Eurogamer has managed to scoop an exclusive interview with Monster Hunter series producer Ryōzō Tsujimoto and Monster Hunter Rise director Yasunori Ichinose. During the interview it is confirmed by Mr. Tsujimoto that the impressive looking Nintendo Switch exclusive has been in development at Capcom for four years. Development started on the Switch title before Monster Hunter World was created, however, Mr. Tsujimoto said that they didn’t really explore whether Monster Hunter World would work on Switch as he says that they treat each title as its own concept. He went on to say that you can not “ignore the hardware you’re releasing it on when you design the game.” Read on for some highlights from the lengthy interview.
Let’s start with an easy one! How long has this been in development for?
Ryōzō Tsujimoto: It’s been about four years in total. Ichinose was the director of Monster Hunter Generations, which came out about four or five years ago. And we did give him a bit of time off after that! It wasn’t like the next day! But we asked him if he could work on the next portable – at the time it hadn’t been released – Switch title. And we also had to consider what engine to use at the same time before we get started. We’re using the RE Engine which at the time had not yet been released, because the first title using it was Resident Evil 7. So yeah, long story short it was a total of about four years once we got all those ducks in a row.
So development had started before Monster Hunter World came out. Did you ever explore the option of bringing that to Switch? I know plenty of people asked questions about it – including myself! – around release.
Ryōzō Tsujimoto: To be honest not really, because we do treat each title as its own concept and you can’t ignore the hardware you’re releasing it on when you design the game. If you’ve got something like Nintendo Switch which is pick up and play, you can play it anywhere, you don’t necessarily want the same gameplay experience which is designed assuming you’re sitting in front of a big TV on a sofa for four hours straight. We want to be able to design a game that you can pick up for 30 minutes on the go, before bed, and get something out of that experience, and that that really affects the gameplay design and you can’t just bring that over and have it be the same, so we never really considered that when it came to Monster Hunter World.
I’m not a monster hunter fan. Only briefly tried the demo for mh4 but I must say mh: rise has me very interested in purchasing.
I liked stories on 3ds so that one is automatic. I didn’t like the transitioning between different zones aspect to it and overall sluggishness in combat it made the experience feel disjointed to me. I’m happy they’ve made it connected now and combat looks more fluid now.
You would have enjoyed World then. It’s more of the same (for as much as they’ve shown off of Rise so far), interconnected areas, getting around faster via “mounts”, and combat is far better than what I’ve played between Tri and Gen-Ult (though some may argue that Gen-Ult keeps up just fine, if not a tad better than World). I’d recommend World for beginners before Rise arrives.
Yea world looked like fun despite the “true” fans giving it hate for making away with the more complex aspects, from what I’ve heard at least. I haven’t played because I know I wouldn’t dedicate time on a home console since Im always moving around, hence my huge backlog of ps4 games lol
“If you’ve got something like Nintendo Switch which is pick up and play, you can play it anywhere, you don’t necessarily want the same gameplay experience which is designed assuming you’re sitting in front of a big TV on a sofa for four hours straight”
Seems like he’s ignoring the other half of the Switch’s functionality, which is exactly what he described. Plenty of people, myself included, use the Switch for that exact reason.
I wouldn’t call rise “impressive” looking in any way, shape or form. Graphics are crap. And yes I’m aware that its an open world game and that the switch isnt very powerful. Still looks pretty bland graphics wise…