Tales of Arise Teases Fishing, Farming, and New Skit Content

A new trailer for Bandai Namco‘s upcoming Tales of Arise dropped earlier today, July 29th. The trailer showcased numerous activities that the colorful cast of characters will get into during their downtime. Titled The Spirt of Adventure, the trailer showed the cast taking part in fishing, taking care of animals on a farm, and of course cooking then sharing a meal together. While cooking meals is an activity that fans of the series are already acquainted with, the addition of a non-mini-game tied fishing and the farm are new welcome additions to the series. As the trailer goes on, however, it’s clear that the high point is definitely the new way Tales of Arise will approach skits.

Party Skits Are Coming to Life

In previous entries in the series, all the way back to the OG PlayStation era, party skits served as a way to provide more color to the characters that make up the adventuring group. Skits were formerly told through 2D anime-style conversations. These conversations were made really lively with sharp, witty writing and the addition of effects and transitions on the images to make them pop off the screen. Party skits have become synonymous with the Tales series and other JRPGs have adopted this feature to bring more backstory and believability to their cast. Tales of Arise is looking to literally take these skits to the next dimension. 3D.

Near the end of the trailer, Alphen, Shionne, and the rest of the gang are seen engaging in lively conversations around a campfire setting. Previously, a lot of the skits would take place at random times during the journey so it’s unclear if these scenes will be restricted to only the campfire moving forward or if the party will stop in their tracks and play out a cutscene right there and then. The scenes on display so far though give hope to the developers being able to faithfully translate the character growth and humor found before into this new dimension of storytelling. This is no doubt another way the studio is looking to further evolve the Tales franchise’s formula as they’ve been keen to mention throughout their current marketing campaign.

Tales of Arise launches September 10th on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.