“We start almost from scratch every time”: Our interview with the producer of Monster Hunter Wilds – News

Welcomed like a rock star on the Capcom stand at PGW by screaming Monster Hunter fans when he arrived on stage, it was nevertheless in a hotel on the sidelines of the show that we met Ryozo Tsujimoto. It must be said that with an involvement in Monster Hunter dating back to the very first opus in 2004, the man has certainly become the emblematic face of the license. And Monster Hunter may be 20 years old, the brand still seems so young, between its peak of interest in the West since Monster Hunter World in 2018 which gives it a new dimension, and the fact that the upcoming opus seems to be the realization of many things developed over the years. The opportunity to discuss Mr. Tsujimoto's aspirations for Monster Hunter Wilds.

There are lots of aspects that we continue to try to improve for accessibility. It's not just about making things easier for new players to join. We're always looking for a balance of features so that each one is beneficial to the new player, while also providing interesting new strategic possibilities for veterans. For example, one of the most dizzying aspects of Monster Hunter is the fourteen types of weapons. When we play for the first time and we have fourteen weapons at our disposal and we are asked to choose, it is not easy to know where to start, which weapon will be best suited to our way of playing. We have therefore added a conversation through a new NPC which will allow you to discover a recommendation to get started. This is great for new players because it gives them a starting point, but even for veterans, this conversation might make you consider a different weapon than the one you're used to and discover a new way to play .

Another significant example would be our Seikreit mount. We got a lot of feedback on Monster Hunter World that the large, multi-level maps were great to explore, but that you could easily get lost. The mount will give the possibility of moving forward automatically, and it will take us directly to our target, thus avoiding getting caught. And again, it reconciles the two ways of playing and a new player will not have to worry too much about where he should go and he will be guided. But it also happens to veterans to get lost from time to time and it's nice to know that you have this option available if you want and you can turn it off whenever you want and explore.

Finally, I will cite support fighters as a final example. You can call AI-controlled NPCs with a distress signal if you want to play offline. It's a good option when you don't feel like playing online and allows newbies to get a taste of the four-player experience. Maybe they won't be sure about the online experience, how to communicate with other players, especially if they are strangers. We can imagine support fighters as a sort of ramp for new players, a bridge between solo and multiplayer.

How do you understand the fact that a base of players present since the very first Monster Hunter regrets this “smoothing” of the gameplay, preferring the austere side of the era?

I don't think Monster Hunter has changed from a competitive point of view over the years, in the sense that when you get to the second half of each game, you know that the difficulty curve is going to increase drastically. This is the moment when you will have to learn the actions and the different elements of each monster and exploit them to see the end of the game. The things that have really changed are those which make the first contact more accessible, leaving the opportunity for everyone to arrive at the moment of the game where they will have the most fun: in the pure action sequences. That’s the whole point of this improvement and rationalization. Ultimately, I don't think we're truly taking away or simplifying what matters most. I hope even the oldest veterans see that this is all a good thing for the Monster Hunter community.

We start almost from scratch every time. I don't want anyone to feel like they have to include something just because it was in the previous game, especially if it's not in line with the new one. We think about our concept, our main idea or theme of what the next game will be and then we start to conceptualize which gameplay elements will be most appropriate. If it's something new, great. If we want to maintain or build on an already existing system and it works well, that's also a good thing. But it remains mainly about alignment with the basic concept which takes precedence and not so much about continuity.

An example of a feature present before MH World What we haven't picked up on is the fact that when we drank a potion, we stayed put. In previous games, this was part of the game design because the maps were divided into small numbered areas and each of them loaded individually. So each action the players performed took place in a relatively small area and we could move from one area to another with a loading screen that gave us a moment of safety during which the monster couldn't follow us. These strategic possibilities mean that we had to add risk to the use of a potion, where when we choose to use it and the monster is not far away, in a narrow area, you have to ask yourself if you prefer to regain life or if you prefer to try a few dodges to get to safety.

Once the cards started not having these transitions with Monster Hunter Worldit wasn't really relevant to the gameplay anymore, because you could escape the monster, but it could also chase you through the different areas. There was no longer this possibility of crossing a line which made us safe and allowed us to drink a potion. So we changed that so that you could drink while moving, and the longer you drank, the more health you recovered. In this way, by being interrupted, we still gain a little life and we are not in an all or nothing logic. This is an example of how we need to rethink every feature, not because it's on a list, but by asking whether it will be good for gameplay. Once we had made this change, we never went back on it, especially for MH Wilds which is even more fluid.

And what was the initial theme for Monster Hunter Wilds as a result? How many people worked on it?

In the first phases, there are around ten of us, I would say. The team came together years ago around the endgame and release of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, while Monster Hunter Rise was in development. It was therefore not possible to mobilize too many people from these projects on Wilds. We start with a small team, including myself, we do research and development and that's when the main theme of the game is defined. In this case, we wanted to introduce monsters that move in packs or herds and we developed a lot of stuff around that. Needless to say, the team has gotten much bigger over the years, and right now with the release imminent, it's a very big team. When you play it, when you finish it, I'm sure you'll see how long the credits are because so many people worked on it. laughter

Of course. On top of that, I'll also add that the ability to have packs and more monsters on screen is something that wasn't really possible before, given the limitations of the hardware. This generation allows us to display more monsters on the screen, but in addition, each of them has its own artificial intelligence to define its movements and others. This way, even when the monsters are in a herd, they maintain their own individual personality and can move independently, get in each other's paths, that sort of thing. We've been wanting to have more monsters at once for a long time, and we're finally there.

Many fans regularly request the addition of a new weapon. Can you explain to us the complexity that it would represent to do this and which players do not necessarily realize?

The main problem when we consider adding a new weapon type is that we already have so many typologies with fourteen weapons that the palette of gameplay styles is already very wide. Adding a new weapon that would not only look different, but play differently, make sense in that arsenal, and make it unique, without redundancy with other weapons, became very difficult. We might say “Oh, let's add a new mid-ranged weapon”, and it might have some specificity and a cool look, but at the end of the day, mid-ranged weapons are already well represented with the longsword by example. You'd have to do something totally different to make it stand out and that's a harder challenge than you might imagine when you take into account all the designs it would have to go through which can be very different, just one visual point of view.

The other thing to consider is the amount of time and effort it takes to design a new weapon. We might say it's a good idea at the time, but it's a better idea to focus our efforts on covering the other fourteen weapons, making improvements, deepening them, making them more fun to play in their own way and ensure that each of them stands out even more from the others and finds their place in the arsenal. For example, the addition of Focus Mode in the gameplay leads to reconsidering things around each weapon, to give additional depth to the game and to each player, whatever the weapon of their choice.

This is indeed something that becomes more and more difficult with each new game that comes out. We have a dedicated team, the “Monster Group”, which focuses on monster design. Honestly, we rely a lot on their creativity, although of course the designs don't happen without the cooperation of other sections of the team, but I think they still have plenty of ideas and consult everyone to come up with truly unique ideas. Even though it's getting more and more difficult, I hope players will agree that we still have a lot of new monster designs up our sleeve, not just in how they look, but also in how they move and how they feel specifically. a by chasing them.