With the launch of Monster Hunter World next week, and it's first review score being almost perfect. Many fans of the franchise are likely optimistic about the forthcoming action-RPG’s launch. The game is on track to release with almost everything needed to make for a nearly flawless experience. In a recent interview the title’s directors Kaname Fujioka and Yuya Tokuda recently revealed that if they lived in an ideal world, they would bring more to the game to make it even better, including the addition of World of Warcraft‘s Arsus and Arthas the Lich King as characters.
During the interview Fujioka and Tokuda discussed how some Horizon Zero Dawn collaborative content came to be as DLC for Monster Hunter World on PS4, which led to the two being asked what characters from other properties they would like to add in their perfect “dream world” scenario. After a short discussion with their translator, the directors’ statement on the matter was shared, as they said, “We would love to see Arsus from World of Warcraft and the Lich King from The Wrath of the Lich King. But that’s just a personal opinion, don’t take it as a confirmation. We just love the characters.”
While on the subject of crossover materials, Fujioka and Tokuda were then asked if they would ever consider adding monsters from other franchises to Monster Hunter World in an added bid of collaborative creativity. According to the directors, such a notion likely won’t occur, as it doesn’t really fit into the ethos of the role-playing series due to the creatures created for the Monster Hunter franchise such as Nergigante being the “unique” aspects of the games.
“We don’t really consider that idea because the monsters are the unique part of Monster Hunter. The ones we create and spend a lot of time working on are the ones we want you to enjoy hunting. The fact is as well that it takes a long time to work behind the scenes on collaboration content up until we can finally announce it. Given the amount of time it takes to create a monster and make it fit into the game and make it work in terms of action gameplay with all the weapons and bows, it is not realistic to consider such a long timeframe for collaboration content. It would be great if we could someday but it’s not realistic at the moment.”
With all of that fresh in the mind, while World of Warcraft assets or beasts from other brands likely won’t be added into Monster Hunter World any time soon, it’s great to see directors like Fujioka and Tokuda expressing their love for other developers’ work, Monster Hunter World already has some interesting crossover materials planned with Capcom bringing Mega Man content to the game.
Monster Hunter: World comes to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 26th, 2018 with free content updates starting this Spring.