While I wouldn’t call it a main feature, almost every entry in the Tales of series, or at least the ones on multiplayer-compatible consoles, have featured drop-in co-op functionality. At any point in a combat encounter, players could connect additional controllers and have friends take command of one of the four party members over from the CPU. Tales of Arise, however, is being touted as a major reboot for the franchise, which means some mechanics will be coming and going. So, will Tales of Arise have co-op multiplayer?
A major part of Tales of Arise’s design sensibility lay in a greater emphasis on story and combat. Obviously, every Tales game has had plenty of emphasis on those sectors already, but this time around, they really want you to pay close attention to this stuff, and presumably, if you’re bantering with friends while playing, you won’t be doing that. This is why Tales of Arise, in a first for mainline releases of the franchise, will not feature any kind of drop-in co-op multiplayer.
Will Tales of Arise Have Co-Op Multiplayer?
In an interview with IGN, Tales of Arise’s producer, Yusuke Tomizawa, explained the team’s perceptions on multiplayer and why it was cut from the game.
“So this game is really a standalone game where one person really enjoys the drama and the overall story of the game, we don’t really have any plans currently for a multiplayer mode,” he said. “But on the other side, we did put a lot of focus on how the characters work together and how they cooperate in the battle and how that plays out in game mechanics.”
A lot of the design of the game has skewed more toward keeping things focused, which is also why a lot of the in-between areas have been made a little more linear than in previous entries and why combat takes place in designated arenas rather than on-field. It’s a little sad to lose an enduring feature, but hopefully, this newfound focus will make up for it.
