Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is on the way soon, giving the iconic Capcom franchise another major opportunity to take off in the West. Though it's a sales phenomenon in Japan, it's struggled to create the same level of success elsewhere in the world.
Will Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate change that? Time will tell, but with an increasing 3DS userbase and a relatively clear run in terms of the release schedule it has a chance to appeal to committed gamers. Localisation is clearly key to that, and there's an interesting post over on Capcom Unity that outlines some of the thought processes and decision making.
Take the opening segment and quests, for example, which serve as tutorials on how to play the game. The localisation team was keen to make a notable change in order to speed up the whole process, in a debate with the development team in Japan that focused on the differing audiences for alternative regions. It was all about a message that consistently appears - in Japan - after key instructions.
If you can't read Japanese, this message translates to "Do you want to hear that again?", and automatically appears after every tutorial message. The cursor also defaults to Yes, so if you're mashing buttons to get through the tutorial, you can accidentally select Yes and you're sent through the entire thing again.
This was one of the first issues I brought to the Monster Hunter team, because I felt Western gamers wouldn't respond well to it. After the director, Fujioka-san, explained their reasoning, I understood why they had made this decision. During the development of Monster Hunter 4, the team was directed to aim for a younger audience because the Nintendo 3DS' market is younger than other platforms. To make sure the younger kids knew what do to, they added that question at the end of each tutorial just to be safe.
Overseas, the audience for Monster Hunter is older and more experienced with games, so they typically don't need to read things twice to get the gist. With that in mind, we asked the team if we could remove that from our version of the game and they agreed. Woohoo! Victory #1! We also were able to naturally cut down on the tutorial length through shorter, but still entertaining dialogue – and no, we didn't cut out anything from the tutorials – which means you can get back to the action a lot faster.
Further examples are given for locales and specific monsters, showing some cases where names were changed and others where - after discussion - the original Japanese was retained. It's well worth reading the full article to appreciate the work that goes into these localisations.
Are you looking forward to Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, and are you one of those most dedicated fans that'll insist on using the original Japanese names for every monster? Let us know.
[source capcom-unity.com]
Comments 31
looks good
Are they trying to tell me that the target audience for MH4 in Japan ISN'T teens and young adults? Get out. Few months ago you had Iwata making comments about the reason that Pokemon ORAS sold so well is because it connected well with 13-25 year olds. Now you have Capcom trying to tell people that Monster Hunter is for kids.
I just started playing MH3U on my Wii U over the weekend. Hopefully, I could catch up to at least 200 hours of gameplay before MH4U!
I hope we get that special demo soon.
@Tsurii897
How are they idiots by shortening the tutorials? It's not catering. Catering would be things like on purposely adding an American flag costume and double cheeseburger item while also dressing up in Mountain Dew and Doritos
Well if the tutorials are short, I can get Monster Hunting even faster! Can't wait for MH4U especially now that online is in the 3DS version. Atleast I won't have to struggle to complete all G rank quests and get to HR 80 all by myself again
Plus I hope to get the demo soon, hear that it has local play. Would be useful to entice my currently uninterested friends to the franchise.
It's a basic usability design decision to make sure the "you wanna hear that again" default to no. Remember ocarina of time?
As great as these guys are in intricate gameplay balances is as bad as they are in usability in interfaces. The menu, the send all to item box, the 5 taps to get online... I love the games though - they are brilliant
I'm so excited for MH4!! I could care less about the original names. I can't believe people actually whine about that. Gimme a release date and that'll be one copy downloaded by me.
@JasonAnArgoNOT64 It's catering to no one by trying to cater to everyone.
I'm an experienced player? Just throw me into the action already!
I'm someone who hasn't played any of these games yet? Maybe I should really get into that detailed tutorial.
They may be trying to nab the people who haven't played in a while, though.
@Undead_terror I'm going to guess right after the direct. I've been on a roll lately and been right about everything. Still I have to be wrong some time right?!
@TheWPCTraveler in some ways the tutorial did need fixing as some ppl who were new to MH lost intrest (specialy the mushroom Q and Gold fishing.. lol) im just glad Text is readable in the games past the 1st on PS2 and the remake/updated ver on PSP (Iv played all MH games releced in the UK most from relece date only one i didnt get on relece was MH Freedom 1 as I didnt have a PSP at its relece lol it made me get one thogh lol) -and yes some of the re-skin monsters were veriy un inspired Im glad thay fixed that in MH3U (only one I notest a real difrnce betwene the colour veriants) ovrall dosnt bother me i just love Monster Hunter lol -side note id love to see Low Shang Lung - Shin Go Ren and Umbrico (althow i think he is in MH4) Retern allong with the amount of Elder Deagons we saw in MH Freedom Unite.
I think that changing the demo to be a couple of tutorial quest and a large monster would draw more people to the awesomeness that is Monster Hunter.
I`am only interested the wii u version.
@Tsurii897 Very very good points there.
The "Woohoo! Victory #1!" was enough for me to realize, that its not about making the game better, but to push through THEIR vision of the game.
If anything, there should be a checkbox during character creation that disables any tutorial flavour text regarding standard mechanics and leave the new stuff in untouched.
If people have a problem with "want to hear that again?" there might be bigger issues than a curser defaulting on "yes"
Maybe your audience youre catering to "rofl lolz, that cat looks like that blue robot guy roflmao" might not be up to par anyways.
Monster Hunter requires one specific atribute more than anything else: patience.
If a handfull of flavour text textboxes ticks you off, get a different game.
@Taikasieni There is no WiiU version
Just waiting for that preorder to ship out...
@LasermasterA : I went to HR 100 by myself to open the last quest. It was a long ride, but I enjoyd it.
Can't wait but the issue here is.... In Japan they play this type of game on handhelds (apparently kids) but in the west USA & UK we play this type of game on a tv based system aka wii u and yes we are adults, and teens!
CAPCOM YOU NEED TO RELEASE IN THE WEST ON A CONSOLE!
@Falk_Sturmfels
Yea it is pretty long. I managed to get my hands on the Wii U version of the game for a bit of local play with my sister and online play but now that I am back at university, I have only the 3DS version at hand. Trying to get to HR 100, at 89 now. 999 would be an absolute pain for one to achieve solo.
Trying to solo Alatreon solo as well as some other event quests. Thank goodness MH4U has online otherwise would have taken 100s of hours again. This time I can spend that time killing tons of monsters online
The only experience west audience has is with mashing the buttons when text pop up >.>
I bet users in this site, as me, are not like that, but lots of players just skip everything and want to get straight to the action, even if that means to complain later that they don't know what to do. I know that for those people a tutorial with a "yes" as default option is bad, but I'm not sure if removing such feature will help such audience ^_^;
@Spoony_Tech Well a leak said that the demo would be releases tomorrow so maybe.
@Undead_terror I've yet yo go over on any of my demos uses so it's no big deal to me. As long as it's not 5 I'll be ok otherwise I just put my system into sleep mode all the time and never close the game.
@BakaKnight I tell my son all the time to get the most out of a game you need to read what it's telling you. Now he's only 7 but he's getting to the point where he can read a bit better. I also told him if you get better at reading I have a whole bunch more games you can play. If that's not motivation I don't know what is lol.
@Lord I think MonHun has become sort of like Pokemon in which they enjoy that the community can meet up locally and play together at events like Expos and things.
@Tsurii897 I don't think removing the default option to "listen again" is dumbing anything down. It's just fixing a stupid an unnecessary design choice.
Guys...they said they shorted the tutorial dialogue - they made the wording snappier without actually cutting any actual lessons - and they changed the default option for rereading the text from "yes" to "no", meaning that those who already know the game can get to the action quicker. If you're actually reading the text, you're probably not mashing the A Button. Seriously, if you read that and thought "this is stupid!", then...you're probably the type of person the Japanese Monster Hunter Team thought of when they decided "children have poor reading comprehension"...even though I don't think I even needed to reread the text in Pokemon once when I was 6, and I had poor reading comprehension until I was 16...
And before you say "but they should've added an option to-" that's not the issue. The tutorial is actually part of the story. Remember Monster Hunter 3? Remember how the "tutoriqal" set up the premise and established the characters you'd be meeting throughout the game? It's a bit like that. IIRC, a little faster, but still...how many other games have you encoutered where the "first chapter" is optional?
Oh, and @Einherjar ...patience is very selective. I have plenty of patience for learning new things, like timing my slashes when fighting a dinosaur. I can deal with that. I have no patience for being told things I already know, especially if its the 3rd, 4th, 5th time I've been told it. In fact, who is this person who can handle sitting through a lesson and given absolutely no new information whatsoever? Who is this person of unfathomable patience who can handle the zillionth time they've been told something when they just want to actually do that thing, of which they already know how to do, such that they should probably be the ones giving the lesson? I have never met this person. I've seen teachers, whose job it is to give the same lessons over and over again, get sick of being told the same crap repeatedly. I'm not sure this person you're talking about exists, but if he does, I would love to meet this saint among men.
@CanisWolfred Well, youre talking to this "saint among men" at the moment.
Your bloated words and ridiculous attitude aside, i have absolutely no problem having a game teach me the ropes.
If im in a hurry, i simply skip through textboxes. Whats the big deal ?
And believe it or not, with a game library that probably cracked the 10000 mark, and not being the person to never play a game again because its old, i tend to mix up and / or forget certain details about games.
Having a summary of "how-tos" in a game is pretty welcome.
And again, why not make it optional ? Whats the problem with "skipping the first act" if youre not going to read the games dialogue anyways ?
Give the player the option of working his way through the tutorial chaper or do a certain arena match. If he beats it, its established that he knows the ropes and thus, is able to skip the preachy stuff.
No Wii U more than likely no sale for me.. I really love it on the big screen and the added cross transfer was really cool.. will be really disappointed if this doesn't come to Wii U!!!
My favorite thing about MH4 coming to the West is that once it launches, MH3U for 3DS will be dirt cheap and I can finally try it without feeling like I'm taking a risk. My track record with RPG's (especially ARPG's) is pretty haphazard as to what sticks and what barely lasts a weekend before I get bored.
@Einherjar Because the tutorial is worked into the story of the game. You can't just skip that. It wouldn't make sense to. But adding a little option that probably required changing two lines of code to make those parts where people might already know what's going on more bearable? That makes sense.
As for the "saint" part, I don't think you understood what I was talking about, but I just can't give a damn anymore.
@CanisWolfred Im kinda glad that you cant give a damn about it, as your speachs are pretty unbearable and shallow.
Again, if your eimpatient enough not to care about a tutorial chapter, you also dont care about a completely irrelevant story.
Thus, skipping the whole thing is far from "not making sense".
There are quite a lot of people from teh "i just want to play already" camp out there.
But a butchered, abridged tutorial wont help anyone. Either all, or nothing.
@Einherjar That is a very black and white ideology. We're done here. Nothing could be gained by bashing our heads against a brick wall, no matter how thick those heads may be...
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