Tales of Arise is slipping out of 2020 and it doesn’t have a launch window in mind

Delayed ‘due to the ambitious nature of the project’

Bandai Namco has a bit of housekeeping for Tales fans today. Not that we’ve seen or even heard much about the next game, Tales of Arise, but it’s going to need more time. It’s skipping 2020 altogether.

As producer Yusuke Tomizawa explains it, the developers are going big for Arise.

They’re striving to catch lightning in a bottle – to deliver “a familiar but innovative gameplay experience to fans of the series, while pushing the technical envelope to deliver a high level of graphical quality to impress both long-time players and those who have never played a Tales of game.”

“While COVID-19 has affected some aspects of development, we’ve done our best to adapt to the situation and have implemented remote development capabilities for our team. However, to achieve the quality and provide the gorgeous experience we envision for our players, we will need more time to realize that vision and therefore we decided to delay the launch timing for Tales of Arise.”

Bandai Namco hasn’t settled on – or at least publicly committed to – a new launch window. The game was previously announced for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. I’m curious where it’ll end up.

Around this time last year, Tales of Arise had just leaked ahead of E3. What a year it’s been.