Yoko Taro took a swing at Monster Hunter Rise‘s story today, writing his own version of the game’s events. Suffice to say, it was the usual Taro flavor of melancholy.

Posting it via a Tweet Longer-type website Fusetter, the Yoko Taro cut of Monster Hunter Rise sounds an awful lot like scenarios for the game’s bad end.

Monster Hunter Rise: The Yoko Taro Cut

Elder Fugen would die during the Rampage tutorial, after the player completes it. According to Taro, this would be because the player made a mistake, leaving the village without its leader.

He also has plans for the two children in the game, the Dango girl and Iori, the Buddy handler. According to Yoko Taro he would have one of them killed off, with the other then going on to set fire to the village. After this event, he says the Buddy Plaza would lose its background music.

His attack on the game’s music doesn’t stop there though. Yoko Taro says he would have players want to forge a weapon out of either Hinoa or Minoto, in order to defeat the game’s final boss. After sacrificing one of the sisters, he says the song you hear sung by the girls would disappear.

The other major revelation Yoko Taro wanted to add is a bit of a throwback to one of his previous titles. According to Taro, “From the highest difficulty stage, the monsters start to talk. The “true meaning” of monsters and Kamura’s village will be explained, and players will realize the meaning of the character voices in this game”.

This is an interesting reference to Nier Automata, where doing Route B of the game from 9S’s perspective lets you understand all of the bosses, giving you a glimpse into their tragic backstories.

He also had some gameplay ideas for Monster Hunter Rise, also driven by his attempts to make it as sad as possible. Taro described a scenario where all your familiar NPCs would eventually leave the village, replacing them with “less impressive” NPCs. These NPCs would resent you for all the calamities happening to the village, giving the gameplay difficulty a spike as supplies become harder to get.

He also gave it the traditional Yoko Taro finisher, saying that after finishing the game’s Village Quests the village would be destroyed, leaving it in a state of ruin similar to the ones in the Shrine Ruins. From here, the game would only be multiplayer.

Typical Yoko Taro Shenanigans

There’s a pretty good chance Yoko Taro is just having a laugh, as he’s fully aware of his reputation for deeply melancholic stories. Despite the content of his games Taro himself is a pretty upbeat man, often putting up an offbeat and laid back persona despite being the guy behind Ending E of Nier Automata.

Still, it’s interesting to see how wildly he could have taken the series if he’d been at the helm. We’d all have hated it, probably, but it would have been cool nonetheless.