Monster Hunter creator talks 10 years of MH, series' status in the West, no MH

Mar 11, 2014 by RawmeatCowboy | Comments: 6 | Show/Hide

Coming from a Eurogamer interview with Monster Hunter creator and producer Ryozo Tsujimoto...

E: This time last year you told me you hoped Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate would help secure a breakthrough for the series in the west. Do you feel you achieved that?

Ryozo Tsujimoto: It would have been impossible to imagine five years ago we would be able to get over 100 people together to bring their game systems to play Monster Hunter in the west. We definitely aren't sitting on our laurels with the achievements we've had with the last title and its sales. But we want to bring the title to even more people and increase the player base with the next iteration of the series.

We've definitely developed the community greatly from when it started in the west, from when the first title was released here. We've got to a great place now, but we're not stopping. We're going to keep going and we're looking forward to being able to achieve greater heights with the community and with the next Monster Hunter titles over here.

E: But what can you do beyond what you've done previously to increase the popularity of Monster Hunter in the west?

Ryozo Tsujimoto: Monster Hunter 4 has got online play for the first time in a portable entry in the series. That's going to mean we've got a whole new stage we can bring the community to. We have our community members now who love to meet up and play the game on local wireless. We hope they can be ambassadors for the title, so when we get more people into the next one and they want to play online, they've got a whole gang of people waiting there who know the game inside out. If they're newcomers to the series and not sure what to do, or they want to go on a quest but they don't want to go alone, if we can use our built-in community as a way for people who are new to say, don't worry, we're here and we'll give you a helping hand, then that's going to be a great way to expand the size of the community.

And then of course people who join that way, perhaps through online play as a first step, will then hopefully get involved in the game community itself and then they'll be motivated to come and join some of the meet ups and get involved in the whole community spirit. So, the online functionality will be a big step in the west in growing our community size even larger than it is today.

E: Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is coming to the west on 3DS. But you haven't announced it's coming to Wii U, as Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate did. Do you plan to release it on the Wii U? The reason you should is because if you did, you could call it Monster Hunter 4U.

Ryozo Tsujimoto: Yeah, that title naming would be a lovely coincidence. That would be pretty sweet.

At the moment we're focused on 3DS, purely because with the previous title, the 3DS version couldn't go online on their own. There was a system to bring them online in conjunction with the Wii U console, but they were only local wireless play by themselves.

In 4 Ultimate, it will be online play just on the 3DS. We really want to see how having just a single platform online multiplayer game works out. So at this time we're focusing on the 3DS version. Monster Hunter 4 in Japan was also 3DS only.

E: Monster Hunter is 10 years old. What will it be like in another 10 years?

Ryozo Tsujimoto: I wonder if I'll still be working or retired by then! My first instinct is to worry about my own health!

It's never going to be drastically changed out of the fact it's a multiplayer action title. We'll still be pursuing the ultimate we can make in that arena. And we'll continue to use this process I mentioned.

It's like World of Warcraft, whenever they put out an expansion it's always had a lot of feedback from the fanbase incorporated into it every time. They keep putting it through that cycle. We will do the same thing we have been doing, which is every time a title comes out we take the player base's concerns seriously and try to plug that feedback straight into the next title to develop it.

If I have to think about what I hope it will be in 10 years, I'd like to think we will have refined the action part of the gameplay even further, that it will get better and better with every iteration. Trying to picture that title in my head is quite difficult.