Right, I guess I should expand upon my point of view concerning Tales games. This is one series where I oftentimes actually prefer the newer entries, since the battle system is constantly evolving. Some games, while I enjoyed them before, I occasionally have a horrid time trying to go back to them (ToS especially suffers from this due to it's decidedly poorly used 3D field). Who knows, maybe I'll have a hard time going back to the currently newer entries after a later game in the series. For me, Nostalgia has absolutely no effect on me when it comes to Tales games if only for this reason.
And some parts seem to use motion capture, hopefully not too many.
Chances are it's mostly for the cutscenes, that's usually the case nowadays.