‘Monster Hunter: World’: Now More Accessible Than Ever

Monster Hunter: World

Monster Hunter: World was debuted during Sony’s E3 2017 press conference, and to the surprise of many, it was receiving a simultaneous worldwide release, a first in the series. However, many fans were confused as to what World actually was. Monster Hunter has a long and convoluted history that is made up of main titles and spin-offs, so it’s hard to keep track of what they are.

In an interview with Glixel, Monster Hunter: World producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and director Yuya Tokuda helped clear up what Monster Hunter: World actually is and how they will tailor it to the western audiences.

This is the next main Monster Hunter game. Our Osaka team is working on it. We’ve brought in some people who are more familiar with next-gen technology to come in and help us adapt it for the current generation of consoles. When you have a series that runs into the higher numbers, I think the numbers themselves start to become off-putting. New players might think, “Oh, I’ve missed four games already, I can’t possibly join at this point.” Just because we’ve taken the number off the title doesn’t mean it’s not a main Monster Hunter game. We just wanted to have “world” in the title because it speaks to the concept of the game in a variety of ways. This is the first simultaneous worldwide release for the game, and the servers are global this time.

We’ve seen in the E3 trailer that the game features very updated visuals, as well as new gameplay mechanics, like the grappling hook. This looks to be a way to streamline the game and make it more accessible to new players. Instead of having a game that is “good once you know what you’re doing” and being taunted by the Monster Hunter 5 title, Capcom dropped the 5 and made the mechanics simpler to get more people into the series. Both Tsujimoto and Tokuda had something to say about this.

Tsujimoto: Well, we just announced the title, so we’ve only shown you a small fraction of it. There’s more time to talk about the changes later, but overall, the concept of a living, seamless “world” for players to enjoy served as our base, and all our decisions flow from that. This led us to look at everything that makes up Monster Hunter, put it all on the table, and think hard about what really works and what really doesn’t. Through this, we’ll be able to make the series more accessible than ever before. These changes come from the world concept, but in general, they’ll make the game more accessible to a wider audience. It’s not dumbing down feature “X” because people didn’t like it – it’s more that now that we have a seamless map, for example, it means that it makes more sense for you to be able to drink a potion while you’re walking, because you’re always going to be closer to the monsters. That’s just one example, but all these gameplay changes have flowed from this central “world” concept. But we’re not abandoning our veteran hunters.

Yuya Tokuda: We want to make sure that newcomers don’t have the same experience they had with previous Monster Hunter games. We always hear people telling their friends, “Wow, this game is really incredible once you get to grips with it,” but their friends just don’t have time to research how to play the game. Those people will have a better time with World. We want everybody to have a chance. This is absolutely a multiplayer game, and it’s absolutely a Monster Hunter game. But we have to introduce what exactly a Monster Hunter game is to a wider audience now, and we just began with the single-player portion. We’re starting simple so people will be able to understand the multiplayer when the time comes.

Monster Hunter: World marks the first time the series will be available on PC, which means there will be a swarm of first-time hunters joining the series. The release date for the PC hasn’t been announced yet and the team wants to make sure it is optimized for the hardware.

Monster Hunter: World will be released on PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2018 with the PC version coming at a later date.

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