Conociendo Monster Hunter Generations con Ryozo Tsujimoto

RG: Which things do you keep in mind when deciding which new weapons eventually get to the game? Like the hunting horn and the boomerang-like weapon that the prowlers carry with them.

RT: First, we decide on each title if we are going to add new weapons or not. We don’t always add a new weapon on every game so with Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate we added two new weapons, the insect glaive and the charge blade, but in Generations we decided not to add weapons, but to add posibilities to all existing weapons, by having each one four selectable hunting styles that really change the gameplay, so the main decision first of all is “are we going to add a new weapon?”.

The next thing is that we aren’t going to add a new weapon that replicates an existing one, so even if we made a weapon that looked different but ultimately just played the same as one of the other weapons it would be kind of pointless, we want each of them to be unique so that’s something we never want to happen so the people say “oh yeah, the weapons X and Y are basically the same”.

You gave the hunting horn as an example, so I’m assuming that you’re interested in that concept. We started with the concept of “what the weapon should do” and then develop it from there. The hunting horn was added because we wanted to add a weapon that gave some possibility to buff parties of four. We thought “ok, it will be a weapon capable of healing your party or increasing their attack or defense, how can we make that work in the concept of Monster Hunters world? What do you need in the real world to be cheered up?”

We thought of music as a great power-up for people; it can really change your mood and give you energy, so we thought that we should use the power of music. Developing that concept is what actually became that giant device that you can hit things with and pressing the buttons you can play a melody. Each weapon’s concept flows from some kind of “core idea”, and we developed it in a way that makes it fit in the Monster Hunter universe.

Just to wrap up, when people went to war they had musicians to energize, like drummers and pipers. For an example you could take the Mad Max’s electric guitar guy, it’s an extreme version but I think that we created something that reflected really well world history and people needing music to get excited to battle.

The most recently added weapon would be the insect glaive. Sometimes the gameplay system making a step forward is what lets us add a new weapon. In our world monsters and hunters live together in the same universe, they kind of coexist in an ecosystem, they’re like real animals in that sense. Hunters are very close to creatures and close to nature in this world so we always had an idea but never had a chance to implement a weapon that represented how close hunters are to nature. We had the idea for kind of a falconer, you know, the traditional person that used a bird to attack or scout areas. That’s something that we never really used in the past, but then we were able to develop that kind of vertical gameplay with Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and we were able to combine this concept with another one we had of a staff or a glaive that you could use to jump on top of enemies, so this new concept of jumping with a staff and this existing kind of concept of using a living creature to attack or benefit you was combined into one single weapon and it became the insect glaive so sometimes it just happens that the evolution of the series brings some new opportunities for us to create a weapon that we couldn’t put in before.

RG: Is Monster Hunter Generations a good starting point for new players? What would you say to those players that dropped the franchise in previous installments?

RT: It’s a great entry point for new users, one big reason for that is that we always considered new users, not just with this title. For Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate we kind of tried to build a storyline in a way that it helped people with their journey and with how to play the game in a more clear to understand way. For Monster Hunter Generations we wanted to be able to teach people not to just get skilled as a hunter, but one of the most key things in the game is being able to observe the monster and their behavior and being able to put that to use in fighting them. If people maybe have been finding it difficult to do that because when you go out as a hunter monsters start attacking you and you don’t have any chance to just take a breath and watch how they move.

The new prowler mode, where you can play as a felyne, is really designed for that because the prowlers are a little bit weaker, but to balance that they actually have more chances to faint. They also have a burrowing move which they can use to dig underground and be safe from most of the attacks. That mode gives the chance to people for being a supportive character while the other hunters attack and you catch a breath while studying the monster’s moves and attacks to use that in advantage when coming back as a human player. That’s a really great way for new users to take some time to learn to play the game before they go in and have their own hunting experience.

As for people that have played in the past but haven’t played recently, I think the hunting styles are a really great way to get into the game because people already have some weapons that they like to switch between and there are new possibilities with the hunting styles to check out because they’re not the same weapons anymore, you now have four different ways to play them and it might give you new ideas or maybe you can end up trying new weapons because combined with those styles they can end having a playstyle that really suits you, like using the aerial bowgun, for example. It’s a really great moment for players to come back to the series.

Esta entrevista ha sido realizada por Jorge Carrión en el showroom de Nintendo Ibérica