Dansk
Svenska
Norsk
Suomi
Deutsch
Italiano
Español
Português
Français
Nederlands
中文
Indonesia
Polski
日本語
한국어
Čeština
Ελληνικά
Türkçe
Tiếng Việt
عربي
Follow us
HQ
Videos
Monster Hunter: Wilds
Monster Hunter Wilds - Interview with Yuya Tokuda and Ryozo Tsujimoto
After playing a nearly final build of the game, we sat down with Yuya Tokuda, director, and Ryozo Tsujimoto, producer, to talk about the game's features, why it will never be an MMO, and what they think about Switch 2...
Audio transcription
"Hello, we are at the Monster Hunter Wild's final preview event in Madrid where we're going to play a brand new section of the game and later I'm going to have the pleasure to talk with Tsujimoto-san and Tokuda-san about the new game."
"Hello, so this is the first Monster Hunter game that it's been made exclusively for the next-gen for PS5 and Xbox Series X.
So how would you say that this benefits the gameplay?
We've been able to use the increased specs of the latest generation of hardware to push the concept of a seamless living, breathing world even further than we could with Monster Hunter World back in 2018."
"With that title we removed the loading zones between different areas of each map and made each map a single seamless experience but it was still necessary to have a loading screen when you went back to camp and returned to the quest.
Now with the latest generation of hardware we've been able to remove those loading screens and present a completely seamless and immersive experience where players don't even have to worry about a loading screen whenever they go anywhere in the entire game."
"And the technology also lets us track many more monsters on the map at the same time.
We can keep track of their AI in the background and make sure that the players feel like they're seeing the cycle of life happening throughout the entire game.
And not only do we have more monsters on screen at one time including more large monsters interacting but we also have monster herds."
"We did have some herds before but they were essentially kind of a single blob that moved as one object but now even with a herd traveling together each monster has its own intelligence and they have instincts that they're following and they're able to behave very realistically."
"So all these things are something that was only possible with the current generation of hardware.
So this is a bigger game and the areas are larger but they are still separate maps I believe.
So have you ever considered making just one open world like many other new RPG games like a single open world or do you believe that it's better for us to have separate zones like desert and snow mountains and so on?
As a result of the decision to have so many more monsters on the map at the same time and to have these changeable climate conditions happening which can vary what's occurring in each map we naturally had to make the scale of the game bigger and I think that that gave some people an impression that we were aiming to do an open world like game."
"But ultimately I think that the kind of experience we want to give people requires us to form these ecosystems somewhat separately from each other because we want to have a really deep immersive experience on each map and have each one of them essentially be its own living world of a desert or a forest."
"Making those interconnected as one large region with some sort of empty area in between wouldn't really achieve those goals for us.
So even though the game has got seamless movement and transitions I just felt that it still made the most sense for the Monster Hunter game design and the game experience I want to present to players is to regionalize the ecosystems while still allowing you to travel between them in the same world."
"It just made the most sense.
The result of our game decisions may look something like an open world game but that really wasn't the intention from the start.
One key part of the game, of the Monster Hunter franchise is the multiplayer, online multiplayer."
"But it's still only for four people.
Have you ever considered to make Monster Hunter maybe a spin-off like an MMO, like Massive Multiplayer Online Game or maybe even a live service game?
Is it something that you would like or even maybe Capcom has asked?
Or do you prefer this four player multiplayer?
I think Monster Hunter is all about the relationship the player has with the monster and that's kind of a one-on-one battle."
"And of course you can play with other players but the more people you add into that experience I think it dilutes the actual quality of what it feels like for each player to be taking on these large monsters in an action combat setting."
"So if we had 50 people, 100 people all fighting the same monster I think each individual player's contribution becomes smaller and it feels like each hunter matters less in the hunt and we want to avoid that."
"Of course we occasionally had some special quest formats over the years where more people would be involved in a special kind of siege or something like that but putting those exceptions aside we feel that four players is about the maximum sweet spot where you get the experience of playing with other players and everyone can contribute to help each other take down the monster faster but you still feel like, oh I really made a great contribution I helped beat this monster and that's kind of where we want to keep it."
"By the way, I totally agree with that.
In my case, for example, I played Monster Hunter Rise but I escaped the world because I used to play on the Switch so what would you say to a player like me who's going to enter into this new era of World and then Wild for the first time?
My message to players like yourself would be don't worry about the fact that you missed Monster Hunter World because if you've played something like Monster Hunter Rise all of the games are based on the same fundamental concept of co-op action against large monsters and that's something that you can absolutely carry your experience over into Monster Hunter Wilds."
"We also actually have learned a lot from the player base of Monster Hunter World in aggregate because we can see the data on the development side of the whole player base and we're able to analyze how everyone found the game was there a certain point where Monster Hunter World players were finding it too difficult to proceed or certain bosses or parts of the game we saw a lot of people dropping off and quitting at that point we could go back and analyze to ourselves what the reason for that was like maybe this monster was too tricky too early in the game or we didn't explain it well enough in the tutorial and we've taken all those learnings on board and put all of that feedback and all of that lessons that we learned into Monster Hunter Wild so in a sense, even though you never played Monster Hunter World you're going to benefit from the experience of the whole Monster Hunter World audience which we've put into Monster Hunter Wilds."
"Okay, so now that the Switch 2 has been announced I suppose you can't say much but would you like to at least see the game running on Switch 2?
Do you think it would be possible?
Of course with relation to platforms from Monster Hunter Wilds we have nothing extra to announce beyond what's already out there but we're also kind of in the same position everyone else is with the Switch 2 it's such a brand new announcement and we would need to take time over the coming future to learn exactly the nature of the hardware and how we'll be using it best and that's something that's going to be in the future for us."
"So I think this is the end but I would like just one little thing that you can say that I really like the underwater sections in Monster Hunter 3 and I would like them to return I know they were a bit controversial but I would like if they..."
Interviews
More
Videos
More
Movie Trailers
More
Trailers
More
Events
More