— With Tales of Symphonia, you had this sort of dynamic story element where, depending on your choices, you either kept Zelos or Kratos. Do you plan on having more dynamic story elements like this in future games where your decisions affect the story?
Baba: Actually, in the next title, Tales of Xillia 2, which will be released on the first of November in Japan, the player needs to make decisions throughout the story many times, so I think this is a very similar system to Symphonia.
— But do these decisions have an effect on the overall story?
Baba: If I talk a lot about how the decisions have an effect on the story, I will spoil it. So I cannot talk a lot about this. But I want to implement similar systems in future Tales series titles.
— Up until Tales of Xillia, the Tales series has not seen a female protagonist. And even in Xillia, she’s paired alongside a male protagonist. In the future, do you see any Tales games as having a single, female protagonist?
Baba: The idea sounds very interesting and possible, but we don’t have any plans to have a single female main character in future titles.
— Can I ask your thoughts on the Wii U?
Baba: We don’t have any plans at the time [to bring the Tales series to Wii U]. But the Wii U is very unique hardware, which has one big screen [on the TV] and one small screen [on the controller], but with the console for development of an RPG, the players need to play for a long time, so we need to create a game in which the gameplay will help players feel less stress.
— Recently, you said you were considering the feasibility of dual audio in Tales of Xillia. Have there been any developments on this?
Baba: I’ve been making efforts to include both Japanese voice-overs and English voice-overs. But with the Japanese voice-overs, it’s not just about data, but the licensing problems. But we are making efforts to resolve this problem.
— It was recently revealed that Tales of Xillia 2 protagonist Ludger won’t be very chatty until the second playthrough. What went into deciding this, and how will it effect his character development?
Baba: One of the main concepts of Xillia 2 is that we want players to become the hero Ludger. Part of the gameplay involves players selecting his actions and emotions. So, to help players feel that they are Ludger, we on purpose did not include voice-overs on the first playthrough. The voice-overs have a really strong effect in the game, and if Ludger speaks with his voice, the players cannot feel that, “Okay, I’m Ludger,” because his voice is different from the player’s voice. So I chose not to implement voice-overs on the first playthrough.
— Recently, in Japan, you released Tales of Innocence R for PlayStation Vita, and in 2009, Tales of Vesperia for PlayStation 3. Are there still chances for these titles to come stateside?
Baba: The Tales series team is always working mainly on development of the new titles. Because the number of staff members are limited, the main focus is creating a new title, like Xillia or Xillia 2. So the number of titles which can be localized for western countries is limited, unfortunately.
— Can you, at least, officially shut down a possible localization for Tales of Vesperia on PlayStation 3? There may still be fans holding back importing.
Baba: This is no official announcement that [localization of] the PlayStation 3 version is shut down. Of course, there is the still the possibility. But I don’t have any plans or an official announcement about the localization of the PlayStation 3 version of Vesperia, as of now.
