A message from the team and a report on Anime Expo 2019

Hello everyone.
My name is Tomomi Tagawa,
I’m a producer for the upcoming smartphone game TALES OF CRESTORIA.

In order to help the fans learn more about TALES OF CRESTORIA, we put together a video series hosted by members of our voice cast: Kohei Amasaki, Yui Ishikawa, and Ayane Sakura. It’s called TALES OF CRESTORIA Channel.
*The English version is the domestically streamed Japanese program released for video on demand with English subtitles.

Watch previous episodes below:

[TALES OF CRESTORIA CHANNEL #1] English Subs
https://youtu.be/_ZFi-WFjKno

[TALES OF CRESTORIA CHANNEL #2] English Subs
https://youtu.be/PczTbMzZ1PQ

This time I’d like to use this blog to answer some of your questions, and also to provide some updates and insight into the development process.
This is a unique chance to share details we can’t include in normal promotions, so I hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at TALES OF CRESTORIA.

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● About the release date

First, I’m so happy and thankful to hear that so many people are looking forward to TALES OF CRESTORIA.

I would also like to sincerely apologize for making all of our devoted fans wait so long.

As I mentioned on the first day of Tales of Festival 2019, development is just reaching the most critical stage. We are doing our utmost to deliver the best product possible to all of the fans.

Thank you to everyone who attended Tales of Festival for the warm, encouraging response.

The whole development team is focusing its energy into making the best game we can. It’ll be just a little longer, so please keep waiting!

Tales of Festival 2019 venue, June 15 (day one)
When Yui Ishikawa, Misella’s voice actress, took the stage at Tales of Festival, the audience changed their light sticks to her character’s color, pink! This is a small memento of that touching moment.
It was such a beautiful sight, I’m sure I’ll never forget it.

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● Why didn’t you make a story with only new characters?

Crestoria was designed as a smartphone game that anyone can pick up and dive straight into the world of Tales. This includes both returning fans of the series as well as players who are encountering a Tales game for the first time, and who might use this chance to explore the series.

While Crestoria is a completely new game that requires no prior knowledge of the Tales series, we also wanted to give new players the chance to meet some of the most beloved characters from other titles. You can think of it as a hybrid structure that features both a brand-new story with original characters and an “all-star” story.

As a smartphone game, it was also made with the assumption of ongoing updates. As such, we can plan for a wide rage of ongoing adventures and encounters with new characters. This is the first time we have taken advantage of these strengths and made a game like this.

To give a more concrete explanation, the elements of Crestoria’s story can be broadly categorized into two types of stories:

▼ Main Story
The story of our protagonist, Kanata, who meets and develops close bonds with many vibrant characters over the course of his life-changing adventure.

▼ Side Stories
Stories that move adjacent to the main story and are filled with characters who lend Kanata and his friends a hand in their travels.

Like other games in the Tales series, the main story depicts the protagonist Kanata and his friends as they face many challenges in their adventures.

The side stories were an interesting, new challenge. Although this may go without saying, in creating the world and story of a game, there are various stories unfolding all over the world that the main character may not see or even know about.

These hidden episodes will be captured in the side stories, which will depict the world from viewpoints of characters other than Kanata.

For example, when Kanata leaves his home village in the wake of a certain incident, the events that occur in the village he leaves behind are shown from Cress’ perspective.

This game revolves around the various interpretations and issues surrounding the concept of sin. This exploration of the central theme becomes even clearer through the series characters’ perspectives and actions.

Unlike previous standalone games, using multiple perspectives allows us to truly flesh out the world and add depth to the story. We hope that you all enjoy this unique facet of Crestoria’s storytelling.

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● Anime Expo 2019 Booth Report

During this year’s Anime Expo in Los Angeles (July 4-7, 2019), we promoted TALES OF CRESTORIA and opened a gallery exhibit!

Let’s do a quick overview of that event!

We hijacked the pillars in the entrance hall (South Hall Lobby) and displayed red wanted posters with key visual art from Wit Studio.

The South Hall Lobby is where attendees lined up to enter, so it was amazing to see the Crestoria red peeking through the gaps in the crowd!

We also set up a Gallery Booth and an AR Experience Booth on the left and right of the South Hall Lobby where you could experience the world of Crestoria.

As this was an event for anime fans, we used our Gallery Booth to reveal the character expression sheets for the first time!

We plan to post them on the official site later, but we’d like to share them with everyone who couldn’t come to the venue, so we’ll include them here as well.

At the AR Experience Booth, you could take a commemorative photo with Kanata, Misella, and Vicious’ Blood Sins.
By the way, Crestoria also has an Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/to_crestoria/). We’ll be posting the AX 2019 photos there, so please check it out!
*The TALES OF CRESTORIA Instagram is only in Japanese.

On July 5, I went to the Tales series cosplay meetup and took a bunch of photos!
It was amazing how people completely transformed into the characters from the Tales series, replicating costumes down to the tiniest detail and posing to capture their personalities perfectly! There were even characters from the mobile games!

Since this has gone longer than expected, I’ll finish up here for today.

In the future, I hope to show you some top-secret images and behind-the-scenes stories from development. If you have any specific requests like “What’s going on with XX?!” or “I want to see XX!”, then please reply to the blog post tweet with your request and the hashtag #TalesOfCrestoria.

We are working hard to get TALES OF CRESTORIA to you and we sincerely look forward to you playing it.

Tomomi Tagawa (TALES OF CRESTORIA, Producer)

I participated in the Tales of Fan Meeting!

Hello everybody!
My name is Tagawa, and I’m a producer of TALES OF CRESTORIA.

Today I’ll be reporting on the “TALES OF CRESTORIA Corner” I attended with all the fans, held in Tokyo on September 15, as part of the “Tales of Fan Meeting-After Tokyo Game Show 2019-”.

“Tales of Fan Meeting-After Tokyo Game Show 2019-” was the first fan meeting held for the Tales series.

Fans who registered in advance for the event were invited to the venue, where the Tales series’ General Producer Tomizawa acted as host. He moderated and coordinated various surprises, mini-games, and “corners” for each title, etc. A great time was had by all!

At the venue, fans were surprised with a card featuring details they had shared in advance. The printed personalized card had: their nickname, favorite work, and favorite character!
(When it was over, I also got one as a souvenir!)

At the Fan Card Exchange Event held at the beginning of the meeting, participants stood up from their tables to trade cards and talk about what was on them. The venue had a really warm and friendly vibe.

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During the "TALES OF CRESTORIA Corner", we took about 20 minutes to introduce the following points:
■ Battle Visuals trailer full-version advanced release
■ Checking out 3D Models with our special development equipment

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■ Battle Visuals trailer full-version advanced release

This is the Battle Visuals trailer, the first cut of which we released at the Tales of Festival in June 2019. We had the chance to screen the full version at the fan meeting.

This trailer has been uploaded to our official website and is available to watch there, so please check it out!

The following content was first previewed in this trailer:
・ All main character's Mystic Artes cut-in illustrations (courtesy of WIT Studio)
・ The complete Mystic Artes sequences of Aegis, Yuna and Orwin

The Mystic Artes sequences and materials for the main characters had last-minute finishing touches added, so the full version was a truly fresh experience.
Check out the details and individuality put in each sequence of these 6 characters!

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

■ Checking out 3D Models with our special development equipment

With so many fans coming together in person for the fan meeting, our special terminal for development was used to give participants a chance to get up close and personal with the characters.

In the special development mode, you can zoom in on Kanata like this....

turn him around like this...

You can check all angles, including some that can’t be seen in regular gameplay.

Three representatives from the fan meeting selected the characters they were interested in from the following lineup and took a closer look at the 3D model.

The first guy got really excited after seeing the Mystic Artes and claimed to speak for all men in the venue by picking the Crestoria character Yuna!

The camera zoomed into the limit... at an interesting angle. He didn’t hesitate in his movements at all...
Weird... It was supposed to be his first time using it...
Although it requires pretty intricate use, he did it perfectly.

While introducing the highlights of the design, we were also able to see angles that you never see during gameplay, like designs used for the lower body.

The second fan, a woman, was the first to nominate Kanata to look at. (Thank you!)
But since the staff showed Kanata as a sample while explaining how to use the device, Aegis was picked instead.

Here, you can see his whole face pretty close up. I heard people commenting, “The eyelashes are beautiful!" while checking out this handsome warrior from every conceivable angle.
I was happy to hear the admiration in the guys’ voices as they remarked on how cool he looked.

Fans were also able to check out the intricate details of the designs on the back of the character as well.

The third fan chose “Misella” because he was interested in how Inomata’s art was reproduced in the game.
We checked out the lace and sheer puffy sleeve design, which overflowed with illustrator Inomata’s charm. The fans commented that her back was also beautiful.

While checking out the fluffy texture of the skirt, the camera position... dropped (no doubt due to the difficulty of using the terminal!) and we were left with a beautifully refreshing scene showing Misella and a blue sky.

Producer Tomizawa joked, “Did you want to see the sky? (Haha!)
It was such a rush to receive so many warm comments and reactions from everyone at the event.

Thank you very much for your participation and cooperation in the corner!

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・
We want to continue creating opportunities for fans to interact with the development side of the game and each other. So, if you have the chance, please come! We would love you participate!

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Bonus

For further details on the 3D models we looked at in the fan meeting, I'm going to share these screenshots I prepared!

We hope you will enjoy the attention to detail

Tomomi Tagawa (TALES OF CRESTORIA, Producer)

TALES OF CRESTORIA
Latest updates, theme song anecdotes, and series characters

*There may beschedule changes due to the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

Hello everyone, it's been a while.
This is Tomomi Tagawa, producer for Tales of Crestoria.

We were able to share several new pieces of information, so for today's blog I'd like to review some of those, while also sharing some anecdotes about the theme song artist selection process and answering some of your questions about the depiction of the series characters, using Luke as an example.

Firstly, we've opened pre-registration for the English version.
We've also started a joint campaign between the English and Japanese versions.
The campaign, aptly titled "Worldwide Pre-registration Campaign ~Decide by vote. Even if it's a sin.~", calls upon our followers all over the world to decide the pre-registration rewards by vote.

If we're able to meet the conditions, the most popular Attachments from the poll (3 types max) will be awarded to all players who complete the tutorial within a limited time.
We would love for everyone to pre-register and vote in the item polls—just don't forget to claim your rewards!

Details on official site

There are two ways to pre-register

1.Follow us on social media : Twitter or Facebook page

2.Pre-register on the App Store or Google Play

Next, I'd like to talk about the Final Trailer.
For those who haven't seen it yet, you can watch it here.

This trailer was the first time we revealed the theme song, as well as a portion of the opening movie. What did you think of it?

The band that provided the theme song for Crestoria was none other than GESU NO KIWAMI OTOME.

Each time we tackle the theme song for a new Tales game, we consider a number of potential artists to work with. The process is never particularly easy.

For Crestoria, we had to express a somewhat solemn tone as well as the concept of "sin," so we started off with several candidates with an "intense" or "hardcore" sound.
In the midst of those deliberations, we realized that we wanted to illustrate the ray of hope represented by these characters fighting through the darkness of their world.
We felt that GESU NO KIWAMI OTOME.'s unique melodic lines, expressed through delicate rhythms and their distinctive sound, could create that perfect combination of ennui and light, and even further deepen the allure of Crestoria's world. So, we approached them with an offer to write the theme song, which they thankfully accepted.

In the end, the game experience is vastly improved by both WIT STUDIO's breathtaking animation and GESU NO KIWAMI OTOME.'s moving phrases.
We hope you're all looking forward to seeing it come together in the opening movie, available in-game.

You can find a comment from GESU NO KIWAMI OTOME. themselves here.

Speaking of the opening movie, some of you may have been a little surprised to see so many series characters in the footage revealed in the Final Trailer.

In light of that, I'd like to talk a bit about the original characters and series characters as they appear in this game.

First, we have the original characters: Kanata and his friends. Their adventures are depicted in the expansive Main Story.
Several series characters will appear throughout the Main Story, but their real adventures unfold largely in the Side Story.

As for why these series characters appear at all, we included them in the world of TALES OF CRESTORIA because we wanted to illustrate the drama that unfolds when they grapple with this game's particular theme of "sin," just like Kanata and the rest of the main characters.

To delve a little deeper into the unique opportunities that this provides, I'll use the example of Luke fon Fabre, who appears as a key character in Crestoria.
Luke, acting as a peace envoy, falls into a trap during a critical mediation assignment and accidentally commits a serious crime. Although he committed the crime against his will, Luke struggles with the gravity of his actions. However, through the System of Justice, his crime is projected by Vision Central and the often-cruel citizenry pronounces him innocent.
What does it mean to bear the burden of a crime? Who gets to decide what a crime is?
Tormented by countless conflicts, Luke fights against the current to move forward with new friends at his side.
That's just a short summary of Luke's story in this game, but those of you who have played Tales of the Abyss might be wondering "how do the events in this game compare to when he was rejected by his friends after Akzeriuth?" Or perhaps you had different questions based on your memories of Tales of the Abyss?

Overall, the series characters as they appear in the world of Crestoria are depicted with a fresh perspective on how they might confront this world's notion of sin, while also rooting the foundation of their adventures in their original stories. We hope that you enjoy the end result.

Another wonderful aspect of the interplay between Crestoria's original characters and series characters is the small character interactions throughout the story.
For instance, the Knight Commander Aegis and visiting swordsman Leon form a striking pair of young, skilled warriors.
Other players might be more amused by the washed-up old man duo of Orwin and Raven. You can look fun to these fun crossover combinations and more in the game.

Not only that, the side adventures of the series characters will give you a deeper look into the rich world of Crestoria from various different perspectives outside of the Main Story.

Lastly, I have an announcement.

Due to the influence of the novel coronavirus, we had to cancel our May 1st live stream, during which we had planned to share the latest updates for the English version.
Instead, we will be sharing that information on our Twitter on the same day as the Japanese version.
The updates will be posted starting from 21:00 JST, which we understand may be early morning in some regions. You can find the detailed schedule below, so we hope you can find a good time to check our official Twitter (@to_crestoria_EN) on May 1st (Fri).

We on the development team will do our utmost to prepare an amazing game for you by release day.
As always, thank you for your continued support of TALES OF CRESTORIA.

Tomomi Tagawa (TALES OF CRESTORIA, Producer)