If you’re a fan of the “Tales” series, you may want to have a seat as Bandai Namco has stated that the game is being delayed. Sadly, this means that the RPG will no longer be released in 2020.
As the producer of the game, Yusuke Tomizawa, breaks it down this is due to the drastic changes due to COVID-19, which has forced developers across the globe to transition to working on the game remotely. This has slowed down the development of the game.
“As you may have already seen in media stories and on our social media channels, we have made the decision to delay the launch timing of “Tales of Arise”, the latest title in the “Tales of” series.
The goal for Tales of Arise is to provide a familiar but innovative gameplay experience to fans of the series, while pushing the technical envelope to deliver a high level of graphical quality to impress both long-time players and those who have never played a Tales of game. Development on the title has move steadily forward in 2020 as we overcame challenges along the way.
While COVID-19 has affected some aspects of development, we’ve done our best to adapt to the situation and have implemented remote development capabilities for our team.
However, to achieve the quality and provide the gorgeous experience we envision for our players, we will need more time to realize that vision and therefore we decided to delay the launch timing for Tales of Arise.
A new launch window update will be provided once we have more details to share.
In the meantime, the determination of our development team has not weakened. It is always darkest before the dawn, as illustrated in the image below. We hope you will join us as a bring a new Tales of adventure to light.”.
COVID-19 has been a major pain in the ass to just about everyone, including game developers. Due to the amount of time and effort, it takes to craft a game, working remotely, for those who aren’t used to do so, can be heavily impacted. Kudos for the team for realizing that this will need more time to cook and hopefully more developers will realize and do the same. Don’t rush a game just to get it out the door.
Interestingly enough, this game was first announced during E3 2019, during the Microsoft conference. Since then, we haven’t heard much of anything for Tales of Arise. What we did/do know is that Bandai Namco was looking to provide a new experience, and provide something new for the fans.
Sadly, due to this delay, a new release window has yet to be announced. That said, it wouldn’t be unexpected to see this game appear during the Summer 2021 or beyond. What we do know is when the game is released, it will be available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, though seeing next-generation versions for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X may also be a possibility.