WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Tales of Arise.
Tales of Arise, the latest entry in the acclaimed Tales series, won Best RPG at the 2021 Game Awards and received high praise from critics and gamers alike. However, beneath the surface lurks a somewhat flimsy story. While this wouldn't be a big deal in a casual JRPG, this is a big problem for a series is known for its grand stories with tons of lore details, plot twists and interesting, complex characters who grow over the course of the game. Tales of Arise loses a lot of this as its story goes from a steady pace while setting things up to rocketing to the end using basic exposition.
Tales of Arise follows protagonists Alphen, Shionne and other party members as they overthrow Lords known as Renans from the nearby planet Rena, who have enslaved the people of the heroes' planet, Dahna. The Lords gather Astral Energy, the game's mana, from slaves for something known as the Crown Contest to determine Rena's Sovereign. However, the party discovers the truth about the Renans and their Crown Contest, as well as the nature of the two planets. Unfortunately, about halfway through the proceedings, things start to fall apart, and the story ends up feeling rushed. Many of the narrative's mysteries and subplots go unanswered or are coincidental.
Shionne is a terrific protagonist. She's powerful, has depth, can stand on her own two feet and has a great character arc, but her past is murky at best. At the beginning of the game, Alphen meets her as a captive and helps her escape. She turns out to be a Renan looking to win or put a halt to the Crown Contest in hopes of getting rid of her Curse of Thorns. While this is interesting and adds flavor to the story, it's never actually explained how she got to Dahna, why she was a captive or how she learned about the Renas Alma, a major plot item.
All players are told is that she stole the Fire Core from a Lord and that she was experimented on while living on the space station Lenegis because of her Thorns. There are also a couple of scenes where Shionne is surrounded by bodies, presumably a memory, that's never explained. There are no solid answers to these mysteries, leaving players to accept that she just showed up one day with important information needed to save lives with nothing but speculation to explain how these things could be tied together.
During the first half of the game, players find out that Astral Energy is collected from Dahnan slaves by embedding stones into their hands and pushing them to their limits for maximum yield. It's an interesting concept, but one that stops right there. To make things worse, while other characters in the party have explanations for not having them, Alphen does not. He wasn't born in an enslaved area, but instead showed up one day, and no one bothered to question a guy in an iron mask with no stone. They didn't even bother to give him one when making him a slave despite it being the entire point of the enslavement.
There is no information about these stones whatsoever, other than that they are forced into slaves' hands. It's unknown if they're specific stones found on Dahna, something imbued with magic or something technological. Even when arriving on Lenegis, entering Renan society and learning about the alien Helganquil race, it's never explained. This detail is only presented as a convenient spectacle of how Dahna's Astral Energy is gathered, then more or less never talked about again after a quarter of the way through the game.
Later in the game, it's revealed that Rena and Dahna are two worlds that were meant to be one, but somehow, they were split apart. Dahna became its own world, while Rena only partially formed, leaving the planet's spirits to develop differently. However, what caused this separation is never explained, and ultimately, the solution is to mash the two planets' Astral Energies together to form a single planet.
Normally, this would be something to take at face value, but this is a Tales game. This is the type of thing that requires deep lore and explanation, especially since it becomes the main goal of the game. Tales of Symphonia is a great example of narrative completeness, as it not only had two different worlds, but they existed on different planes, and it was explained in detail as to why this was and how it could be fixed. Tales of Arise, on the other hand, simply leaves players with the answer, "because it is."
Later in the game, the player discovers that Dahna has a Great Spirit divided amongst its inhabitants as a symbol of their unity, while Rena's Great Spirit is a singular entity which ruled over the planet as a symbol of tyranny. At first, this information seems like it's going to be used in a spectacular way when the plot pieces all come together. Instead the game just points to Rena's Great Spirit as the bad guy. This wouldn't be so bad if this entity at least had a clever scheme up its sleeve or even showed up before the end of the game.
Instead of a complex villain, the player is given a Big Bad that doesn't speak or appear until the final battle, despite it being behind most of the major plot points. At this juncture, players are meant to cruise control to the end and not really ask questions, but a lot of things still don't make much sense. Why did the Great Spirit destroy nearly all of Rena's inhabitants if it just wanted to reunite with Dahna? Why was it afraid to die if it was sustainable? Did it make the Rena's Alma? Why did it suddenly begin to build up such hatred when Alphen and the party. arrived? It all goes unanswered.
The first encounter with Vholran is mysterious, and Tales of Arise sets him up to be the main villain with complex motives and a plan. However, this idea quickly peters out to reveal a flat character. Vholran was once a Dahnan slave who was experimented on and became a Lord after killing one, as well as the new Sovereign. He was treated badly and was always alone, which led to him believing only the strongest survive. Vholran is meant to be Alphen's opposite and rival. Instead, he comes off as an angry guy who shows up once in a while with a flimsy backstory.
Vholran only appears five times in the entire game. His backstory and reasoning are revealed during his third appearance, and that's all players are given before he somehow shows up at the final battle. Like Shionne, it's never explained how he escaped the Renans on Lenegis and made it to another planet, and it's worse because he's a Dahnan slave. Also unexplained is how he managed to kill a powerful Lord. The method by which he managed to get to another dimension with a spaceship for the final battle isn't elucidated either. Everything about him is meant to be accepted at face value, with is a major shortcoming for Tales of Arise.
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