What is your favorite Monster Hunter monster? Depending on when you started playing this 20-year-old series, you might have a different answer to this question. The oldest and grizzled veterans of the series will have a soft spot for Hezus, Diablo, and Fatalis. Later arrivals will fondly recall the Narga Kugas, Royal Ludros and Water Chang. Personally, I like Tetsucabra the best (I like frogs, okay?)
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Monster Hunter Now has been a hit with fans so far. By now, there are monsters in (almost) every corner of the Monster Hunter universe. We have latecomers like Magnamalo and Mizutsune playing alongside OGs like Rathalos and Rathian. Diablo spawns next to Pukei-Pukei. It’s a wonderful smorgasbord of fauna throughout the series, but There are 46 creatures in the rosterthere are a lot of notable absences.
“No monster is impossible,” Monster Hunter Now senior producer Sakae Osumi told me during an interview at the game’s first IRL event in Shibuya, Japan. “Over the past year, we’ve been introducing new monsters and variants, and most recently we’ve started introducing Elder Dragons.”
“It’s been very hot this summer,” Niantic chief product officer Kei Kawai added with a smile. “So it’s only fitting to see Theostra – the Elder Dragon surrounded by fire! – added to the game this season. We always see there’s some sort of “real world” situation for what we choose to add monster.”
“That’s a pretty good hint of what’s to come,” Ohsumi replied, looking shocked.
“I’m not suggesting anything“, Kawai said with a smile.
This exchange got me thinking…does this mean that, during a supposedly cold winter, we’ll see more ice monsters appear in the game? Perhaps we will see Lunagaron, a new character in Monster Hunter: Rise of Dawn, join the game after Magnamalo. Maybe we’ll see everyone’s favorite scary yeti bastard, Goss Harag, make an appearance. Hey, who knows, maybe we’ll even see Velkana arrive as an Elder Dragon Interceptor – that makes sense, right? Nothing is “impossible”, so…
Monster Hunter Now has been out for just over a year, and we’ve already seen the monster list grow from 14 to 46 species. For anyone keeping track, that’s more than three times the base number. Sure, some are variants (like Shibuya Carnival, where we now have three different versions of Rathian and Rathalos), but considering the variants behave differently and incorporate unique armor, I’d still classify them as their own unique monster.
But with the release of Elder Dragons, the player base really started to realize the scale of this game. Elder dragons can fight longer (and often more difficult) battles than their smaller siblings, and they won’t start appearing until the summer of 2024. And, we’ve already seen three Elder Dragons added to the title; Kushula Daora, Teostra, and the event-exclusive Nergigante (which, by the way, is a A super fun battle).
“The Elder Dragons are more important to the story and how they function in the Monster Hunter universe,” Ohsumi continued. “So we have to be very careful about when we add them.”
He went on to note that since Elder Dragon battles are so large-scale and often require tweaking of Monster Hunter Now’s core gimmicks to properly fit into the mobile app, there are implementation challenges for these battles. But Niantic is working on how to implement some of the more unusual battles in the game – the answer is vague, but I’m thinking of the Dah’ren Mohran battle in Generation 4, where you need to be in a moving sand-ship. Or Zora Magdaros’ battle in the world, which is basically you fighting a living mountain.
“Introducing giant monsters into the game has a different goal,” Ohsumi concluded, “and we’re still working on that. So, we’ll see how it turns out!”
Makes me excited. The game keeps getting better, and more monster variety means more fun. If we end up getting Tetsucabra in there, then, well, you can expect me to never take off that stupid armor.
Monster Hunter is now available on iOS and Android. This interview was conducted during the Monster Hunter Carnival in Shibuya, Tokyo, with travel and accommodation paid for by Niantic.
