In an interview with Siliconera, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate producer Ryozo Tsujimoto opened up on the game’s Guild Quests. These are a series of new elements introduced in the franchise.
Tsujimoto said:
“The big difference is that the standard quests are a little rigid in their structure. You get a very specific task, and you go out and do that task—kill that monster and come right back. It feels a little bit like work in that sense.”
“What we wanted to do was have something a little lighter, where you can goof around a little bit. Maybe you don’t fulfil the objective you intended to, and just get some items or whatever and come back. It still feels like you did something. So it’s kind of a lighter affair, and this is where the Guild Quests come into play.”
“There’s an element of randomization to the Guild Quest system, where you’re not entirely sure what kind of map you’re going to get, and what’s going to be out there. Within this randomized system, there are maps we consider to be ‘good’ and maps that are ‘not so good,’ and you can actually exchange these back-and-forth with other players.”
“The way it works is that you’ve got these pre-determined [map] parts, and all that really changes in the randomization is how they’re connected together, since the Monster Hunter maps are always a big ‘master map’ with smaller ones within. When we talk about the idea of there being good or advantageous maps versus bad ones, the best kind that you’re really after is where, as soon as you leave your camp—boom—there’s a big monster for you to fight. There’s lots of elevation shifts so you can do jump attacks. That sort of thing.”
“Up until now, you could collect all the weapons in Monster Hunter, and once you’ve collected them all, you say, ‘Okay, now what? I’ve got all there is to get.’ No more. Because now there are randomly-generated parameters, so you will never truly have all of them, and there will always be something for you to get your hands on.”
In an interview with Eurogamer, Splatoon producer Hisashi Nogami opened up on the game’s origins. It started out as a prototype with an idea from programmer Shintaro Sato, who was attempting to create something new.
Nogami said:
“It’s something we do a lot of at EAD. We’re constantly making different prototypes with different game ideas to see what’s going to be good. One prototype that a programmer made was just this kind of idea of shooting ink on the ground, and doing a territory control game. We played it, thought it was really fun and maybe we can make a full game out of this.”
