Several key staff members from Bandai Namco shared their aspirations for 2025 with 4Gamer. Some of them revealed that they are preparing for the respective 30th anniversaries of the Tales Of and Ace Combat series in the same year. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
Most of the company’s staff members who sent their messages, including Tekken 8‘s Katsuhiro Harada and the Gundam Breaker 4 producer Masanori Tanaka, only stated their intentions to continue updating their respective games. Meanwhile, Yosuke Futami is preparing to release the PvPvE mech shooting game Synduality: Echo of Ada physically on January 16, 2025, and digitally on January 23, 2025.
However, the key staff behind Tales Of and Ace Combat left the most notable comments. Yusuke Tomizawa made the following comment as the Tales Of series producer:
The Tales Of series will reach its complete 30th anniversary in 2025. We have been planning numerous anniversary projects since the end of last year, so we want to celebrate it with everyone who have supported the series until now, and I would also like to add more support to the series’ future.
One of them will be past title remaster project which has also launched; the release of Tales of Graces f Remastered is also coming soon on January 16. As this game is one of the series’ top masterpieces, those who haven’t played it yet should also definitely [get this]!
Yusuke Tomizawa
Meanwhile, the Ace Combat series producer Kazutoki Kono chimed in about the franchise’s next new game, which has been under development since as early as 2021:
. . .Right now, we are developing a new game in the Ace Combat series, and as we pile up issues almost daily, we are also living with utmost efforts towards the days where we can start seeing results. It will still take a bit more time until the new game is announced, but since 2025 is also the 30th anniversary series of the Ace Combat series, I want to properly hype it up together with all the fans.
Kazutoki Kono
Both the Ace Combat and Tales Of series debuted in 1995. Namco released the first Ace Combat for PlayStation in Japan on June 30, 1995, and in North America as Air Combat on September 9, 1995. It later released the RPG title Tales of Phantasia for Super Famicom (SNES) in Japan on December 15, 1995.
The latest mainline entries for both franchises are Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown in 2019 and Tales of Arise in 2021. Both titles are readily available on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Tales of Arise also has native PS5 and Xbox Series X releases, while Ace Combat 7 is playable on the newer consoles via backward compatibility. Bandai Namco has also released a Nintendo Switch port of Ace Combat 7 in 2024, but it has still yet to announce a Tales of Arise port to a Nintendo console as of the end of 2024.
Tales of Graces f Remastered will appear as a part of Bandai Namco’s project to remaster prior Tales Of entries for the series’ 30th anniversary in 2025. It will be available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Switch, and PC on January 17, 2025.
Published: Dec 27, 2024 08:00 pm