Capcom head Kenji Oguro spoke with Very Gary Computing about the new spin-off Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, which he describes as “the JRPG the team always wanted to make.” It’s an interesting chinwag, not least for the way it maps the differences between expectations aimed at Capcom’s role-playing efforts and the older Final Fantasy series (short version: older fans are more set in their ways).
There’s also a fun segment where Oguro brings up the idea of a comparable Resident Evil spin-off. He envisions it as a sort of creature collector, like Monster Hunter Stories, but instead of collecting monsters, you heal them.
“From memory, I think Stories took the fundamental concept of the monster as a creature that you’re going to fight and kill, then flipped it on its head and said, the monster is now a creature that you’re going to befriend and develop a kinship with,” Oguro told the sitethrough a translator.
“If that’s the fundamental approach of a Stories game, flipping the script on basic enemy interaction, then I think a Resident Evil Stories game would probably be about… I don’t think you’ll ever befriend zombies per se, but you know, maybe you would take the approach of, ‘I want to find a way to cure these zombies, so these people who have been turned into monsters, and bring them back to human form.’
“I mean, you could almost end up going in a direction closer to Dead Rising in that sense,” he continued. “But you would try to take them and return them to normal or find a real-time way to develop a cure for them. But what kind of game would that be, and whether it would work or not, I don’t know. This is just in response to your request, this is how I would see the stories working, is taking a completely different angle on the same universe and developing the gameplay based on that.”
I’m writing this because Oguro’s remarks took me on an exciting mental journey. This journey began with contempt. Make zombies human again? This is bullshit worthy of the 1994 Edge Magazine, Oguro. But then I thought about it more and, well, I imagine an open world affair like Dead Rising where every T-Virus mutant must be cured and added to your party via some form of action-puzzle, in order to obtain the means to explore later areas.
To those worried about not being able to shoot these mutants, I say 1) Resident Evil doesn’t need to be a booming shooter – Requiem’s stealth segments are pretty compelling, for example. And 2) I’m sure Capcom could design any number of kinetic puzzle/healing mechanics that approximate the shooter experience, without perforating anyone’s decrepit gray matter beyond repair.
We haven’t reviewed Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, but Ed Thorn (RPS in Peace) gets along pretty well with the previous game. “The story is not going to leave you speechless, the world is rather bland, and it lacks in-depth design options,” he concluded. “But – and it’s a big but – combat is actually a lot of fun, and collecting monsters is a lot of fun. Plus, I love being able to ride my monstie into battle and pull off special moves that practically incapacitate monsters from orbit.”
