Monster Hunter Tri Interview

VGD: To go back to the difficulty issue, Adrien Cho from BioWare told us recently that the present generation of gamers are pampered. Would you agree?

Tan: Yeah definitely. [laughs] It depends. It depends on what the game is, and what the purpose of the game is. I think there’s a place for hardcore skill, and there’s a place for progression and story.

Qurupeco in action. Fear his comedy cravat!

Uncharted 2, towards the end it got a bit difficult, and it kind of broke the illusion – because all the way through you’re basically playing a movie, and kind of right at the end it becomes a game again, and that’s a bit annoying. I wish they’d made it easier there.

But I don’t want people dumbing down Street Fighter or a fighting game system, or something like Monster Hunter – if you make it too easy, you lose some of that sensation of living for the hunt. It’s more about things in the right place. You wouldn’t make something difficult just for the sake of it, that would be insanity.

VGD: Have you heard anything about Wii HD? I guess you wouldn’t be in a position to comment if you had.

Tan: Yeah, both of those. But I haven’t. They’re certainly not going call it “Wii HD” though, because by the time it comes out it would be “Wii SD”.

VGD: Do you think Capcom has taken anything from the West? There was the PC version of Monster Hunter a while ago…

Tan: Yeah, Frontier. Still going, still really popular, still doing well.

VGD: In Japan?

Tan: Yeah, Asia. Well, Korea and Japan, which is basically Asia.

VGD: Has Capcom learned anything from World of Warcraft, perhaps?

Tan: I hope they make it more like that! I don’t know, is the truth. The team that’s doing this isn’t the team that’s doing Frontier, and I haven’t actually met the team that’s doing Frontier so I haven’t had the chance to ask them the million questions that have gone round my head. I think that with the change of focus with Tri on accessibility, and to globalise everything we do [in terms of Capcom as a whole] and make everything less Japanese – not necessarily more American, just more global…

Certainly with a lot of our older games, you can tell they’re designed by Japanese gamers, and as that changes and we move forward I would hope that for all future versions of Monster Hunter that this attitude carries on. Otherwise we wouldn’t be consistent.

Among the more eye-catching new toys is the Switchaxe. It's an axe that morphs into a sword. Neato.

VGD: Have you played the game with motion controls and a Classic controller?

Tan: Yes.

VGD: And which scheme do you prefer?

Tan: Classic Controller Pro. Because – 1100 hours! I’m not able to change. In the office for people who are playing for the first time it’s about a 50-50 split. I think in the long run if you’re going to take it to its optimum level, for me the Classic Controller Pro is more comfortable and lets me do everything in a specific way. I’ve got the claw habit, so I just have more options on the Pro.

And with a nunchuck – you’ve got all those kind of things but unsheathing the sword is one of the only motion control things. I just prefer that on a button. With some of the controls on the button though you do need to be very precise, and I think that maybe it’s a little bit easier on a nunchuck and remote, so maybe from the beginning you start with that. But ultimately I think people will switch over.

VGD: Leo, thanks for your time.

Monster Hunter Tri ships to North America and Europe in April.