It’s taken slightly longer than expected to arrive, but a new update for Destiny 2 will launch on all platforms tomorrow, November 2. This will be accompanied by a maintenance period that will temporarily bring the game’s servers offline.
Maintenance begins at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET / 3 PM GMT (2 AM AET on November 3). This will follow the typical schedule–once maintenance begins, no one will be able to log in, but those already online can continue playing. An hour later, everyone will be booted offline, and the patch will roll out at 10 AM PT. Servers should be back online by 12 PM PT, although, as we’ve seen numerous times before, that is only an estimate; the wait may be longer or shorter.
The patch is update 1.0.6, which Bungie announced last week. We’ve already gotten a preview of the patch notes, which you can see below; it adjusts the mercy rule in Crucible and fixes the exploit involving the Bureaucratic Walk emote. Not everything the update does is included in the notes; we’ll have to wait until it’s actually available to get the complete rundown. This comes just ahead of the return of Trials, which was canceled for two weeks due to the emote bug.
At a basic level, Monster Hunter makes more sense than most games. Hunting and gathering – the looping rhythm of every game in the series since the 2004 original – is quite literally built into our DNA. Thing is, our caveman ancestors didn’t have to wade through four pages of stats to work out if their clubs had a 30% chance of knocking out a bison, or navigate a set of weirdly specific menu screens in set locations to bring mates along. The base idea is simple, the result immensely satisfying, but for over a decade, Monster Hunter’s main problem has been one of communication.
It’s a long-since trite point that the best way to get into the series is to have someone who already understands it explain things to you, because the game simply never will. Given that Capcom’s made very clear that it won’t be dumbing down the core experience (and, after about 15 hours of play, I can personally vouch for that), Monster Hunter World’s key concern will be in how it brings new players into the fold painlessly.
Even after playing over 12 hours of Monster Hunter World, I still died while hunting my final monster. A lot.
Now, some people have already jumped straight to the comments following my opening sentence, or maybe they didn’t make it past the headline. But for those of you who’ve actually read this far, I’ll answer my headline outright: Monster Hunter World is not too hard. With the caveat that I played a still-in-development build of the game and just made it through the opening section, my deaths in the game felt important. I learned from them; I learned how to better use my weapons, I learned how to take advantage of my environment, and most importantly, I learned how to read my monstrous opponents all-important tells.
Capcom recently flew a group of journalists out to Monster Hunter’s Osaka development office to play the beginning missions of Monster Hunter World and to talk with the developers about the game. I got some insight into what happened to the underwater levels (Monster Hunter Tri introduced hunting in the water, but that setting has been absent from the series ever since), and I also asked about whether the increasingly popular loot box system might make its way to the series. But the question long-time fans of the series have had is whether Monster Hunter World, as both first Monster Hunter game available worldwide at the same time and the first game on a Sony or Microsoft home console in a very long time, is going to dial-back on its infamously complex battle system in order to be more approachable.
From what I’ve played of Monster Hunter World, it does feel like a more friendly game for new players. A revamped training area makes it easy to experiment with new weapons and loadouts. A hunting guide lays out the weak points and loot tables for the monsters you face. And you can call for help from online friends and strangers even if you’re in the middle of a hunt. But Monster Hunter World also retains its signature challenge and depth, the elements that have made it such an enduring franchise.
And it does that while expanding the scope of the game dramatically. I’m told that the dozen hours I played are just a small slice of the game, the trailer showed at Paris Games Week revealed what was almost a completely new set of monsters from the ones I fought, and the environments in that trailer were a world apart from the ones that I’d played around in. Ryozo Tsujimoto, producer on Monster Hunter world, tells me, “There is still a lot more for you to see. You are still at the start of your journey here.” And when he says, “There’s no question, it’s the biggest Monster Hunter project to date,” it’s easy to believe him.
Death and failure are a natural part of exploring this massive new world. “It’s more that the game cycle will ramp up the difficulty where you’re gonna hit a wall. Then you’re gonna have to examine what you need to do to clear that wall,” says Tsujimoto. As an experience, Monster Hunter is about going back to creatures you’ve bested before, and fighting them again. But you’re repeating that process not just to get better items that you can turn into new weapons and armor, but to hone your skills.
“Even though you failed the quest, we don’t want it to feel unfair,” Tsujimoto says. “It has to be something where you realize that, oh, I need to do better next time. Next time you jump in, you’re gonna see that move coming, you’re gonna read that tell better, and you’re gonna say this is my time to get out of the way and then I’m gonna attack. And then the satisfaction of having improved on that is really a key part of the Monster Hunter experience.”
The first hard wall I hit in my playthrough was the Rathalos, a hulking Tyrannosaurus-like creature that far outclassed the power level of previous creatures I’d fought. While in a normal playthrough, I probably would’ve taken a little more time in getting to him, for this event I plowed through the normal story events and avoided most side missions. So my patchwork collection of armor and a so-so weapon meant that, if I got hit at just the wrong time, the Rathalos could completely knock me with one shot and I could do little to retaliate.
“What we imagine you should do is maybe go back and do a few more of the earlier quests and brush up your skills or check out your weapons and armor. Maybe you haven’t made the right ones yet or maybe you haven’t quite completed the set,” says Tsujimoto when I explain my trouble. “Maybe the monster–the one before the one that you’re stuck on–maybe [with] his armor set, you can complete it. It’s gonna give you the skill or the defense bonus to get through that quest that you were kind of hitting a wall with.”
And that was the case. After forming a hunting party of other journalists at the event playing through the same demo, we hunted down the creatures we needed to kill to collectively upgrade our armor. And then on our next encounter with the Rathalos, we completely destroyed it. For good measure, we went back and did it about six more times after that as well.
Being in a party was helpful, but it was just as important to get in the practice and the better equipment on easier enemies. Even if someone enters your gameplay session in the middle of a fight, the difficulty of that hunt will ramp up on the fly–however the devs told me the challenge doesn’t go back down if someone inadvertently leaves your hunt. Increased monster health is one factor in that difficulty, but there are other secret variables that adjust the difficulty of a quest the developers didn’t want to divulge. In multiplayer, it’s less that you can do more damage as a group, and more the value in having someone distract a monster while you run off to heal up or re-sharpen your weapon.
“Coming into this game, there were lots of things that we wanted to do, that we’ve always wanted to do,” Kaname Fujioka (the game’s executive director and art director) tells me. “To be honest, for the portable systems, there was a kind of sense of having to adapt our visions to what the software was capable of, and having to make concessions for that, for the hardware.” And a lot of what the team wanted to create were monsters that behave naturally. They wanted to make fantastical beasts that could actually exist in real life. And in Monster Hunter World, the amount of detail you can see on a creature makes it possible not just to find more clues about what your opponent is going to do and what attack they’re going to pull off next, but you have a good indicator of how well you’re doing. You can see the injuries, cuts, and broken sections of your prey more clearly than is possible on previous, less powerful systems.
All of these things help balance the game’s difficulty, making it feel fair even when you’ve misjudged your opponent and you’re getting slaughtered in battle. And games like Cuphead and Dark Souls show that players are eager for brutal, but fair challenges that reward practice and skill. However, there are other, even bigger questions that Monster Hunter World will need to answer as it approaches its launch on January 26. I played the game in, essentially, ideal settings–the online system worked perfectly because I was at the company headquarters with a full team able to troubleshoot any potential problems. From my relatively brief time with the game, playing solo is still fun and there’s a mystery-filled story to pull you along, but the combat is just more exciting with friends. It was easy to get a team together to play with, because I could just look across my table at every other available player. A vitally important question is: when Monster Hunter World launches, will it have the online stability to support its player base? With the game spread across different platforms, will players have a full online experience regardless of where they choose to play?
Those answers will only come when the game comes out, but the foundation is already there for an experience that builds on what makes Monster Hunter unique, while still evolving the franchise for a new audience.
Monster Hunter has experimented with many different modes and gameplay styles over the years, but one of the biggest changes only lasted for a single iteration: underwater hunting. Monster Hunter 3 (in its various iterations) allowed you to dive deep underwater for a different take on the game’s combat.
But why was that feature left out of later games, and is there a chance it could come back? During a recent Monster Hunter World preview trip to Capcom’s Osaka office, we talked with game director Kaname Fujioka about what happened to the series’ underwater adventures.
“We wanted to challenge ourselves to make underwater action in Tri because we had never been satisfied with how underwater sections worked in other games,” Fujioka said. “And we wanted to see if we could make underwater action that still feels like Monster Hunter action. We worked really hard on it, but for the amount of time and effort it takes to make underwater action work, we felt that in [Monster Hunter] World we’re better off focusing on other things. So, there are only a few parts where you’re gonna dive underwater, but there’s no main underwater action parts. As for what the future holds, I’ve got a really strong attachment to it. So I’d like to try it again someday, but I really can’t say.”
2017 has seen the rise of the loot box system enter AAA gaming in a big way. Most recently, Shadow of War implemented the purchasable items as a way to acquire Orcs and weapons, and EA addressed player concerns for the system in the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront II. But the major argument for the system tends to focus on players who don’t have hours to invest in a game to earn incremental rewards. In a way, loot boxes can potentially level the playing field
Monster Hunter World, like previous games in the series revolves around killing massive beasts over and over again and then carving them up for the chance to get rare parts to turn into new gear. So loot boxes seem like something Capcom could have considered as a way to give newcomers to the series more chances to get some of the rare loot that otherwise requires lots of luck and even more skill.
During a recent preview event, I asked Monster Hunter series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto whether his team ever considered adding loot boxes to Monster Hunter World. “I think that Monster Hunter has already built that kind of randomized, item reward into the gameplay,” he answered. “Whenever you carve a monster after a hunt, you don’t know what you’re gonna get within a certain range. You’ve got certain rare parts that you almost never get. You’ve got some of the ones you don’t need that you get a lot of. And then there are the rewards for the quest as well. There are some [rewards] that are standard, there are some that are randomized, and a bit bigger or smaller chance of getting them.”
He explained that it just felt like Monster Hunter World doesn’t need that kind of system. “You’ve already kind of got loot as a core gameplay aspect without having to shove a microtransaction version of it in,” Tsujimoto said.
The mechanics are, essentially, a part of the game, but what about saving a player’s time? “Our focus is on wanting to get people to play our action game and feel the kind of satisfaction that comes with the achievement you get with completing a hunt and getting rewards,” Tsujimoto said. “We want people to have the experience that we’ve made for them rather than the option to skip the experience.”
In a separate interview game director Yuuya Tokuda echoed that response. “I wouldn’t see a paid loot box or paid system for getting random items as fitting Monster Hunter because it isn’t a game where the strength of the items is the key aspect of how you proceed,” he said. “The idea is that the time you spend hunting and the action part of the game is how you brush up on your skills. And then of course you get rewards of better items; but by skipping out on the part where you get better and hunt–if you’re simply getting more items–I don’t think that’ll be a very satisfying experience for players because it wouldn’t even necessarily make it that much more of a time saver if you haven’t got the skill to use the items you’ve gotten.”
“I think the games that successfully do loot box systems are designed around them completely from the outside and they’re a core part of the gameplay loot,” added Monster Hunter World game director Kaname Fujioka. “Whereas as our loop, it’s more based on the gameplay action itself, then gathering items, then using that to create better gear, and then using that to go and do more action gameplay. We would have to fundamentally rethink our gameplay loop. When you’re including loot boxes you have to make them desirable to players and make them want to have them by introducing them in basic gameplay. And then that leads to further opportunities for purchasing to save time or get cooler items. And with our gameplay, we can’t just put them in there and have it work. We’d have to have a substantial re-think, which is not something we’re particularly planning to do at this time.”
EA CEO Andrew Wilson has commented on the closure of Visceral Games, and discussed the refocusing of its in-development Star Wars game.
Speaking on an EA earnings call (as transcribed by Seeking Alpha), Wilson was asked about the decision by a shareholder:
“Anytime you close a studio, it’s a very, very tough decision,” he replied, “and something that we take very seriously, and we spend a lot of time working through before we make such a decision. But it does happen from time to time as part of the creative process.”
Although DC’s cinematic universe has been hugely popular at the box office, it has been less kindly received by critics. Wonder Woman was a hit with both fans and reviewers, but the likes of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad were met with much criticism. Now, Superman star Henry Cavill has spoken about the state of the DC universe and admitted that “mistakes” have been made.
In an interview with The Rake, Cavill said that DC’s problems were more than just a comparison with superhero rivals Marvel. “Even if Marvel didn’t exist, we’d struggle,” he admitted. “There was a style [DC was] going for, an attempt to be different and look at things from a slightly different perspective, which hasn’t necessarily worked. Yes, it has made money, but it has not been a critical success; it hasn’t given everyone that sensation which superheroes should give the viewer.
“I feel like now the right mistakes have been made and they haven’t been pandered [to], and we can start telling the stories in the way they need to be told. It is even better to come back from a mistake or stylistic error into the correct vein because it will make it seem that much stronger. Wonder Woman was the first step in the right direction.”
Cavill’s comments follow those made recently by Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot, who expressed regret about the way her character’s back story was handled in Batman v Superman. In that movie, it is suggested that Wonder Woman is returning to fight evil after a long time away from mankind, which doesn’t really match up with the way the character is portrayed in the subsequent standalone movie.
“None of us knew exactly, exactly, the back story of Wonder Woman,” she said, via Comicbook.com. “And once they decided to shoot the solo movie for Wonder Woman and we started to dig in to understand the core of this character, we realized that, actually, there is no way that Wonder Woman would ever give up on mankind.
“Sometimes in a creative process, you establish something that is not necessarily the right decision, but then you can always correct it and change it. So Wonder Woman will always be there, as far as she’s concerned, for mankind.”
Despite being a no-show at E3 2017 and at this year’s Paris Games Week, Dreams is still in development.
In an interview with VG247, Sony’s senior vice president of worldwide studios, Michael Denny confirmed the game is still currently being worked on despite the studio sharing very little about its latest project for two years.
“It is still in development and it is still very, very exciting,” Denny said. “We’re big fans of everything Media Molecule has done and it’s so wonderful and it’s very much in development, very much still progressing and will very much be exciting when we next talk about it.”
