Monster Hunter: World

Monster Hunter: World is an action role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. Similar to previous games in the series, the player takes the role of a player-created character who travels to the "New World", an unpopulated landmass filled with monsters, to join the Research Commission that studies the land from their central command base of Astera. The Research Commission tasks the Hunter to hunt down and either kill or capture large monsters that roam outside Astera to both protect the Commission and to study the monsters there.[1] The player's character does not have any intrinsic attributes, but instead these are determined by what equipment the character is equipped with. This includes a weapon, selected from the series' fourteen archetypes (such as long sword, bow, or hammer),[2] which then further defines the types of combat moves and abilities the player can use, and pieces of armor, which can lead to beneficial or detrimental combat skills if matched properly. While some basic equipment can be purchased using in-game money, most equipment is built from loot obtained by slaying or trapping monsters, rewards from completing quests, or items gathered while in the field. This creates a core loop of gameplay that has the player fight monsters they can beat to obtain the right loot to craft improved weapons and armor to allow them to face more powerful monsters and the potential for even better equipment.

Astera acts as a central hub where the player can buy and sell goods, manage their inventory, craft new equipment, and gain new quests.[3] A core facet of Monster Hunter games is the construction and upgrading of armor and weapons at a forge using the monster parts and resources the player has gained from combat. As the player defeats tougher monsters, they can make armor with more defensive value or particular elemental resistance or can improve weapons to be more lethal and deal elemental or debuffing damage. Weapons and armor also carry various skills which have a number of different effects for the player; World introduces a new streamlined skill system compared to previous games, where each weapon or armor piece has one or more ranks in at least one skill, and the total effect of a skill on the player is determined by adding up all ranks of that skill from all equipped items the player carries. Additional services in Astera include a farm to grow quantities of flora while the player is out on quests, training areas to practice weapons, a gathering hub to take on special Arena challenges against one or more monsters, and a canteen which the player can order a meal from specific ingredients to provide buffs and special conditions while out on the field.

Quests and combat

After taking a quest in Astera, or after choosing to simply go on an open-ended expedition, the player is taken to a base camp in one of six large regions that make up the New World. Each region is made up of numbered zones, but unlike previous Monster Hunter games, these zones are seamlessly connected, and there are no loading screens when moving between zones. The player must traverse zone to zone, though they can quick-travel to any of the base camps in that particular region when outside of combat. From camp, the player can acquire limited provisions, rest to restore their health, and new to World, have a meal that provides limited-time buffs to the player. The player sets out to track down monsters, which in World is aided with the use of Scout flies, which hover near tracks and other signs of large monsters, or highlight resources that the player can collect such as flora, ores, bones, and insects. Investigate the traces of the monster leads to improving the Scout flies' abilities for the quest, eventually enabling them to lead the player via their glowing flight path towards the monster they seek; further, investigating these help the player to gain research towards the monster that helps them gain insight on its strengths, weaknesses, and behavior.[3][4]

In this gameplay screenshot, the hunter is combating the 'Great Jagras' monster.

Once a monster is located, the player can take several approaches to either slay or capture it using traps once sufficiently weakened, using a combination of their weapons and items they are carrying. As a monster is weakened, its tactics will often change, frequently becoming more aggressive, or fleeing to a lair to rest or find food to recover. The player has additional tools within World for combat. Each player has a Slinger, a tool that can be used to fire small projectiles like rocks at the monster to damage it or cause other debuffs, or can be used as a grappling hook to reach higher elevations or pull-down objects onto a monster.[2] A new type of tool called a Mantle can be used for a limited amount of time; these cloak-like objects provide a buff to the player, such as acting like a ghillie suit to reduce the chances of monsters detecting the player. Furthermore, the player has opportunities to use the environment strategically against the monster, such as bursting a natural dam to flood out a monster, or leading a monster into another monster's den to cause them to fight each other.[2][5] The game includes a dynamic weather system and day-night cycle, which can affect the behavior of some monsters mid-quest.[2]

In combat, the player must watch their health — if it falls to zero, they faint and are taken back to camp but then can set out again at a reduced reward; however, fainting more than three times (the exact amount depends on the quest) will cause the quest to fail. Further, the player must watch their stamina, which is consumed for dodging and certain other attacks and actions; stamina will recover quickly but the player must not take other aggressive actions for this to happen, which can be tricky in the heat of battle. The player can carry various restorative items for health and stamina; unlike previous games where the player was forced to stand still to consume them, World allows the player to do so while walking, though the player must not be interrupted for a few moments to gain the full effects of the restorative item.[6] The player must also be aware of various debuffs that monsters can inflict on them, the sharpness of their weapon or the quantity of ammo for certain weapon types, and the limitations of items they can bring on a quest that restricts how much they can recover while in the field. If the player successfully completes the quest, they gain reward resources, often consisting of parts from that monster along with zenny, the in-game currency. The distribution of rewards from a quest is determined by rarity, so obtaining certain rare parts may require repeating a quest several times to get a desired part.

World features a story mode offered through the quest system. Unlike previous games, where the story mode led the player through and to complete the "Low Rank" quests, before opening the game to more difficult "High Rank" quests without a story driver, World will have a narrative that continues into the "High Rank" quests.[7] The game's complete story mode is estimated to take between 40 and 50 hours, according to director Yuya Tokuda.[8] Instead of quests that required the player to slay a number of smaller monsters or collect resources, World will offer these as Bounties that can be achieved alongside the main quests, or provided as Optional quests that generally lead to improving some facet of the resources in Astera.[9] A player can have up to six different Bounties active, and which provide rewards when they are completed.[10] The player can gain Investigation quests as well, which come from investigating the trail of monsters with Scout flies or by breaking off parts of monsters in combat. Each Investigation offers a quest that may have unique limitations or goals compared to main story quests, such as time limits or reduced fainting limits but also provide additional rewards; Investigations can only be attempted, successfully or not, a limited number of times before they are exhausted and removed.

In an unnamed high fantasy setting, humans and other sentient races have set their eyes on the New World, a separate continent from the populated Old World. The New World is an untamed wilderness where many powerful monsters roam free, and where researchers have been drawn to uncover new mysteries. Several ocean-bound Fleets have been sent already to establish working bases, safe from monsters, and operations are led by the Research Commission.

Characters of this game are Handler (Eden Riegel), Commander (Jamieson Price), Admiral (Richard Epcar), Field Team Leader (Matthew Mercer), Seeker (Keith Silverstein), Second Fleet Master (Xander Mobus), Third Fleet Master (Salli Saffioti), Huntsman (Matthew Mercer) Analytics Director (DC Douglas), Tracker (Cindy Robinson), Excitable A-Lister (Phillip Reich), Provisions Manager (Karen Strassman), Chief Ecologist (Mick Wingert), Tech Chief (Michael Sorich), Captain (David Lodge) and Serious Handler (Erica Lindbeck).

Monster Hunter: World director Yuya Tokuda at the 2018 Game Developers Conference

Monster Hunter: World is considered the fifth installment in the Monster Hunter series, according to the game's senior producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and director Yuya Tokuda.[6] Along with executive director Kaname Fujioka, Tokuda served as a director for Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.[19] Development of World started about three years prior to the E3 2017 reveal, following a year of brainstorming on what the next core title in the series would be.[20] With the series more than a decade old, Capcom re-evaluated where they wanted to take the series, and concluded that with the hardware capabilities of the new consoles, they could realize a different vision compared to the handheld entries.[20] According to Capcom Europe's COO Stuart Turner and marketing director for the Europe, the Middle East and Africa Antoine Molant, the divisions of Capcom outside of Japan had suggested for Capcom to embrace a Western release with full online gaming support. The Japanese teams had been wary of this, since the series normally assured them of three to four million sales within Japan and they would risk those assured numbers by making the game more global. However, the risks of taking a more worldwide approach were embraced when Sony said they would help support this approach, since they believed this would also help to boost PlayStation 4 sales.[21] Additionally, the sheer scale of the project also used a large budget which they deemed necessary to "go up against Hollywood movies", and cost-cutting measures had to be adopted throughout Capcom.[22]

Tsujimoto said that past games typically had arcane rules, and the zoned-area structure made each zone feel isolated, and wanted to change that approach.[23] They have also wanted to implement living worlds and ecosystems, with complex artificial intelligence interactions between monsters and the environment but have been limited in the past by handheld gaming hardware.[6][20] The team determined that they would pursue highly detailed worlds that felt realistic, eliminating the disconnected zoned-map approach.[23] This created a "ripple effect" of changes in gameplay; for example, elimination of loading screens meant the player could not use the tactic of jumping to a different zone to heal in safety, and thus allowed the player to drink healing potions while walking.[24] Tokuda noted that with these changes, the pace of the game also became quicker.[24] A prototype of this more open world approach took about 18 months to complete by November 2015 with a team of 50-70 developers to test the seamless transition in the map, and how monsters would behave in these varied environments.[25] The environments were such a focus that the original prototype did not even feature a combat system; enemy monsters had to be evaded or dispatched through other means. This also helped the team recognize that player survival during hunts by effective use of the environment, either for protection or as means to harm monsters via destructible components, and of monsters themselves, luring one to an area to draw out another, could be a key part of World's gameplay.[26]

While the game features monsters already created from previous games in the series, the developers also crafted new monsters that took advantage of the benefits from more powerful processing hardware. A design of a new monster typically began around developing a certain gameplay challenge or mechanic for the monster's behavior that the player may need to exploit to defeat it, and then working with the level designers to find or help craft an area in the region maps to have that monster inhabit that allows for that behavior to be shown off. This in turn helped to establish the look and other behavior of the monster so that it felt like it belonged in that particular region.[27] Individual features of the monsters could now be more directly animated compared to the previous games, such as showing feathers on bird-like monsters having natural-appearing movements, or having monsters take on different forms. In one case, the monster Nergigante was designed to have thorns all over its body that grow over time as it becomes more aggressive; with the ability to render monsters in more detail, they could show each of these thousand-some thorns moving and growing on their own, which directly affects how the player interacts with it in combat, making it a creature they could not have previously used in early games.[27] Monster animation was developed in part with motion capture, with human actors acting out some of the various monster actions.[28] Sets of rules were developed for the monsters to follow to interact in their environment, but they did not resort to any type of scripted event. This often created unexpected monster behavior when testing or demonstrating the game to public audiences.[12] Once monsters were created, then they used those to develop the various weapon and armors that could be crafted from those monster parts to give a consistent feel to the game.[27]

As they worked towards this, Capcom found that this more open world would be something better appreciated by Western audiences. The Monster Hunter series has generally languished in sales in Western markets due to the complexity of the game, high learning curves, and the preference of console and PC gaming in Western audiences compared to the popularity of portable gaming in Japan.[23] The team felt the new approach to the game would be something that would mesh well with Western markets, and starting adopting the game to include more Western standards in controls and interface design. They also looked to provide more tutorial information as well as making these fully voiced, as to avoid unskippable dialogue boxes that had been used in the past.[23] With these changes came the decision to make the game a worldwide release with inter-region play, as they believed they would be able to draw more Western players with the gameplay changes they have made.[23] Tsujimoto and Tokuda recognized that World would be the first Monster Hunter game that many in the Western regions will likely play, so wanted to make sure the game was accessible to those players without having played any of the previous games. They also were aware of past criticisms that the games were very hard to learn though provided a rewarding experience once learned, so aimed to include means to help ease the learning curve and provide more information to the starting player.[6]

Fujioka responded to some initial criticism of the Western-driven changes to the game that they were not trying to make the game easier just to drive sales: "We're not taking things that people in the west hate and fixing them to make western players buy it. People sometimes make that assumption, or they've got that fear, but that's not the case at all."[5] He continued that some of the changes that were seem to favor Western audiences were necessitated by the highly interconnected maps, and that "the new gameplay has to mesh with the new concept or else it would just be a mess."[5] Tokuda said that they were not simplifying the game, but instead "It's more that we want to have this great core action gameplay where players observe monster behaviour and then learn how to take advantage of that and manipulate that to assist in hunting them. We want to make it so that if they make mistakes they don't feel it's unfair but instead think that it's their mistake and they have to grow and learn."[12] Most of the changes made were thus specifically to reduce the difficulty curve to make it easier for new players to grasp the concepts of the game, but otherwise not changing the core difficulty.[12] Tsujimoto also said that as they have been working on the series for more than a decade, they are aware of what fans expect of a Monster Hunter game, saying "we want Monster Hunter fans to feel like this is a Monster Hunter game through and through when they play it".[5]

The subtitle "World" alludes to many facets of the game's design changes from past Monster Hunter games: it reflects that the maps are no longer connected zones but wide-open worlds, that these maps represent living worlds in and of themselves, that the game had a simultaneous worldwide release, and that it plays on worldwide servers rather than being segmented by region.[6][20] Capcom opted not to use a numerical title, such Monster Hunter 5, as that would give the impression that players needed to have completed other games in the series to play this one.[24] Tsujimoto and Tokuda said they add a unique gameplay element with each Monster Hunter, and as such, the "Hunter Arts" and "Prowler" Modes from Generations were not included. However, they have re-evaluated all the existing weapon classes to add new moves and abilities to provide a fresh take on the series for veteran players.[20]

While their main Monster Hunter development team from Osaka developed the core, Capcom brought in other programmers familiar with the newer consoles to help with bringing the game to those systems.[6] The game uses a modified version of Capcom's internally developed MT Framework engine which provided a minimum of 30 frames per seconds on all platforms.[29] The PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One version includes ultra-high resolutions and other improved features for the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X.[20] When they had started development, neither of these console refreshes had been announced, and by the time the specifications for both were released (around 2016), Capcom recognized they did not have time to evaluate the specifications fully without changing the release window, but were aided by support of both Sony and Microsoft to help make World run efficiently on these newer consoles. For these, the game includes options to run between a detailed graphical version, lowering the game's framerate, or with reduced graphical details to maintain a high framerate.[12]

Tsujimoto and Tokuda said the delay on the Windows version release was to make sure it was "optimized and fine-tuned for the PC as much as possible", with all work being done internally within Capcom to avoid treating the game as an outsourced port.[30] They also seek to have Monster Hunter: World support a wide variety of personal computer configurations, and need the additional time to achieve this broad range.[24] Additionally, the Windows platform lacks the built-in matchmaking that is in Xbox Live or PlayStation Network, requiring them to build their own version for this.[31] Tsujimoto announced in January 2018 that they are aiming for a Windows release in the second half of 2018,[32] looking to get the console versions released so that they can spend their full attention towards the Windows port.[31]

There are no plans for Monster Hunter: World to be released for the Nintendo Switch. Fujioka and Tokuda said that development started well before the Nintendo Switch was announced, and had focused the game to best play on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.[33]

Announced at E3 2017, Monster Hunter: World was released worldwide for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 26, 2018.[34][35] In addition to digital and normal physical releases, the game was shipped with a Collector's Edition that includes an art book, a CD with the game's soundtrack, and a statue of one of the monsters from the game.[36] A limited run of PlayStation 4 Pro consoles emblazoned with Monster Hunter: World art was released in Japan on December 7, 2017.[37] A three-disc original soundtrack of the game's music was released in Japan on February 14, 2018, composed by Tadayoshi Makino, Zhenlan Kang, Akihiko Narita, and Yuko Komiyama.[38]

A limited demo, exclusive to PlayStation Plus members, was offered from December 9–12, 2017; the demo included practice areas for all fourteen weapon types, and three hunting quests that can be completed alone in solo play or using the networked cooperative support planned for the full game. Players that completed the three quests received bonus in-game items and a cosmetic item when the main game was released.[39] A second demo period for PlayStation 4, no longer requiring PlayStation Plus, ran between December 22–26, 2017,[40] and a final beta period, adding one additional quest, ran from January 19–22, 2018.[15]

Originally announced alongside the console versions, a Microsoft Windows version was released on August 9, 2018.[41][42] Tsujimoto said while they will try to release new content updates for all platforms as soon as possible, the Windows version may see updates come out later; for this reason, they do not anticipate supporting cross-platform play between versions.[43] The initial version was released with graphics parity with the console versions, with plans to offer a post-release patch for graphic updates;[44] this patch was released for free in April 2019, and included both high-definition textures and additional graphics options for players.[45] With its major Iceborne title update in April 2020, Capcom plans that all future updates will be simultaneous between the Windows and console versions.[46][47]

Tencent managed the release of World for personal computer users in China via its WeGame platform. However, less than a week after its release, Tencent was forced to pull sales of the games, after there were numerous complaints made to Chinese authorities about the online content of the game. Normally, the State Administration of Radio and Television (SART) would have issued a license for Tencent to distribute the game after reviewing it for content, but SART has not issued any licenses for video games since March 2018, after the agency was reformed by the government to strengthen the government's oversight of online activities.[48] While players could still play the game in offline mode, Tencent offered full refunds over the following two weeks.[49]

Monster Hunter: World received "universal acclaim" from critics on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and a "generally favourable" reception on PC, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[65][63][64]

Reviewers generally praised the game for being able to retain and not sacrifice the core Monster Hunter formula while opening it up to be amenable for new players to the series, being able to take advantage of the higher processing power of consoles compared to handhelds to make the game's worlds feel more alive, though still noted that there are elements of learning the game mechanics and the difficulty curve that can still be somewhat daunting to inexperienced players.[77][78]

Prior to the game's release, long-time fans of the series established an unofficial "Adopt-A-Hunter" program, where players experienced to the series would be paired up with novice and new players to help teach them about many of the core gameplay strategies and subtle features of Monster Hunter: World. The program was created by fans recognizing that World would likely be the first game in the series for many in the Western regions, and was designed to help these players understand the game and manage the steep learning curve as to help bring more players to the community and make the series successful in the West. While such efforts have been part of the Monster Hunter community since its release, the broader distribution of World was expected to be more amenable to this adoption program.[79][80]

• Official website