Yesterday, we found out about a new playable character in Tales of Xillia via a partial scan. A small version of what appears to be the rest of that scan has leaked which shows off the game's skit system and what appears to be some of the battle HUD.

The game will utilize the contrast between light and shadow, which will lead to the game having a different art style direction than Vesperia's anime-style graphics or Graces's watercolor-style graphics (it could be more of a hand-painted or oil painting-like feel if the concept artwork is any indication). Baba stated that when he saw some of the concept artwork images running on actual hardware he was very impressed.

As can be seen, in addition to the regular box-based skits we've come to know and love in previous Team Symphonia-handled Tales titles (this time called Long Chat) there are two new types of skits. The first is Fighting Chat, which are textless, non-animated and only voiced. This can be trigger when you switch out one party member for another (not one currently on a field, but one of the members in reserve).

In the scan, we can see Jude replacing Mira, which triggers a Fighting Chat. This is done using the d-pad in a similar format to the active party member switching found in Tales of Graces. One thing to keep in mind about this new system is that it can't be used on dead party members, which applies to both sides.

The second new skit format is Short Chat, which occurs automatically as the player is moving across the game's fields, towns and dungeons. It's currently unknown if these are voiced or simply text-based.

We also get a look at part of Xillia's battle HUD in these new scans. As can be seen, the party member boxes are displayed in a cross-format (likely making it easier to see which characters are linked together in battle).

Tales of Xillia is set for a 2011 release in Japan. No word has been given on a North American or European release.

UPDATE (12:14pm): Added a new scan and a higher-quality version of the original scan. New information about the skits and the battle HUD were also added.