Adding new weapon types to Monster Hunter is "very difficult", says Wilds director

rockpapershotgun.com:

Monster Hunter Wilds adds various new tinctures of wyvern, toad monster and arachnid to the fantasy creature chopper's vaunted eco-stew, but that additional variety isn't quite apparent from the weapon types. They're fancier-looking with tweaked or expanded movesets, but it's a familiar line-up beneath the extra layers of flesh and metal. I recognise most from my ancient PSP copy of Monster Hunter Freedom 2, released in 2007.

Capcom have thrown in a few novelties such as Monster Hunter 4's Insect Glaive over the intervening years, but according to Wilds director Yuya Tokuda, the developers currently feel it's more important to trick out and rebalance the existing wargear than give you entire new ways to play.

"When we start development of games such as World and, recently, Wilds, we always consider whether or not this is the time to add another weapon type," Tokuda told PCGamesN via translator in a recent interview. "It's not off the table for any particular reason, it's just that we never really decided that we wanted to for the recent titles."

The game's current arsenal includes 14 categories of large animal evisceration, from the relatively fool-proof Greatsword to the fussier Hunting Horn, aka Magic Murder Trumpet. It's tricky, Tokuda said, to envisage "a 15th weapon that would actually have a place in that lineup and feel equally as valid as the other weapon types while also not overlapping with them too much."

"It's a very difficult thing," he went on. "With each title we always adjust all the weapon types and maybe bring new concepts to them and their relationships with each other to make them feel fresh. We also bring new depth with new combos and moves. The resources and time that it takes to do that is something that, in every case since the last weapon was added, we've always decided were better spent bringing the whole lineup to a better place than to simply start adding another new one in."

In the case of Wilds, Capcom have also had to wrangle