The 3DS version of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate won’t have online play. To make up for that, the development team implemented save transfer functionality with the Wii U game. Three 3DS players and a Wii U player will be able to experience the title together through local Wi-Fi.
Monster Hunter chief Ryozo Tsujimoto told Eurogamer:
“We wanted people to play together. We know there are some people who want to play online. Unfortunately with the 3DS version you can’t do that. But we have made this feature so you can play together. You can have your friends bring their save data to your house and have a Monster Hunter party. One person will play on the big screen and three other people will play with their 3DS versions. People can continue their save data from what they had before and go back home and update their data on their Wii U.”
As for why the 3DS version doesn’t have online play, Tsujimoto explained:
“To put it frankly, when we were developing the game we were looking into it but there were some places we were unsure about. We didn’t have the correct techniques to get it to work. We decided we probably shouldn’t release something that didn’t work well. We didn’t want to lower the quality of the game.”
Tsujimoto was able to share a few details as to how Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate’s online will work on Wii U. It will support text chat, possibly video chat, a friends list, and a search function to find other hunters.
“With internet play you can play with other hunters online. In terms of new features, we have text chat in the game. Right now we’re looking into voice chat and seeing how we can get that to work, but it hasn’t been 100 per cent confirmed. In the game we have a friends list. So if you have your friends you know personally, you can add them to that list. That makes it very easy to jump to wherever they’re playing. If you want to find other players there is a search function you can use. Once you get four hunters connected together you’ll automatically go off on a quest. We’re trying to make an online experience that’s extremely stress-free and easy to use for the players.”
Capcom hopes that Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate will lead to a rise in popularity of the series overseas. In addition to making the 3DS and Wii U versions available together on the same day, Ultimate’s localization time is the shortest for any title in the series thus far.
In the end though, Capcom won’t be changing Monster Hunter in any big ways just to make the IP more appealing to western games. The team wants to maintain the essence of the series, but is willing to make a few small modifications/additions, such as the new Target camera.
“We know there are a lot of people overseas who have made their own Monster Hunter communities. We know there are a lot of people who are huge fans of the series overseas. We want to make products to continue to build that fan base. We know it’s a fantastic game and an interesting game for overseas users. So we think if we continue working on the game, it’ll eventually start to break out. We don’t want to segregate the two groups, like Japan and overseas. We view them as one group. The most important thing for us is we keep the essence of Monster at its core. We want to make sure everyone knows this is what Monster Hunter is all about. We do get opinions and feedback from people from all over the world, not only in Japan, but also America and Europe and other countries. We take that all into account when we’re developing our games. That’s one of the reasons why we have this new feature called the Target Camera. We got a lot of feedback from fans, and they said one of the most difficult things about playing Monster Hunter is controlling the camera. So we added the Target Cam to the game so with the press of a button you can focus on one of the monsters you’re fighting against. You don’t have to spend all this time pressing the d-pad just to focus on a monster. You can just do a simple button press and you’re done. Those are the kinds of changes we want to make. They might be little changes, but they can turn out to be very significant as well.”
Finally, Tsujimoto addressed the reasoning to make Monster Hunter 4 for the 3DS:
“When we were developing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the 3DS, it was an experiment. It was new hardware for us. We didn’t know the capabilities of the hardware. But as a portable system it was very unique to work with. It has two screens and 3D capabilities. To us as developers, we want to challenge ourselves to make something that is very good on that system. So after we made Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on 3DS, we were able to analyse what we did on that game. We realised it was quite easy to develop for. That was the reason why we continued with Monster Hunter 4 on 3DS.”
