As discussed last week, Tales of Graces, the latest game in Namco Bandai’s long-running RPG series, is getting ported from the Wii to the PlayStation 3 in Japan, a bit of news that made console warriors pick up their pitchforks and lay waste to gaming forums all across Asia.
Something that got overlooked amid the chaos, though, was Namco Bandai’s mention of a brand-new Tales game, one that’s due to come out exclusively for the PS3. Developed to celebrate the series’ 15th birthday in Japan, the as-yet-unnamed Tales title had its first reveal in this week’s edition of Famitsu magazine in the form of six pieces of concept art. The interesting thing about the art: it doesn’t seem anime-like at all, instead looking like the sort of traditional fantasy-laden tableaus you’d expect to find in a much older generation of JRPGs.
“The next Tales will be the culmination of 15 years’ worth of know-how we’ve accumulated,” series producer Hideo Baba told Famitsu. “The thing I want to emphasize here [in the art style] is the contrast between light and shadow, a new type of expression compared to the anime touches of Tales of Vesperia and the watercolor look of Graces.”
