Tales of Arise’s Story is Unrelated to Previous Tales of Games

Iyane Agossah June 18, 2019 6:16 AM EST

Despite certain similarities, Tales of Arise is a brand new, original story with no links to previous games in the Tales of Series.

Shortly after Tales of Arise‘s reveal at E3 2019, Producer Yusuke Tomizawa mentioned that he will bring us frequent development updates on the game through the Tales Channel Plus blog.

In the blog’s newest update, Producer Tomizawa first elaborated about the name Arise, repeating his comments shared through Famitsu with more details. In short, Arise means to “rise up”, reflecting the main characters’ rise to free the people of Dahna from slavery. “Arise” was also the game’s development code name, reflecting how it’s a new evolution for the series and an ambitious challenge for the development team. Lastly, on how the initials overlap with Tales of the Abyss, Producer Tomizawa specified that it’s not like they’re planning to stop the Tales of Series once they run out of letters to use. And it’s not like they purposely avoid picking initials that they already used. Future games might or might not use a letter they already used.

Tales of Arise has two main characters revealed so far: Alphen from planet Dahna, and Shionne from planet Rena. While they work together, Shionne looks down on Alphen for being from Dahna. A lot of previous Tales of Series games similarly dealt with racism. As such, many fans are wondering if Tales of Arise‘s story will be linked to one or more previous games. Producer Tomizawa revealed that Tales of Arise features a new original story, unlinked to previous Tales of Series games.

Producer Tomizawa also stated the different reasons behind this choice. This is in order to make Tales of Arise accessible to all, with no prior knowledge required to fully understand the story. A brand new story set in a brand new world also fits the fact that the game is striving to become the series’ next step.

More development updates on Tales of Arise will be coming soon.

Tales of Arise will launch in 2020 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.