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[batbeg]

What are the chances the English dub will use the same voice?

It just won't be Lloyd to me unless I hear "Titans, GO!" in my head at the start of every battle.

They said they're hoping to reunite the English cast, but can't promise anything (or at least, if this person is legit, I suppose this is the case):

I can't go into specifics of the game like battle and story, so I won't be able to answer anything along those lines (I'm not ignoring you, it's just that if I answered them, my marketing and Japan's marketing will hunt me down). But I'll try and answer those that I can.

1. Original TOS Voice Actors: we are trying, but I cannot promise anything.
2. Skits will be voiced (or that is the plan).
3. Font for TOS: it's a variation of a Japanese font called "風雲体" (we won't be using this one for DNW).
4. Sales date: we're aiming for fall...is all I can say.
5. How do I know I'm not lying? Good question. I don't think I can come up with an answer on that one. Wink

http://tales.namco.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60501&start=4035

Was very disillusioning to hear someone else's voice in Radiant Mythology, hope I don't have to again

 

[Blackjack]

I would love for the entire ToS English cast to come back, but I think I could deal with replacements for almost everyone.

As long as Lloyd and Zelos are the same.

 

[Ashodin]

What are the chances the English dub will use the same voice?

It just won't be Lloyd to me unless I hear "Titans, GO!" in my head at the start of every battle.

More than likely. The guy from Tales reprised his role in Soul Calibur Legends, so it's possible.

 

[Sagitario]

TVCM+PV

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6hWF-EzCa7Q

We're sorry, this video is no longer available.

 

[Verve]

works for me

 

[Sagitario]

Now it's working... how weird... I've been getting that in a lot of YouTube's videos...

Edit: I can't believe how freaking smooth/fast/good/ the battles and animations look... Motion capture FTW!

 

[batbeg]

Mow it's working... how weird... I've been getting that in a lot of YouTube's videos...

Went through all that effort of reuploading it for you too.

 

[Sagitario]

Went through all that effort of reuploading it for you too.

Oh... well, thanks... ... Give me your link and I'll re-watch it ...

 

[Datschge]

May be worth noting that finally finally two Tales Studio dudes are confirmed in leading positions through the blog. Game Planning/Progress Manager is some new dude (荒堀, Arahori?) with no previous Tales experience. Battle Planning is Masahiro Abe (安部 昌&#23439 who has been with Tales since ToE, but oddly enough usually only in Special Thanks. Exception is Battle Program Support for ToD2.

To be honest at this point I'm way more looking forward to seeing ToS-R's battle design than ToV's one. I'm personally shocked ToV's reused the button mashing climax attack previously used in ToL and ToI, I expected Team Symphonia to finally try to approach Team Destiny level of battle design polish instead this crap. ToS-R may reach a better 3D battle design with Abe's knowledge of ToE/D2 and the new controlls.

 

[JaMarco]

It just won't be Lloyd to me unless I hear "Titans, GO!" in my head at the start of every battle.

same here

 

[Sagitario]

May be worth noting that finally finally two Tales Studio dudes are confirmed in leading positions through the blog. Game Planning/Progress Manager is some new dude (荒堀, Arahori?) with no previous Tales experience. Battle Planning is Masahiro Abe (安部 昌&#23439 who has been with Tales since ToE, but oddly enough usually only in Special Thanks. Exception is Battle Program Support for ToD2.

To be honest at this point I'm way more looking forward to seeing ToS-R's battle design than ToV's one. I'm personally shocked ToV's reused the button mashing climax attack previously used in ToL and ToI, I expected Team Symphonia to finally try to approach Team Destiny level of battle design polish instead this crap. ToS-R may reach a better 3D battle design with Abe's knowledge of ToE/D2 and the new controlls.

Interesting... it would explain why the battles look so fluid and fast [I don't know if it's because of the motion cap and animation, but seriously... the battles in KoR look almost as fast as the 2D incarnations]...

So... when was confirmed that Vesperia is using a climax-like system?

 

[AceBandage]

I would love for the entire ToS English cast to come back, but I think I could deal with replacements for almost everyone.

As long as Lloyd and Zelos are the same.

TITANS! GO!

Sorry, every time I heard Lloyd speak, I thought this.

 

[Blackjack]

TITANS! GO!

Sorry, every time I heard Lloyd speak, I thought this.

That's the appeal!

 

[GamerSoul]

Interesting... it would explain why the battles look so fluid and fast [I don't know if it's because of the motion cap and animation, but seriously... the battles in KoR look almost as fast as the 2D incarnations]...

Yeah, the battles do look very fluid . Emil's aerial stunts look crazier than Stahn's in ToDr to me becuase of the 3D element involved.

So... when was confirmed that Vesperia is using a climax-like system?

dunno myself, but the guy seems to know his tales stuff.

 

[Rpgmonkey]

So... when was confirmed that Vesperia is using a climax-like system

I think he means Burst Arts.

Didn't seem like Climax attacks and Infinity Jam to me. :/

 

[Jazzem]

Wow, I can't wait for this now. I loved the first game despite its many flaws and I could do with a good JRPG on Wii.

Does anyone know if this uses the Wii motion/pointer/tilting controls in any form?

 

[GamerSoul]

Wow, I can't wait for this now. I loved the first game despite its many flaws and I could do with a good JRPG on Wii.

Does anyone know if this uses the Wii motion/pointer/tilting controls in any form?

The World Map is click-and-point, it's also used for the Sorcerer's Ring, and i think they said the shortcut movelist will use it. That's all I know of.

I'm wondering how much of a effect will the characters being assigned an element will have on the battles. I know Emil=Dark, Marta=Light, Genis=Ice, Presea=Earth, etc. but I wonder if there is an advantage.

 

[Jiggy]

Following along since I last replied...


1) Ever since playing The World Ends With You, AKA Top 5 Of The Year Fact and Best Square Game Since Chrono Trigger, I've really been hoping Heather Hogan comes back and handles her role with an inflection much less "Colette" and much more "Shiki." Although she's obviously the same person, I thought the skill difference between those two performances was staggering, so much so that even I didn't fully recognize her until spotting her name in the credits. Regardless of whether the reason boils down to her leveling up her Voice Acting stat in those four years since ToS or merely trying a different speaking style (or even that she just had, like, 0.0008% as many spoken words in TWEWY and could afford to take her time perfecting each phrase), I really, really want to see that kind of voice work applied this time. :O

Other than that, it would be nice to have the voice actors for Zelos, Sheena, and Lloyd reprise their roles. Don't really care about Genis or Raine and openly can't stand Regal, so it doesn't matter to me what's done with them. I liked Presea's voice work alright, but wouldn't see the harm in a new actress since she (Presea) should probably turn out to be more changed personality-wise than anyone else from the old cast.


2) On a separate note, I don't think we've ever really discussed this, but is it just me or is the HP scale radically different than normal for ToS: DotNW? I'm used to beginning-game combos doing like 150-200 damage while end-game combos do 6000+, but these characters are getting into quintuple digits with a single hi-ougi. I mean... I've seen 33,699 damage from Raine, on an attack that hits multiple enemies, and then there's a certain scan where Presea does 166,915 damage with one attack. She'd one-shot every ToS boss like that, which just makes me pretty curious exactly what kind of HP scale we're talking about here...


3) Someone who's been there since Tales of Eternia is somewhat reassuring, although learning that after actually seeing the battles in action kind of dampens the effect.


4)

I'm wondering how much of a effect will the characters being assigned an element will have on the battles. I know Emil=Dark, Marta=Light, Genis=Ice, Presea=Earth, etc. but I wonder if there is an advantage.

When did we find this out? This sounds potentially interesting.

 

[GamerSoul]

It's just something I noticed while looking at the screenshots, but as of now, I don't no the real significance of it. The colored area around the character portraits show their elements. The monsters helped me realize this. Emil being Dark is no suprise for me.:lol

I just want to know if there is an advantage of being a certain type in certain situations other than maybe catching monsters.

 

[Datschge]

Looks like now at the last minute Namdai decided to actually show all the Tales Studio people on the ToS-R blog. Last entry is by Nobuo Kanuma (鹿沼 宣&#38596 who had been with Wolfteam since 1992, mentions having done the battle background textures in previous Tales games and that this is the first time he's responsible for texture design of not just battle background but all locations.

I'm wondering how much of a effect will the characters being assigned an element will have on the battles. I know Emil=Dark, Marta=Light, Genis=Ice, Presea=Earth, etc. but I wonder if there is an advantage.

Best case would be the approach of ToDr where elements are the most important aspect to consider as the difficulty level goes up. (Ie. on normal it can be safely ignored while the higher the difficulty level the more strategically one needs to use specific elements to make significant damnage against specific enemies. Turns the game into a different wholly different beats on higher difficulties unlike the cheap enemy stats upping of Team Symphonia games.)

 

[GamerSoul]

Looks like now at the last minute Namdai decided to actually show all the Tales Studio people on the ToS-R blog. Last entry is by Nobuo Kanuma (鹿沼 宣&#38596 who had been with Wolfteam since 1992, mentions having done the battle background textures in previous Tales games and that this is the first time he's responsible for texture design of not just battle background but all locations.

Since 1992?! Well damn. That Sheena statue does looks amazing though.

Best case would be the approach of ToDr where elements are the most important aspect to consider as the difficulty level goes up. (Ie. on normal it can be safely ignored while the higher the difficulty level the more strategically one needs to use specific elements to make significant damnage against specific enemies. Turns the game into a different wholly different beats on higher difficulties unlike the cheap enemy stats upping of Team Symphonia games.)

Good stuff. I'm liking the sound of that possibilty a lot.

 

[Integra]

oooooh. new video. I'm liking this already. *grins*

 

[Joule]

Best case would be the approach of ToDr where elements are the most important aspect to consider as the difficulty level goes up. (Ie. on normal it can be safely ignored while the higher the difficulty level the more strategically one needs to use specific elements to make significant damnage against specific enemies. Turns the game into a different wholly different beats on higher difficulties unlike the cheap enemy stats upping of Team Symphonia games.)

That would heavenly after ToA's Unknown mode. It basically felt like the damage formulas were defense - attack at that difficulty. Elemental exploitation was almost negligible as were buff spells (both offensive and defensive). There were no ways to inflict status ailments.

It's ridiculous when it takes longer to brute force a battle because you can't cause much damage than just going out to grind for a hour or 2 then coming back to beat it in a hour.

 

[Sagitario]

I really want to hear the new tunes and the Sakuraba remixes [Fatalize, It Can Waver and Fight, Fighting of the Spirit, Beat the Angel, etc.] ...

 

[grandjedi6]

I don't see why the original english voice actors can't come back. VA tend to make a living off of this and rarely say no when asked to reprise old work

 

[TreIII]

I don't see why the original english voice actors can't come back. VA tend to make a living off of this and rarely say no when asked to reprise old work

Only thing? Scheduling. Contracts being made or broken. And various other things that just go under the "life happens" category.

Any of these types of factors could have an effect on making it so that a VA may be here today, gone tomorrow. So, while I hope for the best, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were at least a few VAs who couldn't come back for some reason, and thus need to be replaced.

 

[ivysaur12]

I've gone from thinking this was going to be a quick-cash to actually really wanting this game. It looks better every time I see it.

And English voiced skits is a nice plus.

 

[Htown]

Oh man the battles just look so SMOOTH.

 

[dragonlife]

Can't wait.

 

[Datschge]

And the old Wolfteam/Tales Studio people keep coming into the blog now. This time it's Susumu Omameuda (大豆生田 &#36914 responsible for Dungeon Design, is with Tales since ToD on PS1 and worked mostly on the 3D world maps of the Team Destiny games (which rock unlike the Team Symphonia ones incidentally enough =P) lately.

 

[reriel]

And the old Wolfteam/Tales Studio people keep coming into the blog now. This time it's Susumu Omameuda (???? ?) responsible for Dungeon Design, is with Tales since ToD on PS1 and worked mostly on the 3D world maps of the Team Destiny games (which rock unlike the Team Symphonia ones incidentally enough =P) lately.

good, datschge, with all this people, now can we say it's developed by tales studio ? or maybe they sent some guys to help ? it's my doubt.

 

[Sagitario]

And the old Wolfteam/Tales Studio people keep coming into the blog now. This time it's Susumu Omameuda (大豆生田 &#36914 responsible for Dungeon Design, is with Tales since ToD on PS1 and worked mostly on the 3D world maps of the Team Destiny games (which rock unlike the Team Symphonia ones incidentally enough =P) lately.

Nice ...

Do you know anything about the music composer/arranger of this game? I mean, the OST is coming and I haven't heard anything about it...

 

[Datschge]

This thread sure fell back a lot. New blog entry is by an apparently all new Tales Studio 3D character modeller called Miya (宮&#22283.

with all this people, now can we say it's developed by tales studio ? or maybe they sent some guys to help ? it's my doubt.

They definitely were more involved in this than in TotT for sure, and with all the new people already mentioned and older people getting more responsibilities is sounds like the 3rd team in the making. Yoshizumi stated early in an interview that new people as well as staff from ToS and TotA would work on this game. The separate mention of ToS staff made me hope that some GC specific staff would make a return (like the director Sato could turn out to be ToS GC field programmer Katsutoshi Sato). It's still to be seen if this all turns out to be true though.

Do you know anything about the music composer/arranger of this game?

By the sound of trailers I expect the usual pair to do this and ToV, but getting official confirmation seems impossible outside the in-game staff rolls. Namco is notorious for not acknowledging the composers, leading to ridiculous cases like having Sakuraba and Tamura do comments for the ToDr OST liner notes which are then credited to "Namco Tales Studio Sound Staff" instead mentioning their names anywhere. In the past this pretty much extended to the whole dev staff (my favourite is the Freudian slip in the ToE OST "developed by for Namco" when Wolfteam/Telenet Japan was never mentioned as the actual developer of the games) which is why the new openness through the blog is a nice change of pace. But with Sakuraba and Tamura being neither employees exclusive to Tales Studio nor a real selling point (with the lack of budget for musicians and all, the JPop acts are way more important) I don't see any change coming for them anytime soon.

 

[GamerSoul]

Any translations yet? This one seems pretty interesting.

 

[batbeg]

By the sound of trailers I expect the usual pair to do this and ToV, but getting official confirmation seems impossible outside the in-game staff rolls. Namco is notorious for not acknowledging the composers, leading to ridiculous cases like having Sakuraba and Tamura do comments for the ToDr OST liner notes which are then credited to "Namco Tales Studio Sound Staff" instead mentioning their names anywhere. In the past this pretty much extended to the whole dev staff (my favourite is the Freudian slip in the ToE OST "developed by for Namco" when Wolfteam/Telenet Japan was never mentioned as the actual developer of the games) which is why the new openness through the blog is a nice change of pace. But with Sakuraba and Tamura being neither employees exclusive to Tales Studio nor a real selling point (with the lack of budget for musicians and all, the JPop acts are way more important) I don't see any change coming for them anytime soon.

Sakuraba definitely doesn't seem to be doing anything. His English website lists ToS: DotNW as "Reused compositions with no direct involvement of Mr Sakuraba." So I don't think he's involved.

 

[Sagitario]

Sakuraba definitely doesn't seem to be doing anything. His English website lists ToS: DotNW as "Reused compositions with no direct involvement of Mr Sakuraba." So I don't think he's involved.

Datschge is the one in charge of that site... ;9

 

[Spirit Icana]

Oh, nice.

It sounds very Sakuraba during battle in the gameplay vid. And it is definately a new song. I expect his involvement to some extent.

Now, if only Hometeck can surprise us with a Mio Sakuraba song in replacement of the current J-POP song.

 

[batbeg]

Datschge is the one in charge of that site... ;9

So I've heard :O

 

[Firestorm]

Amazon.ca updated the release date:

Availability: This item will be released on November 24, 2008. Pre-order now! Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

 

[GamerSoul]

Some interesting shots from today's updates.

 

[reriel]

one of the last updates reports that symphonia characters have fixed level. They will level up only after some story events.

 

[grandjedi6]

one of the last updates reports that symphonia characters have fixed level. They will level up only after some story events.

Note to self: Don't waste experience on the old Symphonia crew

 

[AceBandage]

Note to self: Don't waste experience on the old Symphonia crew

Wouldn't be a wise idea, anyway, since they are only temporary party members.

 

[Jiggy]

Do I dare set myself up for disappointment by hoping something about this fixed level business was lost in translation? ...No. No, I don't. Guess I'll just be busy hoping for a Symphonia re-release so I can play Colette, Zelos, and Presea again legitimately, with the ability to level up and all that non-extraneous jazz.


Day one for ToS: DotNW nonetheless. May fanaticism shine through.

 

[batbeg]

That's pretty lame. Luckily I don't think it would in any way bother me, but it will obviously bother a lot of others.

 

[Firestorm]

I already pre-ordered. Dunno if I'll get it day one as it was online and I used super saver shipping >.>;

 

[crowphoenix]

one of the last updates reports that symphonia characters have fixed level. They will level up only after some story events.

Gya. That really sucks. Generally, all I want to do in these game is get to the old party. And now they don't level? Well, save after certain events.

 

[Jiggy]

Fixed levels for the old cast wouldn't bother me nearly as much if the new cast was twice as large and/or if monsters could be controlled. Having only three characters who can be levelled and are playable doesn't really cut it to me at all.

 

[Sagitario]

If the old cast is just temporarily in your party, why would you bother to level-up them anyway?


BTW... When was it confirmed that you can't control the monsters?

 

[Jiggy]

Well, to be honest, I still don't buy that the original cast is only temporary throughout the full game just because of dodgy Nintendo Power wording saying that only Emil and Marta are "permanent." Technically speaking, only Lloyd was "permanent" in Symphonia, but Colette, Raine, etc. were still there a great majority of the time. Besides, I don't see why they developers would bother to get four-player co-op working if there's not at least some near-end-game point where the original characters can be accessed at any time.

But maybe this is all just hope speaking. Nobody would exactly accuse me of being an impartial observer for this particular game universe.



Anyway, as for where we heard monsters couldn't be controlled (and about four-player co-op, for that matter), right here:
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/tales-of-symphonia-dawn-of-the-new-world/a-2008050991855496000/p-3