Tales Of Arise (Photo: Bandai Namco Entertainment)
After an indefinite delay in 2020, Tales of Arise has followed through with its namesake and will release on Xbox One and Series, PlayStaion 4 and 5 and PC on September 10.
“Having announced that delay and working through COVID and changing how we do work, this year of development has been pretty positive for the most part,” game producer Yusuke Tomizawa told IGN in an interview. “Mostly because we have given ourselves the time to really focus on quality and improvement of the game, as well as expanding accessibility and giving players more options, such as porting it to the PS5 and the Xbox next-generation consoles so that we have wider options for the consumer to choose from when they’re thinking about buying this game.”
Tales fans ought to commend Tomizawa and the team beside them who decided to delay their game rather than release it in an incomplete state. Corporate expectations rarely coexist with developer realities in the video game development sphere. Interestingly enough, stories of developers being treated humanly often come from Japan, a culture often associated with overworking and maintaining workplace mores over personal comfort.
Nintendo made headlines when they cited staff well-being as one of the reasons Animal Crossing New Horizons was delayed into March 2020. Bandai Namco kept the trend going when they delayed Tales of Arise.
Daydreaming gamers can only imagine what would have happened to Cyberpunk 2077 if CD Projekt gave their developers realistic deadlines. Any story where developer input alters a corporate course ought to be celebrated.
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