It just continues to escalate from there, with every key point somehow building and adding to the whole. The very first boss in Tales of Arise is a shatteringly, massive confrontation that could easily have been the final boss of any other game. There are twists and turns through the narrative, as you would expect (and it would be unfair of me to delve into spoilers here, so I won’t), but the game never loses sight of these thematic foundations, and continues to work hard to do them justice throughout. What you do with your freedom and the society you form around it matters and Tales of Arise recognises this. The game casts you in the role of a group of heroes working to liberate communities from a colonial power, and while its not certainly not relativist in its treatment of the subject (liberating an oppressed people from a colonial power is a righteous cause), the game does a remarkable job of highlighting the internal conflict of the characters and some of the things they need to do in chasing the objective, and – most critically – actually asking the question “what’s next?” After you expel the imperialists, life doesn’t immediately revert to a utopic freedom. Arguably as well as I’ve ever seen in popular entertainment. I need not have been, because Tails of Arise handles it magnificently. That simplistic and naïve understanding of revolution does people no favours, and when I first realised that this would be the dominant theme of Tales of Arise, I was more than a little concerned.
It will barely touch on the personal, cultural and political tensions that lead to it, and it rarely deals with the subsequent consequences that come from a successful revolution. In most cases, when popular entertainment deals with revolution as a subject, it simply focuses on the fight for freedom.
Revolutions are always motivated by a good cause – the rising up of the oppressed and downtrodden – but what comes after the revolution isn’t always a positive outcome (and whether it is a positive outcome or not depends on your worldview across a whole lot of things). By its very nature it’s politically loaded, inspires people towards polarised thinking, and involves wide-ranging social and cultural change. Revolution isn’t an easy topic to deal with. It’s a game about one of my favourite topics and areas of thought – revolution – and it does it with almost surprising nuance. I enjoy them enough, but even the best of them doesn’t wind up on my list of favourite JRPGs. I’ve not been the world’s biggest fan of Bandai Namco’s Tails series. “We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.” – Che Guevara.
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