Namco announced today that Tales of Xillia 2 will be released in Western territories sometime in 2014.
Tales of Xillia 2 is a direct sequel, picking up a year after the original game’s ending. It stars a brand new protagonist, Ludger Wil Kresnik, who is forced to embark on adventure to fix some of the unforeseen consequences of the events from the first game.
It’s sort of strange that Namco would announce a sequel before the original game has even been released in America and Europe, but I’m not complaining. In the years following Tales of Vesperia’s tepid reception in America, Namco seemed hesitant to localize new entries in the Tales franchise, but it now seems like they’ve regained their confidence in the series and are dedicated to making sure Western fans of the franchise don’t miss out on any of the new games in the series: besides the release of Tales of Xillia this August, Namco Bandai has also announced that an HD collection of the Tales of Symphonia games will be released sometime next year as well.