《Monster Hunter Wilds》DLC Ascendance 东京电玩展开发团队访谈

Monster Hunter Wilds, like many previous games in the series, is soon to receive an expansive DLC. Despite serious early issues with Wilds, the team at Capcom pushed forward to make amends and develop a large-scale expansion, this time titled Ascendance.

Last month, at Tokyo Game Show, we sat down with four members of the Monster Hunter Wilds development team: Ryozo Tsujimoto - Series Producer, Kaname Fujioka - Art Director, Takuro Hiraoka - Director, and Genki Sunano - Producer for Monster Hunter Wilds on Switch 2, to get the lowdown on what to expect from the upcoming content.

TheGamer: Talk me through the thought and design process that goes into Monster Hunter expansions. How do you decide what environment and setting you want?

Takuro Hiraoka: With Wilds, we reflected on the fact that we were able to create a really convincing environment in the Forbidden Lands. The story scope focused on meeting Nata and, through your and Nata's interactions, discovering the villagers' storyline and the threat they were facing. We never really had a chance to dive deep into the lore of the Forbidden Lands or its history. We wanted to introduce an area and a storyline that would let us explore that.

In the second half of Wilds in particular, the maps felt relatively constricted, like caves and other enclosed areas. Even with this very mobile sekret, I think it felt a bit too constrained by the end of the game.

We felt that having this skybound map floating in the sky would not only let us zoom out a bit on the Forbidden Lands and explore the land's ancient history, but also bring a new sense of freedom to the traversal players could experience. Because after all, your sekret has wings, and now it can fly.

TG: How about the Monsters? How do you decide which ones to bring back from previous titles?

TH: As I mentioned with the lore, we didn't really get a chance to explore Elder Dragons and Wyverians, or that aspect of the game's storyline, in the base game. So certainly, for this game, we thought Elder Dragons were a good direction to go in.

Speaking more generally, you always want to look at player feedback and which fan favorites haven't been back in a while, or who people really want to see return.

But there's a game design element as well, because the monsters are essentially slotting into a game flow that we want to create. We need monsters that, early in the game, even in an expansion, let you get to grips with the basics. And then as you go through the gameplay, there will be hurdles, and there will be multiple times during the gameplay when it's sort of a skill check. For this monster, you'll have to use what we've taught you, because you can't just power through. You're going to actually have to use all these abilities. We have to think about which monster design suits being a hurdle monster at which stage of the game.

Needless to say, in addition to all that, the monsters' actual properties, like what kind of attacks they do, are also a general consideration.

TG: What about Kushala Daora? This monster seems to come back time and time again.

TH: It's the original Elder Dragons, so whenever we spoke about topics that were coming up for the storyline and themes, and Elder Dragons being a major one, that's the Elder Dragon. It seemed like a sort of obvious choice in this case, and that's why we keep coming back to it.

Ryozo Tsujimoto: Since its appearance in Monster Hunter 2, when we introduced the concept of Elder Dragons, I think Kushala Daora has become a byword for Elder Dragons and represents the entire concept.

TG: How big is Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance compared to previous DLCs like Iceborne and Sunbreak?

RT: Like previous expansions such as Iceborne and Sunbreak, we approached it with the goal of making it feel like an entirely new game.

I'm confident the content volume will match those expansions and meet players' expectations for what a massive Monster Hunter expansion means: a good, meaty amount of content.

TG: Talk us through the new Booster Bracer mechanic and the reasoning behind adding it.

TH: It's a system where, throughout the hunt, attacking the monster builds your energy, and you can spend that energy on a boost mechanic. Boosting gives certain moves extra power and adds new moves into the gameplay flow, so it adds a new element to the hunting cycle: as the hunt goes on, you can use this energy to create advantageous situations for yourself.

As for why we implemented this: a lot of the back and forth of a hunt is kind of about creating windows of opportunity. We just thought, what's something that can feed into that system? So, with the Boost Bracer, when you've got a window open, you have a powerful tool at your fingertips to take full advantage of it, and by using those powerful attacks, you can also create new windows.

TG: It's been roughly 18 months since the launch of Wilds. The reaction at launch was mixed; how do you feel now you've had time to step back and think about it?

RT: We've looked at all the user feedback that has come in since launch, and there's been a lot of it, and I think we're grateful to have an opportunity to reflect on the original game.

We've been continuously updating the main game with lots of free title updates. It's not just about new content; we're taking the chance to try and make performance and quality-of-life improvements. I think the feedback cycle between players and us is rewarding, even though it has its challenges, and hopefully, by the time the DLC comes out, the title will be in a better place than ever.

TG: Would you say it's the hardest you've ever worked on the series since it began?

RT: I would say so. It’s the first time we launched on PC and console simultaneously in the series’ history. That, along with many other things, was very challenging. The team really gave it their best, and I’m really proud of what we all managed to achieve. I hope that comes across to the fans.

TG: Do you regret launching on PC and consoles at the same time?

RT: I don’t think so; I have no regrets about that. It’s what everybody wanted. It was a challenge we needed to take; the player base doesn’t want to be split by who gets to play first and who plays catch-up. We needed to take that step forward and break through.

We learned a lot, and we’ll take those learnings from the challenges and the good things and put them to work in creating the best possible version of Ascendance and any future titles.

TG: Given how challenging it seemed to get the game running smoothly on PC, I have to imagine the Switch 2 version was a lot of work?

Genki Sunano: It's definitely been a new level of challenge considering we just about got the PC to where it needed to be. We've been working on the performance of the game continually and, you know, Title Update 4 in particular was a big step forward.

When it came to adding Nintendo Switch 2, we reviewed everything we could about how the game processes internally and all aspects of performance, and made as many tweaks and improvements as we could.

It's running really well, and that challenge has created a kind of virtuous circle for us: the know-how and optimizations we made to make the Switch 2 version work can be backported to all the other platform versions, making it a rising tide lifts all boats situation.

TG: Now you've got Monster Hunter Wilds working on the Switch 2, Monster Hunter World must be next, right?

RT: The main challenge is that Monster Hunter World uses a completely different engine.

From Monster Hunter Rise onwards, we’ve been using our own RE Engine. That engine change changes the conversation completely, regardless of performance or machine power. We’d have to completely remake the game from the ground up.