Topic: Tales of Zestiria opening animation

just see the opening today

Cool. This is looking like a really good entry in the series. They surely need to release a PS4 version though.

I'm so hyped for this game. Symphonia is my favorite game of all time, but the other Tales games failed to replicate the sense of openness Symphonia had. Zestiria seems to be going back to a more non-linear exploration based stucture.

How was Symphonia any more open than most of the others? I haven't played them all. But surely Abyss was just as open as Symphonia?

In terms of literal openness, they are Symphonia and Abyss are similar, but in their utilization of that openness, they couldn't be more different.

Symphonia's main story is relatively non-linear for a JRPG. There are multiple portions where the open area you are in has multiple locations that you can visit in different orders. In addition, the overworld itself has several secrets to discover, such as hidden quests, guideposts, and treasure chests. Because of all this, the player is encouraged to explore the world and look around.

Abyss didn't need an overworld. Every single objective is completely linear, and there aren't really many secrets to find in the overworld itself. Yes, there were search points, but those didn't require exploration, just walking to a point visible from very far away. The game really wouldn't be much different if you just started with the quick travel menu and no overworld at all.

Looks lame, actually. This whole over-emphasizing how the characters automatically have some broken power is just irritating by now, since that also degraded the stories of most previous entries into sterotypical show-off nonsense.
Not putting any faith in the series anymore, Tales has been terrible for such a long time, fans have gotten used to the series being terrible, to the point where they praise whatever they can get with the "Tales of [insert dumb fantasy word here]" slogan slapped onto it.

I don't think the stories have ever been the main draw. The main draw is the combat and characters.

But that's the entire problem. Because the story and presentation are so terrible, the characters and their "techniques" get dragged down immensely. Just look at some of Xillia's gameplay: it's almost on par with Vesperia when it comes to spam encouragement, but also making fights flashy, but increasingly boring and artificial. Not to speak of the godawful designs.

I'm not going to lie. Tales seems to be going down the cliche route.

Also, Symphonia really wasn't THAT open. I remember only less than a handful parts branching out.

Pretty much the entire first Sylvarant part had you going to fields that branched out. It changed a bit once you got to Tethe'alla, but when you go after the summon spirits, it opens up once more.

Eh. I wasn't feeling it. I'm guilty of watching the full opening for both Symphonia and Abyss every time I turn those games on. This one... meh.

The bulk of the game is still linear though.

Well yeah. I'm not saying it's an open world game. I'm saying it has a good sense of open-ness so you feel like you have some agency.

Lol the entire series grew out of the cliche root.