,” added Makoto Yoshizumi, general manager of the Tales series. “The original Tales of Phantasia, which we released 15 years ago, got a lot of great reviews but didn’t sell as many copies as we’d hoped. We wanted this series to be one that’d last, so we’ve tried to keep improving our efforts and fixing the mistakes we make with each previous game. That process isn’t changing with Xillia.”
