The Tales of Luminaria live stream took place last week, and we would have discussed it sooner except that we had Bayonetta 3 news for the first time in almost four years.

The live stream gave a basic overview of the game and its structure, which revealed some interesting details.

First, there are 21 main characters.

That’s a massive main cast for a Tales game to start with, and they’re all being considered main protagonists. Each character will have their own story, which in some cases will give you different perspective on the same events. They are split into three factions. Eight characters belong to the Federation’s Knight Academy, another eight are part of the Empire’s army, and the remaining five are adventurers who team up to pursue their own goal.

One episode will be released a week, and each will take about an hour to complete. Each character will have 8 episodes, and after you play Episode 1 for each character, a special “crossroad” episode will follow.

21 intertwining stories sounds like a massive game, and they estimated it would be like three console Tales games. If we assume 8 episodes for each character plus 8 crossroad episodes, at one hour an episode, that’s a 176-hour game.

Gameplay footage was also shown during the event, starting at 31:54 in the video.

A lot of people have been critical of it for not looking like a Tales game, but while combat looks very different (it’s using basic touchscreen controls), I was pleasantly surprised by how much it looks like a regular game. You run through the game environments, encounter monsters, talk to NPCs, and so on.

The game also has full English voice acting, and the main composer is Go Shiina. That stood out to me because the most epic song on Zestiria’s soundtrack were his.

There will also be an anime adaptation called Tales of Luminaria: The Fateful Crossroad. It will follow one character’s point of view and include content from the middle, instead of being an adaptation of the game’s beginning like Crestoria’s anime.

I’m very interested in how Tales of Luminaria will turn out. They confirmed that you do not need to pay for characters or main story episodes, so it doesn’t seem to lend itself easily to intrusive gacha mechanics. However, it’s still a free-to-play game with in-app purchases, so my theory is that the purchases (preferably not gacha, but probably) will be weapons/equipment.

I doubt my tablet will be able to run Tales of Luminaria, but if and when I replace it, I’ll be interested in giving this game a try once it’s out. How do you feel about Tales of Luminaria?