Fans have been anxiously awaiting Tales of Arise for some time now, ever since its highly-anticipated reveal all the way back at E3 2019. Several new trailers and all sorts of details have come to light in the intervening two years, and the most recent announcement from Bandai Namco looks to focus on one of the game's brand new characters.
Bandai Namco officially revealed a new character introduction trailer yesterday, focusing on main character Shionne in a video that's part action-packed gun-fu and part quiet story-telling. The trailer describes her as "a long-range gunslinger who also uses Astral Artes, letting her heal the party between shots," and her affinity with a firearm is evident in Tales of Arise's single-player combat sequences.
The brief glimpses of combat are interspersed throughout a longer scene, showing Shionne seemingly captured by a group of Dahnans who conveniently explain the nature of the strange, electrifying thorns that prevent her from touching anyone without causing them pain. That curse doesn't seem to bother fellow Tales of Arise main character Alphen, though, who appears to be lost for words at the end of the trailer by the sight of Shionne descending towards him in full noble regalia.
Whether fans are watching for the story or the gameplay, though, it's hard to deny that Tales of Arise is looking beautiful ahead of its September 10th launch. The developers are clearly making the most of the shift to Unreal Engine 4, with character models looking impressively detailed and all sorts of particle effects flying around the place during battle. With this newest trailer, it's more obvious than ever that modern consoles and hardware are at the forefront of the development process.
Tales fans have waited a long time for this next entry in the series, especially following the announcement of its delay to 2021 last summer. It's arguably been a good thing, though: the team at Bandai Namco have made it clear that they're putting a lot of love into Tales of Arise to make it the best game it can possibly be.
With an extra year of development time, hopefully they've been able to strike the right balance between bringing over key elements of the Tales series and leaving some of the more dated ones behind. At the very least, this latest character-focused trailer proves that the kind of interesting and multi-layered protagonists fans have come to expect from Tales games are present and correct in the newest addition to the series.
Tales of Arise will come to PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on September 10th, 2021.