"We Wish To Localize Tales Of Games That Never Left Japan." Tales of Producer Teases More Remasters on 30th Anniversary Talk Show
We translated a part of the Tales of 30th anniversary talk show with series general producer Tomizawa Yusuke.
For the 30th anniversary of the Tales of series on December 15, 2025, Bandai Namco released a special talk show with several key developers of recent Tales of games, from Xillia to Arise. The YouTube video is similar to the 25th anniversary talk show published in 2020, which featured key developers from the first games in the series starting with Phantasia.
The talk show most notably featured a segment where the developers answered questions from non-Japanese fans, gathered beforehand.
At the start of this segment, Tales of series general producer Tomizawa Yusuke (Henceforth TomizawaP) was asked how he feels about the fact that the Tales of series also has many fans supporting it overseas.
Overall, TomizawaP said the same words as in the 30th anniversary message video published in English, with a few different nuances. Most notably, he accentuated that one of the goals of the Remaster Project is to localize some of the Tales of games that never left Japan.
We translated his words below.
TomizawaP: Historically, there are many Tales of games that were never released outside Japan. One of the goals of the ongoing Remaster Project is to properly localize some of these games in several languages. We managed to achieve that with (PS3) Vesperia's remaster (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Traditional Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, South American Spanish). We also did a worldwide simultaneous release for Tales of Arise, but there are still many games exclusive to Japan. Thanks to our current social media era, we regularly receive messages from fans around the world stating they'd like to discover these games. And I don't think overseas fans are any different from Japanese fans. They all love the characters with all their hearts. That makes us really happy. So as a producer, I hope to make it so all fans worldwide can enjoy the games together.
The 2020 developers talk show received official English subs some time after its release. It's likely this new 2025 talk show will be officially translated at some point as well.
Personally speaking, I am sadly very skeptical of TomizawaP's words. It's been two years now since the remaster project began. The Tales of Symphonia remaster was passable, with its Switch version managing to be the worst version of the game ever, filled with bugs at release. The Graces F and Vesperia remasters are fine, but the choice of remastering Xillia 1 without 2 bundled together is puzzling. Finally, remastering Berseria - a game already on Steam - clearly displays a lack of respect and understanding of the fans from Bamco's higher-ups.
I feel like TomizawaP has his hands tied but has to save face, so he keeps promising us again and again that the older games are coming too. However, it feels like the higher-ups at Bandai Namco aren't keen on that idea and don't greenlight any remasters of Japan-only games. Let alone remake projects, I completely lost hope in that regard.
At this point I simply can't believe that Bandai Namco cares about the Tales of series at all. All the evidence has been piling up this last decade. At best when it comes to older games I feel like we'll get an Abyss remaster, maybe Destiny, and that's it. And I don't think I'm overreacting like those weirdo Monhan Rise JP fans who got giga mad at Wilds' director for an inconsequential remark. If you look at the replies on the Japanese Tales of Twitter, there are many Japanese fans constantly complaining that Bandai Namco is ignoring their pleas for remasters of Destiny and other games which were extremely popular in Japan.
There are five major Tales of games that were never officially localized: Tales of Phantasia Narikiri Dungeon, Destiny PS2/Destiny Director's Cut, Destiny 2, Rebirth, and Innocence/Innocence R. These titles are all part of the golden age of the series and it'd be great if even one of these games got an official release, even only in English. But I'm not getting my hopes up.
Bandai Namco has already mentioned several times that a brand new Tales of game is currently in development, but that it is not the time to reveal it yet. TomizawaP hinted that things will speed up now that the 30th anniversary year is starting. I assume the new game will get fully announced and released in 2026. I'm not particularly looking forward to it though. Tales of Arise sold over 3 million copies so I assume what comes next will be very similar to it. However, while Arise is a good game, it doesn't feel like Tales of enough to me, especially when it comes to iconic elements like Skits. Anyway, we'll see how it goes insha Allah.
Thanks for reading everything. If you liked this piece, make sure to share it with your oomfies. You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive future posts directly in your inbox. Pour celles et ceux qui parlent Français, je vous conseille aussi la chaine de Bejito, mon streamer francophone préféré et la personne qui connait le mieux la série Tales of en France.
