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What’s your favourite Monster Hunter monster? Depending on when you started playing the 20-year-old series, you’re probably going to have a different answer to that question. The oldest, most grizzled veterans of the series are going to have soft spots for the Khezus, the Diablos, the Fatalis. Later arrivals will reminisce fondly about the Nargacugas, the Royal Ludroths, the Mizutsune. Personally, I’m most fond of the Tetsucabra (I like frogs, OK?)
Monster Hunter Now, so far, has been something of a fan-service delight; there are monsters from (nearly) every corner of the Monster Hunter universe, so far. We’ve got latecomers like Magnamalo and Mizutsune rubbing shoulders with OGs like Rathalos and Rathian. You’ve got Diablos spawning in next to Pukei-Pukei. It’s a wonderful hodgepodge of fauna from the series at large, but with 46 creatures in the roster, there are a lot of notable absences.
“There are no monsters that are off the table,” Sakae Osumi, senior producer for Monster Hunter Now, tells me during an interview in the middle of the game’s first IRL event in Shibuya, Japan. “We’ve been introducing new monsters, as well as variants, for the past year, and we’ve also started introducing Elder dragons, lately, too.”
“This summer was extremely hot,” grins Kei Kawai, Niantic’s chief product officer, as he adds on to what Osumi is saying. “So it was kind-of fitting to see that Teostra – the Elder Dragon surrounded by fire! – added to the game for this season. We always see that there’s some sort of ‘real world’ situation for the choice of monster we choose to add.”
“That’s a great hint for what’s next,” replies Osumi, seemingly quite shocked.
“I’m not hinting at anything,” says Kawai, laughing.
The exchange gets me thinking… Does that mean, in an assumedly cold winter, we’re going to see some more Ice monsters arrive in the game? Perhaps we’ll see Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak debutant, Lunagaron, added to the game to follow on from Magnamalo. Perhaps we’ll see everyone’s favourite horrible yeti bastard, Goss Harag, make an appearance. Hey, who knows, maybe we’ll even see Velkhana arrive as an Elder Dragon Interception – it’d make sense, right? And nothing is ‘off the table,’ so…
Monster Hunter Now has only been online for just over a year, and already we’ve seen the roster swell from 14 monsters to 46. That’s over triple the base number, for anyone keeping count. Sure, some are variants (as of the Shibuya Carnival, we’ve now got three different versions of both Rathian and Rathalos for example), but given the variants behave differently and feed into unique armour, I still categorise them as their own, unique monsters.
But it was with the introduction of the Elder Dragons that the playerbase really started to realise the scope of this game. The Elder Dragons, which can be fought in longer – and, usually, more difficult – fights than their lesser siblings, only began arriving in summer 2024. And, already, we’ve seen three Elder Dragonsget added to the title; Kushula Daora, Teostra, and the event-exclusive Nergigante (which is a super fun fight, by the way).
“The Elder Dragons are more important to the story and how they work in the universe of Monster Hunter,” continues Osumi. “So we want to be really careful in terms of how we select the timing to add them.”
He continues to note that because the Elder Dragon fights are so big, and usually require a tweaking of the central Monster Hunter Now gimmick to properly fit into the mobile app, there’s an implementation challenge when it comes to these fights. But Niantic is examining how it’ll get some of the more unusual fights in the game – the answers were vague, but I’m thinking of the Dah’ren Mohran fight from Gen 4, where you need to be in a moving sand-boat. Or the Zorah Magdaros fight in World which is basically you versus a living mountain.
“There’s a different goal in bringing the gigantic monsters to the game,” concludes Osumi, “and we’re still trying to figure that out. So, we’ll see how it ends up!”
Colour me excited. The game just keeps getting better, and more monster variety simply means more to enjoy. And if we finally get a Tetsucabra in there, then, well, you can expect me to never take off that silly armour.
Monster Hunter Now is available on iOS and Android. This interview was conducted during Monster Hunter Now Carnival Shibuya in Tokyo, and travel and accommodation was paid for by Niantic.