Bandai Namco held a new stream for Tales of Arise on July 29, which most notably included one hour of Q&A with game producer Yusuke Tomizawa, who confirmed cameo characters will appear.

The first part of the stream revealed new Tales of Arise gameplay, showing skits for the first time and how they've been switched from 2D to using 3D models. In the second part of the stream, Producer Yusuke Tomizawa answered several questions from fans for over an hour. Including freshly sent-in questions related to the fishing and skit gameplay shown in the first part.

Bandai Namco is doing an excellent job with the Tales of Channel lately, with videos getting English subs. As such, I won't be translating all of the Q&A as official subs should be coming soon. With that said, there are a few answers worth looking into right now.

Will Tales of Arise get a demo? New Score system explained

Yusuke Tomizawa highly implied on stream that a demo will be released before the full game launches in September.

Yusuke Tomizawa: "A demo was already released for the media, and we're looking into making a public demo for fans too. I can't tell you anything specific for now. But we definitely want fans to be able to directly feel the game for themselves. Please wait just a little bit more."

Next, speaking about the battle system, Yusuke Tomizawa also confirmed there are no victory poses in Tales of Arise. The characters will only speak through voiced lines after each battle. He also explained the Grade system was replaced with a new Score system.

Like Grade, the Score system is still dependent of how good you are and how fast you defeat enemies. However, you'll get more Skill Points if you get high Scores, being able to unlock new gameplay functionalities tied with Skills faster. There's also a Consecutive Battles Bonus. If you keep having high Scores for several battles in a row, the drop rate of rare materials will increase. The encounter rate of rare enemies will increase too.

Coliseum side content and cameo boss battles teased

At the 1:16:00 timestamp linked above, Yusuke Tomizawa also revealed Tales of Arise will feature a coliseum.

Yusuke Tomizawa: "Yes, there is a coliseum as part of the side content. And yes, it will have cameo characters. What kind of content it'll have, and which characters it'll be, I can't reveal. Play the game to find out."

Cameo boss battles are a tradition in the Tales of series. It's definitely great to see Tales of Arise will do it as well. Stay tuned as we have more Tales of Arise coverage in store.

Tales of Arise will launch on September 9 in Japan, and September 10 worldwide on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC (Steam).