Hello! This is Shibata, reporting to you from the Monster Hunter Rise dev floor!

For this special series, I will be interviewing the developers of the recently announced Monster Hunter Rise. I’m sure they have lots of stories to tell about all of the cool things they put into the game!

To kick off this auspicious occasion, let’s start with Ryozo Tsujimoto, producer on the Monster Hunter series!

Shibata: Alright, let’s get right down to business! What are the main themes and characteristic of this game?

Ryozo Tsujimoto: The theme is “a Monster Hunter that you can play anytime, anywhere, with anyone you want,” and we wanted to make a Monster Hunter that would feel good on a portable console as well.

One of the main characteristics is the fun of traversal, be it by using the Wirebug to climb and fly all over the map, or by riding a Canyne to run across the fields at high speed.

Shibata: It’s great that you can just pick up and play this game. You can just lie around on your sofa and decide to do a quest or two!

I’m sure you must’ve spent a lot of time playing the game already. What would you say is the thing that impressed you the most?

Tsujimoto: How good it feels just to move around.

You can really go to a lot of places on the map, and just climbing up cliffs feels like a fresh and fun new experience. You can climb on top of a mountain and then look down all the way below, where you can see monsters roaming around. Just figuring out how to climb a big cliff face in front of you can be a lot of fun!

Shibata: And then you can actually go there!

Tsujimoto: That’s right. If you can see it within the boundaries of the map, you can probably go there.

Shibata: Apparently, there’s a fair amount of people who think the Wirebug actions look complicated?

Tsujimoto: It’s a completely new feature, so it’ll take some time to get used to, but you don’t need to whisk around the map right from the start, and we made sure the game is fun enough without using the Wirebug.

Shibata: Yeah, you can get by just fine with the classic play style.

Tsujimoto: You can run around the field riding your Palamute without consuming stamina, and you can even climb vines like this, so you can reach some pretty high places with little effort. It feels really good! I hope everyone tries using their Canyne to get around as well.

Shibata: The Wirebug can be used to attack monsters as well, so does that mean the player won’t be expected to fully comprehend that immediately either?

Tsujimoto: That’s right. If you manage to incorporate your Wirebug into your combos, your repertoire of moves will expand significantly, but what that means is that you’ll just have even more choice on top of the already rich amount of strategy you normally have.

Shibata: Each weapon type has its own attacks using the Wirebug (Silkbind Attacks), so we’d like players to experiment, and a good place to start would probably be the Wirefall, don’t you think?

Tsujimoto: Indeed! The Wirefall can be a lifesaver when used effectively, so it comes highly recommended.

Shibata: At TGS last year, you gave the world its first look at live gameplay, and it was quite interesting to hear hunters talk during quests now!

Tsujimoto: Yeah, we received a lot of positive feedback on that. At TGS, the player characters only spoke Japanese, but you can also change this to English or Monster Hunter Language.

You can even adjust the frequency of the voices, or turn them off altogether.

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Closing remarks from me:

Wirebugs and Canynes; there’s a lot of new features to be excited about, but it’s good to know that you won’t need to master them right away.

I’m sure a lot of people will be happy to know that they can adjust the voice settings to their liking as well.

There’s more news to look forward to, so stay tuned!

Next time, I’ll be paying a visit to the Director!

To be continued!