How did Tales of Arise get its painterly look?

Every Tales game before 2021 announced its designer on the box, and the name was always Fujishima or Inomata. Tales of Arise changed the credit. Its character designer and art director is Minoru Iwamoto, who had contributed designs to Zestiria in 2015 and spent the intervening years as the series' rising illustrator, drawing key art across the line. For Arise he took the whole visual identity himself.

The look follows from that single authorship. Arise renders its world with a custom 'atmospheric shader' that softens light and color so landscapes read like watercolor paintings behind the characters, a deliberate step away from the cel-shaded anime style the series had used since Vesperia. Dahna's regions are painted biomes, Rena hangs in the sky as a second world, and the characters' more realistic proportions sit inside the scenery instead of on top of it.

Iwamoto's authorship extends to the game's public face. His key art fronts every regional box, and when Arise passed three million copies sold in February 2024, the milestone artwork Bandai Namco released was his new painting of the full party, Nazamil from the Beyond the Dawn expansion included. The series' illustrator had become its visual director in fact as well as title.

For collectors the shift is easy to shelve: Arise-era art books and goods are Iwamoto books, distinct from the Fujishima and Inomata art books that document the earlier line. The two-hands era has a third volume now, and it is the one still being written.