The final piece of news from Bandai Namco’s RPG Tour was from producer Yasuhiro Fukaya with the announcement that Tales of Berseria will be arriving in Europe early next year on PS4 and Steam and will feature English and Japanese audio. Tales of Berseria follows the story of Velvet Crowe, the series first female solo protagonist. Three years prior to the events of Berseria, the world was suffering from a disease called Daemonblight which turns people into monsters. On a night of a Scarlet Moon, Velvet was betrayed, lost her parents and her left arm was swallowed by a mysterious power. Now three years later, the world has slowly begun recovering from Daemonblight and Velvet is racing through the world to track down the one who took everything away from her.
The central theme of Tales of Berseria is “Emotion vs Reason”, focusing on the conflict between those driven by emotion and those driven by logic and reason. Fukaya also explained that the title “Berseria” comes from the myth of the Berserker, a warrior with unusual and uncontrollable power. While Tales of Berseria is a prequel to Tales of Zestiria, there’s some references to other Tales games as well. The ship that Velvet and her party travel the world on is called Van Elita, the name of the ship from Tales of Eternia (otherwise known as Tales of Destiny II) though there’s no story connection between the two games. Fukaya finished by demonstrating Berseria’s battle system which is called the Liberation Linear Motion Battle System (or Liberation-LMB). Players now have full control over the camera in battle and can fully customise their own arte combos.
