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During our visit to Singapore for the GameStart Asia 2018 event, we were honored to have met and interviewed with the directors of Monster Hunter: World! The game that was released earlier this year in January 2018 has made it’s round around the world and everyone is basically in love with the game. As there are plenty of questions by fans to know about the ins-and-outs of the game, you can read on below for the full interview with Kaname Fujioka and Yuya Tokuda!
The Interview
Monster Hunter: World is the first main-line monster hunter game that is available on PC. What were the challenges faced by the development team porting over the game and how did the team overcome this?
One of the biggest challenges porting to PC is the online matching system. Because xBox and PS4 are using a different matching system, the development team for PC have to come up with a new one.
The Handler is one of the characters that grows onto players throughout their journey. What went into designing the character and can we expect to see more character development in the future?
In Monster Hunter: World, because players create their own characters in the beginning, it’s difficult to see how the character express their feelings. With the Handler who brings players into the world and quests, she brings out the feeling and experience throughout the game which helps show how your character feels. So that makes her an important character in the game.
There are plans in the future where there will be costumes for the Handler where players can download it. So there’s a variety for players to choose from and change the look of the Handler. We hope players will look forward to it.
Monster Hunter World has seen collaborations with other games such as Megaman, Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry and Horizon Zero Dawn. This has been popular among players all over the world. Can we expect more in the future?
The development team would definitely love to try something new and they would like to explore how other games can merge into Monster Hunter World. We will try our best – we can’t tell you our concrete plans now but we hope you guys will continue to support us.
We observed some subtle differences in design for the monsters in Monster Hunter World compared to previous iterations of monster hunter where the monsters appear fairly realistic. The monsters in Monster Hunter World looked more zombified. Was this a conscious design decision or the transition just happened naturally through development?
Because this time around MHW was being developed in this very high-spec platform, so one of the challenges were on “how do they express the details of each living & how to express them without using too much data”. The development team also would like to show the immense atmosphere surrounding each monster, so it might look dark a bit dark which gave it a ‘zombified’ impression. However the key was that the development team would like to show the intensity and intimidation when facing the monsters.
What inspired the team to design Bezelgeuse?
There’s a few things that the development team wanted players to experience was that, a giant flying monster gliding through and explosion starts happening. What inspired this design was the bomber jet flying through dropping explosives onto the ground along with a sound que which inflicts an intimidating feeling when Bezelguese appears.
What is your biggest challenge in developing Monster Hunter: World?
One of the biggest challenge was, during the prototype phase, we’ve created a world without any weapons to work on the world – how the habitat looks like. It was tough then because the expectation was not met as ideas tend to differ from the expectation. And a part of the issue was communication which resulted in not meeting the expectation. Even after that was done, to move on to the next challenge was also difficult as to meet and follow a schedule they had during the early stage of development.
Is there a chance for an organized event of Monster Hunter Championship in Singapore or Malaysia?
So, as you know there is this Monster Hunter Championship upcoming in the certain countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong and more, this is the first step in reaching out to the global players and to figure out who’s the best player. This is one of the efforts made to reach out to global fans and in the future, this event will definitely be expanded to reach out to more places where fans are enjoying this game. It is indefinite on when and what is going to happen but this is something that’s part of the plan to reach out to the global players.
What are the challenges or plans for making tougher monsters like the Arch Tempered Elder Dragons? Will we see Arch Tempered Nergigante or other monsters?
For each monster, there are different ways to face them. Some of them might have different attack patterns but to simplify it, their damage has increased and their health pool had also been increased. Nergigante is one of the popular monsters in the game and we will definitely do something about it. But as of right now, we can’t tell you when or what’s the plan for it.
Are there any plans to introduce new weapons into Monster Hunter: World?
Right now, there’s no plans to introduce new weapons. But there’s a plan to refine the experience to play with different weapons so that players can enjoy further with the existing weapons.
So Monster Hunter: World is coming to its first year anniversary. Is there any plans for the first year anniversary?
The first year anniversary is definitely very important but as of right now there’s nothing official yet. But there’s definitely plans in stored for the first year anniversary. So please wait for an official announcement.
What inspired the creation of the monsters?
First of all, when creating a monster, we’ll have to think of the role and mechanic that they want to introduce. For example, Nergigante is an Elder Dragon, so there’s tons of action when fighting against it. One concept was destruction and regeneration which they put both to work together. So that’s one example.
So taking from the concept of destruction and regeneration from the design team, anything that’s related to the concept were listed down. As the spikes of Nergigante can be regenerated like a porcupine’s, there are other references from nature and they are gathered to be discussed before finalizing what is best to represent the concept. So that’s how the monster creation are inspired.
The Monster Hunter: World feedback team respond really quickly and fix issues quickly with the next patch. So how does the team take feedback and react to it so quickly?
The development team is always mindful to make sure that everyone playing the game would enjoy the game. Sometimes they might not make the best choices, but they would fix it immediately. Hence they will try to fix them as soon as possible to bring the best experience. Because we play the game often as well, so sometimes we meet people who are experienced from the community or opinion leaders in the game. So that’s where we get feedbacks quickly as well.
It was a great experience to interview both Kaname Fujioka and Yuya Tokuda during GameStart Asia 2018 in Singapore and we’ve definitely learnt a lot from both of them. They have also set an example as developers who actually play the game regularly, get feedback from the community in the game itself and implement them as soon as possible to improve the experience of players around the world. That said, they both are highly experienced in developing the Monster Hunter series and they will continue to provide updates to the game in the coming future.
