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Tales producer not influenced by The Last Story, Xenoblade success, talks series' potential changes
A portion of a 1up interview with Tales producer Hideo Baba...
1UP: I wanted to start off by asking a question about the marketplace for RPGs and how it's changing. Both Xenoblade and Last Story made people rethink what the term "Japanese RPG" means. I wanted to ask you if the release of either of these games changed the development of Xillia in any way.
Hideo Baba: To answer your question simply, it didn't influence our development at all. The reason being, when we develop the Tales series, it's always a struggle internally. We always try to look at the Tales franchise as something that we can improve upon ourselves. There are other Japanese RPG franchises, like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, but rather than looking at those games and comparing ourselves to them, we try to compare ourselves with what we've created and find ways that we can improve on what we've already created. It's not to say that I haven't played those games. I played The Last Story -- my first impression of the game was, "Wow, what a huge town!" I definitely have my own opinions of those games as a player. But I try not to let that affect how I think as a developer.
1UP: You said that when you approach each new Tales game, the team challenges itself to make it better and to bring change to it. And the games industry is changing a lot. So what changes do you see happening to the Tales series -- to keep it fresh and keep it popular -- over the next, say, five years? You said that you don't see the game going in the direction of something like Skyrim, but what do you see as the future of Tales?
HB: As far as the Tales franchise goes, there are definitely certain aspects that we'll always want to evolve and change. There's the battle system -- we always want to try and improve and change different aspects of the battle system to keep it fresh. In regards to the story, we don't want to maintain the same characters. We want to deliver different characters and different storylines for each installment. When it comes to games like Skyrim, as much as I enjoy playing them and as much as I might like to make a game like Skyrim personally, I don't think that kind of game exists for the Tales franchise. If I were to make a game like that, it would be a completely new franchise. It wouldn't exist in the Tales universe. For the Tales franchise, rather than drastically changing it, I feel like it's important to look at our foundation, see what we have, see what's good, and build on top of that. Going back to the analogy about cars, if you look at old cars and new cars, we've gone from more boxy cars through a slow process toward more curvy cars. But ultimately the basic structure inside them, the foundation, is still going to be the same. If you made a car with two wheels instead of four and told people it was a car, they wouldn't believe you. I feel that same way about the Tales franchise. If we changed it too drastically, then people would lose faith in us. We don't want that to happen.
Full interview here
1UP: I wanted to start off by asking a question about the marketplace for RPGs and how it's changing. Both Xenoblade and Last Story made people rethink what the term "Japanese RPG" means. I wanted to ask you if the release of either of these games changed the development of Xillia in any way.
Hideo Baba: To answer your question simply, it didn't influence our development at all. The reason being, when we develop the Tales series, it's always a struggle internally. We always try to look at the Tales franchise as something that we can improve upon ourselves. There are other Japanese RPG franchises, like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, but rather than looking at those games and comparing ourselves to them, we try to compare ourselves with what we've created and find ways that we can improve on what we've already created. It's not to say that I haven't played those games. I played The Last Story -- my first impression of the game was, "Wow, what a huge town!" I definitely have my own opinions of those games as a player. But I try not to let that affect how I think as a developer.
1UP: You said that when you approach each new Tales game, the team challenges itself to make it better and to bring change to it. And the games industry is changing a lot. So what changes do you see happening to the Tales series -- to keep it fresh and keep it popular -- over the next, say, five years? You said that you don't see the game going in the direction of something like Skyrim, but what do you see as the future of Tales?
HB: As far as the Tales franchise goes, there are definitely certain aspects that we'll always want to evolve and change. There's the battle system -- we always want to try and improve and change different aspects of the battle system to keep it fresh. In regards to the story, we don't want to maintain the same characters. We want to deliver different characters and different storylines for each installment. When it comes to games like Skyrim, as much as I enjoy playing them and as much as I might like to make a game like Skyrim personally, I don't think that kind of game exists for the Tales franchise. If I were to make a game like that, it would be a completely new franchise. It wouldn't exist in the Tales universe. For the Tales franchise, rather than drastically changing it, I feel like it's important to look at our foundation, see what we have, see what's good, and build on top of that. Going back to the analogy about cars, if you look at old cars and new cars, we've gone from more boxy cars through a slow process toward more curvy cars. But ultimately the basic structure inside them, the foundation, is still going to be the same. If you made a car with two wheels instead of four and told people it was a car, they wouldn't believe you. I feel that same way about the Tales franchise. If we changed it too drastically, then people would lose faith in us. We don't want that to happen.