More ToV than you can Shake a Stick at

If any of you out there are anticipating Namco Bandai's latest game in the Tales of series, Tales of Vesperia, even half as much as I am, I think you will be quite pleasantly surprised with the contents of this post.

To get a few housekeeping things out of the way, here are the final two main characters in ToV: Judith and Raven. I know, I know. Old news is old. I haven't posted anything on them until now because I was waiting to get some more info to share with you other than just their names. Read on, dear reader, read on.



Raven is a 35 year old wanderer shrouded in mystery. Though his manner of speaking is often coarse, he occassionally spouts words deep in meaning. He seems to have a generally carefree attitude about him, but at the same time gets annoyed with tasks set to him. He seems to have experienced many rough times throughout his life, but no one knows much about him for sure.

Judith is a 19 year old lancer of the increasingly rare Klitea tribe. She encounters Yuri and the party while she is traveling with a friend. Though she appears to be soft spoken, her words are often harsh, and she will regularly call things as she sees them. She acts in whatever way she thinks is right, but rarely tells people about her plans beforehand. It should also be noted that while she generally conducts herself in a calm manner, she becomes relentless in battle. Yuri takes to calling her "Judy."

In addition to the announcement of these two characters, the official Tales of Vesperia website includes pics and summaries of two new locations, Developing City Heliode (JP=shinkou toshi herioodo) and Guild Home Dunglest (JP=girudo no soukutsu danguresuto). I won't bore you with location details, but if you want to see them, check the official site under story (4th line of squigglies counting down on the sidebar) then click on the second group of characters on the long, brown bar (it should be glowing).

Also in the new site update are a new plethora of screens (included below), most of which show off Judith and her big... uh, spear. =)





And last, but certainly not least, is the elusive Tales of Vesperia playable demo available right the hell now on Japan's Xbox Live Marketplace (available to all Japanese accounts). If you don't have a Japanese XBL account, I've heard (this is all second hand information now) that you can, like, create one if you want. Like, you know, with numbers that you just made up, or something. Again, totally not sure about that.

For anyone unable to download that, I will have my impressions up on Monday! ;)

Tales of Vesperia will launch in Japan on August 7th, and presumably soon thereafter in North America.