Bandai Namco always know how to celebrate the Tales of series. While they didn’t have a lavish party on a boat this time around, they recently held a special stage during the “Machi Asobi” event, to talk about the latest features and details on some upcoming info for Tales of Zestiria. (Thanks, Dengeki)

They started the event by talking a bit about their annual “Tales of Festival,” which will be taking place on May 31 and June 1 at the Yokohama Arena. Siliconera attended the Tales of Festival 2013 last year, where Namco first announced Tales of Symphonia Chronicles, so hopefully we can hope to see a few surprises this year as well.

Next, they showed off the game’s latest trailer, along with an introduction to the new character, Laila. There will be cutscenes in Tales of Zestiria where the heroine Alicia won’t be able to see Laila, Miclio, Edna, and the others of the Heavenly Tribe, but she will be able to see them later on in the game.

Namco also shared a feature they mentioned at their NicoNico Super Meeting 3 event—the “Fusionic Chain – LMBS (Linear Motion Battle System).” Producer Hideo Baba has hinted that the keywords behind the system are “Fusion” and “Chain”.

Baba also mentioned that the battle encounters will be different compared to past games, where monsters were on the field, and running into them will commence the battle. While he couldn’t say more, he announced that Tales of Zestiria will have you “naturally enter battles, and naturally back to the field”.

While the producer couldn’t say how far they are into the development of the game, he said that it will still take a while until it is complete. At the moment, the game’s development is at a stage where it can be played, but from this point on, the adjustments will take longer.

Baba concluded by mentioning that the more time that it spent on adjustments, the better the game will be when it’s done.

They ended the event with that a look at the latest issue of the Viva Tales of Magazine.

Tales of Zestiria is currently in development for PlayStation 3.