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Bandai Namco is teasing a "new RPG reveal" for later this week, and I'm going to let the FromSoftware fans down right now: this is almost certainly not Elden Ring 2, or any other follow-up to the open-world RPG, no matter how much you might want that to be the case. There are a few other possibilities for the game's identity, but none more likely than the long-awaited next entry in the Tales series.
"A serenity soon to be disturbed," reads a blurb accompanying the teaser. A follow-up tweet promises that this is "a new RPG from Bandai Namco Entertainment," to be revealed on YouTube at 3pm PT / 6pm ET / 11pm GMT on March 5.
If you just see the text showing the dates and times, with an ornate golden font on a black background, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is something related to Elden Ring or another FromSoftware game, and you'll see more than a few hopefuls in various comment sections jumping to that conclusion. After all, while FromSoftware now fully owns the Elden Ring trademark, it maintains a close relationship with Bandai Namco, to the extent that company published Elden Ring Nightreign last year.
But if you take a look at the brief teaser video, any thought that this could be a FromSoftware title will quickly evaporate from your mind. Rather than dark fantasy misery, we see a brilliantly green landscape and a brief glimpse of an anime-style character wearing a bold, heroic sword and shield on their back.
Bandai Namco has a roster of about a billion different anime-style IPs it could be developing a new RPG for, but none more likely than the Tales series. The aesthetic matches, and so does the timeline – it's been five years since the launch of Tales of Arise, exactly the same gap that existed between that game and its own predecessor.
It's also possible that this could be a new IP, or an entry in some other franchise – Sword Art Online fans are keen to point out how familiar that big pillar in the background of the teaser looks. But a new Sword Art Online game, as many fans as the anime has, doesn't feel like the kind of announcement that'd be big enough to warrant this kind of build-up.
Tales, though? That's the kind of game – not quite Elden Ring-sized, but with a big fanbase – you can count on making headlines for a special debut on a random Thursday. There's also a larger Tales 30th anniversary broadcast coming on April 3, and I could easily see a new entry debuting here ahead of a more detailed presentation at that event. We'll know for sure what Bandai Namco has in store later this week.
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