Pre-E3 2004: Tales of Symphonia Interview

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IGN: Why are you bringing Tales of Symphonia to GameCube? Especially when GameCube isn't really home to RPGs and the PlayStation 2 is home to the prior Tales games and has such a large RPG fan base?

Nao Higo: I think that's precisely why we want to bring it out on the GameCube. We wanted to give GameCube owners a chance to experience a really solid RPG, which they haven't been able to up until now.

IGN: More specifically about Tales of Symphonia -- what has changed between Symphonia and the prior Tales titles besides the move to 3D?

Nao Higo: Basically, we've ramped up the battle system in Tales of Symphonia. In the past, Tales series has always been in 2D, so the battle system has always been linear-- meaning that all the characters are on one plane, fighting on the same lines so it's sorta a static system whereas because we were able to do the game in 3D the battle system takes place in a 3D area and you get to fight on different enemies on different planes. It's much more exciting.

What have you done with the localization of Tales of Symphonia? Are there any changes between the Japanese and US versions?

Nao Higo: Besides the obvious stuff like just the text and whatnot, I definitely wanted to present Symphonia in a new light from past RPGs that have come out on the market. We really focused on doing the voiceovers -- we tried to do a great job on it. Also, one of the things I changed for the US was the opening theme song. The Japanese version had a song done by a pop group, but for the US we changed it so that we have the in-game music composer do the opening theme and I think he did fantastic job. I think the US market will like it a lot.

IGN: In terms of the voiceovers, the biggest concern that most people have is that Tales of Symphonia will have the stereotypical dubbing that's done for the US -- it rarely sounds natural. What steps have you taken to make Tales sound authentic?

Nao Higo: The first thing we did was we definitely wanted to go with high caliber talent, so we used talented voiceover professionals from Hollywood. If you name a new cartoon, I'm sure the voiceover actors in those are in our game -- like Teen Titans. Lloyd is Robin on Teen Titans. Tara Strong, who is Bubbles (Powerpuff Girls) and she's also on Teen Titans I believe, is also one of our characters. They're all great wonderful actors. The voice over sessions went really well.

Have you had any troubles with the localization? Was there a major hurdle that you faced?

Nao Higo: We tried to get this game done as soon as possible so that we could present it to the US audience in a timely fashion. I know that some RPGs take years to localize and the US market is like " When is it coming out, when is it coming out!" So we definitely have tried to get it out as fast as possible, but because of the sheer scale of the RPG -- if you play through it completely it's more than 80 hours -- so I think that was one of the more difficult aspects.

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