Tales of Festival Reveals Release Dates, Voice Actors and more

The second Tales of Festival offered attendees the expected mix of live Tales-related performances and breaking series announcements.

Held at Pacifico Yokohama in afternoon and evening sessions on June 14, the Tales of Festival 2009 stage event kicked off with live skit performances featuring 12 characters from past titles as portrayed by Hikaru Midorikawa, Tomokazu Seki, Jun Fukuyama, Katsuyuki Konishi, Chihiro Suzuki, Toriumi Kosuke. Mai Nakahara, Mamoru Miyano, Yukana, and Kanae Itou. The event as a whole was hosted by Masaya Onosaka (Zelos Wilder in Tales of Symphonia) and Akiko Kimura (Ruca Milda in Tales of Innocence).

The big news updates followed through producer Hideo Baba, with support from some of the voice staff. As usual, most of the information had been provided in advance through the likes of Jump Magazine and Famitsu.

Baba and crew revealed a release date for the PlayStation 3 version of Tales of Vesperia. The PS3 updated port of last summer's Xbox 360 Tales title will arrive on September 17, priced at ¥7,800, the same price as its Xbox 360 counterpart.

Namco Bandai will be offering a pre-order bonus for the title. Those who pre-order the game will get a product code which can be entered into the PlayStation Store for a free download of Tales of the Abyss costumes for characters Yuri, Fren, and Estel.

For Tales of Graces, the next "mothership" entry in the series, attendees were treated to a new trailer along with an introduction to heroine Sophie. As revealed in Jump Magazine recently, Sophie has lost her memory at the time of her meeting with main character Asbel. The name Sophie is something that was created by Asbel.

Baba also shared first voice actor information for Graces here. Asbel will be voiced by Takahiro Sakurai (voice of Cloud in the Final Fantasy VII series). Sophie will be voiced by Kana Hanazawa (voice of Eri Mizutani in Idol Master DS). The two appeared in a video message where they promised that the game would make its previously announced Winter release period.

Impress Watch, in its story on the event, reports on a new gameplay system reveal for Graces. Known as Around Step, you achieve this evasion move through simple input of the analogue stick, which Baba said would make it easy to use even for those unaccustomed to action games.

The event also saw some non-game announcements for the series.

A new trailer announced an opening date of October 3, 2009 for the film adaptation of Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Vesperia: the First Strike.

Tales of Abyss will see a special fan disc DVD released on December 22. This will feature voice actor skits. Namco Bandai is holding a special promotion which will have the various voice actors shuffle their roles during one of the skits. Fans will be able to cast their vote on who should play what from July 1 through August 31 at the anime's official site.

The event closed off with a live concert event. During the afternoon event, Back On performed Fly Away and Re:Start from Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 with Girl Next Door following with Infinity and the debut of the Tales of Versus theme song Be Your Wings. The evening event saw Misono perform music from Tales of the Tempest and Symphonia.