Nintendo kicked off its third-party showcase today with the reveal of a big new Monster Hunter game from Capcom coming to the Nintendo Switch. It’s called Monster Hunter Rise.
A trailer showed off classic Monster Hunter battling with giant swords, lots of thrashing of huge creatures and a hunt for a big beast called Magnamalo.
Release date: March 26, 2021.
During an extended online presentation of the game, Capcom developers explained that the “Rise” in the title is meant to refer to the verticality allowed in the adventure, noting how the characters in the game were running up walls and using a grappling tether that’s associated with an item called the Wirebug.
The Wirebug tether can also be used in combat, as a grappling hook that can pull the player’s character toward a monster to better slice it up.
Hunts will occur in seamless locations, the developers noted, as opposed to the segmented worlds of classic Monster Hunter games.
There will even be Amiibo.
But wait!
After Rise was announced, Capcom and Nintendo revealed another game in the franchise: Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin. Slated for Summer 2021. The original Monster Hunter Stories was released for the 3DS in 2016 in Japan, 2017 elsewhere. It was more of a traditional RPG and had some fun Zelda tie-ins.
In a short showcase for Stories 2, Capcom developers didn’t have much more to share other than to confirm that it’s a role-playing game and will include monsters going along on the adventure with your player character.
Both of today’s newly-announced games will connect to each other in some ways. There were scant details about what that entails.