Monster Hunter is in a particularly precarious place with the release of the upcoming Monster Hunter Rise. It’s previous installment, World, brought more new features and completely revamped player expectations for the Monster Hunter series.

In a new Dev Interview with game director Yasunori Ichinose, Ichinose said that World’s player-based difficulty scaling would be returning in Rise. The interview was translated by the Monster Hunter Asia Facebook.

“We’ve looked at past titles for reference and tweaked the settings to fit this game the best”, he says.

Previous Monster Hunter games have also had special quests you could do to explore the world. While games like Monster Hunter Generations and 4Ultimate had “gathering quests” that you could take to explore freely, World combined them with another feature called “Expeditions’”.

While Ichinose didn’t clarify the exact nature, he said that players would still get to explore the locales in some way or other in the game.

“Outside of the regular quests, we have some quests that allow you play without a time limit as well, so if you want to focus on exploration and gathering materials instead of hunting, you can do that to your heart’s content”, he says.

While the answer doesn’t confirm whether or not they’d be doing expeditions a la World or the traditional gathering quest, it’s good to know you won’t be off-setting the entire hunt to go gather honey.

Ichinose also talked about the fan reception to Rise thusfar. One of the most noticeable reactions was to the new companions, the Palamutes.

“I was happy to see the response to the Palamutes was extremely positive, not just in Japan, but overseas as well. A lot of people asked to what extent you can customize your trusty Canyne”, he says. “We already revealed this information, but in case you missed it: you can change the shape of their ears and tail, and the color of their coat. We hope you create your own unique Palamute and treat it with as much affection as you would your Palicoes!”

“I’ve been using my own customized Palamute for checking the game, and it’s grown on me a lot”, he laughs.
But it’s not just the Palamutes that have been getting attention. Back during the reveal for Monster Hunter Rise, they showed off several new monsters, all with a Japanese folklore theme. Ichinose says the fan reception to these monsters has been great as well, even if they haven’t released much official information.

“We received a lot of reactions to the Buddies, but the monsters were very popular as well”, he says. “We introduced 4 new monsters (and a few others): Magnamalo, Aknosom, Tetranadon, and Great Izuchi. We only showed their names and what they look like, but people came up with lots of speculation for each creature and it’s all been really interesting to read”

On top of that, fanartists have been having a field day drawing the new monsters, and Ichinose wanted to let the community know that they’ve seen it all.

“I’ve seen a lot of fan art on social media as well, which makes all of us working on the game very happy. Thank you, everyone!”, Ichinose says.

“This game has a very Japanese/Asian-flavored setting, so initially I was a bit worried what kind of response that would elicit, but people reacted very positively to this as well, so we’re all very satisfied. We want to create something new while maintaining the core Monster Hunter experience, so we hope you look forward to future information”.
For those still on the fence about Rise, Ichinose says there’s far more to the game than has been shown thus far.

“There’s still a lot of things we haven’t talked about yet, so we’ll keep bringing you new announcements as the release date draws closer. Of course there are still plenty of monsters, both new and familiar, that we haven’t shown yet”, he says.

“And there’s some new player-related systems apart from the Wirebug as well…” he teased. “In terms of stages, we’ve only shown the Shrine Ruins so far, but of course there are a few more. Some of them may even bring back some fond memories”, he concludes.