Tales of Arise continues my lifelong journey alongside the series

(Image credit: Bandai)

In Tales of Arise, one of the biggest themes is human connection. Alphen, the game's protagonist, tin't feel pain. Shionne, the game's female person pb, tin can't touch another person without physically harming them. The metaphor isn't subtle, but the Tales series has never actually been virtually subtlety. It's here to remind us that sometimes life — like video games — is big, showy and dramatic. I know that for a fact, considering the serial has inexplicably, just consistently, mirrored the course of my adult life.

While I highly doubt that Bandai Namco has been post-obit me around and developing Tales games specifically with my life events in mind, the series reminds us that the games we play aren't there to simply pass the time. By and large, somehow, we discover the right game at the right moment. And if we're lucky, a long-running series can stay with us for a decade or more, showing us how we've grown and inverse, also as how we've anchored ourselves.

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Motherly communication and lifelong friends

For applied purposes, my experience with the Tales series began in 2003 with Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube. It was the summer before my senior year in high school, and my summertime job had left me flush with greenbacks, by 16-year-onetime standards. Tales of Symphonia defenseless my eye as I perused an EB Games with my mom.

For the first time in my life, $50 for a new game didn't seem all that steep. Merely I remembered trying Tales of Destiny on the PS1 a few years earlier, and putting it downwardly afterwards I compared it unfavorably to the much flashier Final Fantasy Seven. "Should I buy information technology?" I asked my mom — a adult female who has, to my knowledge, never fabricated a frivolous purchase in her life.

"If you tin beget it and call up you'll enjoy it, yep," she said. "If you're but ownership information technology because it's new and popular, then no."

Xviii years later, this is the exact advice I requite my friends and family unit every fourth dimension they wonder whether to invest in a new book, movie, Telly show or video game.

Tales of Symphonia was everything that Destiny wasn't, with gorgeous graphics, spirited phonation acting, interesting level design and a fast-paced battle system. But what I retrieve about about the game is how I learned to set aside a little coin for leisure, and spend it wisely.

When Tales of the Abyss debuted in 2005 — and when I finally played it in 2006 — my life was already in a dissimilar place. I was between higher semesters and interning at a nonprofit system, when I received a troubling phone call. A friend of mine had a publishing internship lined up in Manhattan, but her housing had fallen through at the terminal minute. Could she come stay with my family unit for a week or so?

"A week" quickly became "the whole summer." I decided that rather than hole myself up in my room with my new Xbox 360, I'd keep her company downwardly in the family room, where the PS2 lived. Knowing she was a Symphonia fan, I picked upwards Tales of the Completeness and asked if she wanted to play co-op. She said no, simply she definitely wanted to picket over my shoulder.

If you lot've played Tales of the Abyss, and then you lot know it's one of the amend Tales games, primarily due to its bandage of characters. Immature lord Luke fon Fabre starts off by confronting his own pampered lifestyle, and ends by confronting an ideologue who would willingly sacrifice the whole earth in the proper noun of unfettered liberty. His human relationship with his friends — specially the sympathetic healer Tear Grants — gives him the courage and determination to exercise the correct affair, even when it would be easier to merely fall back on his wealth and power.

When the game's credits rolled, I looked over to my friend, and saw that she was in tears.

When nosotros're at our lowest, knowing that we tin rely on our friends makes all the difference. I didn't demand Tales of the Completeness to remind me of that. But I'm glad information technology did.

Endings and ancestry

In 2012, I lived with my mom for a year while I saved up money for my own place. Anyone who's tried living with a parent after living alone for a few years tin can guess how well that went. Later on many trials and tribulations, withal, I found my very first New York Urban center flat, and had all my boxes packed. The nighttime before the moving truck arrived, I saturday in a bare room in front end of my TV and my PS3 — I'd take care of those the side by side morning.

I was playing through Tales of Graces: an uneven entry in the series. In the game, many characters grapple with the darker sides of their natures. The conflicted Richard sacrifices his morality for ability; the stoic Sophie digs deep to notice her humanity; the arrogant Hubert learns to dear his family once again.

Had I, too, not been my best self over the by year? Had I pushed away people who loved me, because there was something I idea I wanted even more than?

In the end, Tales of Graces was a hard game to finish. This is partially considering the game has a wicked difficulty curve and a punishing final boss. But in retrospect, I don't think those were the just reasons.

By 2013, however, things had turned effectually. I loved my new identify; my family and I were on meliorate terms than ever; and I had even started writing for a little-known publication called Tom's Guide. (Past now, y'all may have heard of it.) At the fourth dimension, the staff was transitioning over from an older site chosen TechNewsDaily, and we weren't yet sure what to cover from day to day. I argued that whatsoever else we did, video games should be part of our plan.

My editor was skeptical; after all, nosotros didn't accept a big staff or any name recognition in the gaming space. Games reviews have a long time to write, and the games themselves take even longer to play.

I acknowledged his points, only told him that a game chosen Tales of Xillia had just come out, and I was going to play it anyway. If it worked, we could try more reviews; if not, we'd know to focus our attending elsewhere.

And so, on Baronial 8, Tales of Xillia became the first-ever game review on Tom's Guide. It wasn't the concluding.

Thematic resonance in Tales of Arise

Granted, not every single Tales game has matched up with some big milestone in my life. (And, frankly, information technology'd be a fiddling scary if they had.) I don't think anything particularly important was happening when I reviewed Tales of Xillia ii; I played Tales of Eternia years after information technology came out; and the less said about Tales of the Earth: Radiant Mythology, the better.

Still, every bit I reviewed Tales of Arise last week, I couldn't help but call back on how this escapist fantasy RPG series occasionally touches on something profound. Equally mentioned in a higher place, the primary relationship in the game is between the pain-immune Alphen and the pain-inflicting Shionne. Without spoiling anything, the two eventually come to realize that feeling hurting is a worthwhile toll to pay for connecting with some other person.

Two years agone, I moved in with my girlfriend, and nosotros got a domestic partnership. One twelvemonth ago, a pandemic swept beyond the country, and nosotros found ourselves sharing a 1-chamber apartment for both work and leisure, 24 hours a day. Being in shut contact with another person actually can cause pain, and that pain can sometimes seem unbearable. Merely, as Tales of Ascend observes, embracing that pain can help forge even stronger bonds.

Three weeks ago, I invited my partner out to i of our favorite spots. While her dorsum was turned, I went down on one knee and pulled a ring box out of my pocket. When she turned around, I asked her to marry me. We had endured our pain together. It'southward a trivial cost for a lasting, meaningful connection.

As I watched Alphen and Shionne start to draw the same conclusions, I realized it had happened once more. A Tales game had come along at the perfect fourth dimension in my life, and taught me a little something nigh myself in the process. I tin only wonder what milestone the next game in the series volition marker.

Marshall Honorof is a senior editor for Tom'southward Guide, overseeing the site's coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a science writing groundwork, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of scientific discipline and technology. After hours, you lot can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on archetype sci-fi.