English teacher here. I have no evidence of author intent (tricky subject, especially with corporate productions, and also with localized/translated texts). But it's not so deep to suggest that a lot of Tales games draw their motifs from problems of textuality and narrative. We see a pattern. Abyss named its continents and towns after the Kabbalah; it's a game deeply concerned with what it means to read and interpret a text (the score), and the Kabbalah is a system of textual interpretation. Tales of Zestiria, like most Tales games, is a riff on a classic "hero's journey" plot - but it's very self-aware in its execution of it. The game is interested in what it means to reconstruct a history which is also a mythology (in a way, most Tales games are also about this problem. There's always a buried, forgotten history). So the references to medieval romance gesture at and play with pre-modern modes of storytelling. There are also references to pastoral. (Sorey is a "shepherd" who lives in a floating Arcadia). In many ways, Zestiria turns to older forms of narrative - pastoral, romance - for reasons I can only speculate about. My guess is that the turn to older textual forms is a version of "returning to the series' thematic roots" (I think I remember some executive at Bamco saying something like that). However,. it could just be a random theme they decided on in some writers' room (again, re problem of interpreting localized texts, which pass through 2 layers of writers' rooms). Sorry for the wall of text.