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Cut To The Chase

September 6, 2019 by Tim

Me, when Monster Hunter tries to “story” at me.

I’m sure there are people out there that need the story in the game; that feel “we have to hunt them because reasons” amounts to the cohesive glue that ties the whole thing together. Not me. I have been a Monster Hunter for eleven years now, and the game’s story has always been my least favorite part. I’m there for one reason, and one reason only, and the flimsy plot constructed around the mechanics only serves to slow me down.

Just let me punch the monsters and wear their butt as a hat.


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Tonkin
Tonkin
5 years ago

That aptly describes about a half dozen friends of mine that play the game

foducool
foducool
5 years ago

reasons are : if you don’t hunt the whole village will starve and you have to kill the big bad monsters because they will kill other hunters
no need to make it more complicated than that lol

One
One
5 years ago

Monster hunter is like porn.
Nobody cares about story

Michael
Michael
5 years ago

Basically me in every single RPG I’ve ever played. I always just end up trying to make money. Every single one. Divinity 1 and 2, every single Fallout that I’ve played, every Mount and Blade, every Elder Scrolls game. You name it, if I’ve played it, all I do is try to do is become an in-game billionaire instead of actually trying to play the game.

Max Savage
Max Savage
5 years ago
Reply to  Michael

Well, they do make it ridiculously easy in most RPGs. Skyrim for example; I play the game for the game, but I always end up with tens of thousands of gold that I only ever spend on houses or materials, because I craft my own gear and loot everything worth at least ten gold per weight unit.

Jéquiyot
Jéquiyot
5 years ago

Normally I’m a story-driven gamer. Monster Hunter is my one exception. Give me a weapon and let me beat dinosaurs because it’s fun.

CRN
CRN
5 years ago

I must admit unfortunately that the monster hunter franchise is on my (saddenly growing) list of games I plan to play and never find time due to work, kids etc. so I do not really know the story.

But Tim, I think I remember that you once explained that WoW made a real difference to you once you read the quests rather than just slaughtering the mobs which were bothering somebody for an unknown reason. 🙂
What’s the difference with Monster Hunter? Are the stories just boring oder badly written or something like that?

CRN
CRN
5 years ago
Reply to  CRN

Ah ok, think by reading the other comments it seems to be a “Monster be bad, you hit monster dead, save village” type of story. Guess that explains the skipping to the bashing. XD

Bernie Margolis
Bernie Margolis
5 years ago
Reply to  CRN

Tim’s comics give me the distinct impression that I’m peering 15 years into my past, so I’m chiming in. For me, I chalk it up to getting older, more impatient, and jaded. I’m going through this issue right now because I recently took up FFXIV. My daughter accurately observed that I’m not even reading the quest text, and I get super annoyed with the many many cut scenes in the game. My daughter, on the other hand, plays almost exclusively for the cut scenes and story text. The fact is that I’ve seen and read most of these stories before… Read more »

Burning Batsu
Burning Batsu
5 years ago

With the recent announcement of SNES games finally being added to the Switch “Virtual Console” Library, it kind of makes me wonder if a Console Wars one-shot is on the horizon >_>

Eldest Gruff
Eldest Gruff
5 years ago
Reply to  Burning Batsu

Nah, probably not. I love Nintendo to death, but all that free SNES games does is make their weak $20/year online service worth the price of admission. Doesn’t give them a leg up against the competition or anything.

no thanks nintendo
no thanks nintendo
5 years ago
Reply to  Eldest Gruff

Eh, the SNES games don’t even do that for me. I have those games already on multiple platforms. I’m not interested in paying Nintendo $20 a year to rent them for Switch, especially with that awful overlay you can’t disable. And the online is just as laggy and unusable as it was when it was free. No way, Nintendo. I don’t care how low the price is, this is incredibly bad value for my money.

Merendel
Merendel
5 years ago
Reply to  Burning Batsu

I could see a CW strip revolving around reusing old ammunition. Not that thats particularly unique to any given console these days with all the remakes, remasters, reboots.

Skyblade
Skyblade
5 years ago
Reply to  Merendel

It does seem quite relevant following that Direct, though. As big of a Nintendo fan as I am, there were basically no new games shown there at all. I think the only one was the Kirby one, and even it was very similar to a prior 3DS title. Everything else was a remaster, port, or details on an already announced game. None of it bad, necessarily, but no new reveals, let alone big ones.

Kaitensatsuma
Kaitensatsuma
5 years ago

I mean I appreciate the attempts, the bit of urgency with Xeno was a nice touch.

A bit of a class up from “Murder Tigrex because he knocked you off a mountain, and that’s really about it”

jeadly
jeadly
5 years ago

Me in Just Cause 2: I’m blowing up all these fuel tanks cause it’s effing awesome!
Game: Great! That’s how we’re going to destabilize this authoritarian government.
Me: Oh, well that’s a happy coincidence. For the people, or something.

Merendel
Merendel
5 years ago
Reply to  jeadly

Thats pretty much the just cause franchise. Lets see, how artistic a boom can I create while creatively teathering things? Oh thank you for helping liberate us Rico. Ya ya, Viva la revolution, now sush, artist at work here.

Kaitensatsuma
Kaitensatsuma
5 years ago
Reply to  jeadly

“Can I please go faster than an arthritic walk on the ground though? I still need to occasionally shoot guards which also take a suspiciously large amount of bullets to kill, what am I shooting, nerf darts?”

*NO*

Nextgener
Nextgener
5 years ago

I liked the Witcher DLC, in how it managed to fix the major issue of Monster Hunter’s story as a whole. Focusing on the Character’s over the Monster’s. I know that Sound’s backwards, but it Worked. giving people actual character make’s them more appealing than just having them be nameless quest giver’s. (quite literately in this case)

HonoredMule
HonoredMule
5 years ago

This describes my interaction with just about every game. Words are just filler getting between me and gameplay.

And if you really want to turn me off, make it necessary for me to actually pay attention to the blah blah blah in order to know what to do or where to go. For extra credit, narrate the text–slowly.

Books make much better books.

Leon
Leon
5 years ago

Hehe, ‘whore’-frost……..

Admiral Casual
Admiral Casual
5 years ago

Honestly, FFXIV’s story is one of the stronger parts of the game. That’s not to say other parts of it are lacking either. It supports a number of exciting flavors of personal badassery and the crafting system is one of the most in-depth examples I’ve ever seen in a game.

Eldest Gruff
Eldest Gruff
5 years ago

This just does not compute for me.

I -would- be interested in Monster Hunter, and have considered picking it up and playing it so many times, especially as it’s often on sale. But it always sounds so boring, grinding over and over. I hate that.

And if I get it, and I suddenly ENJOY grinding over and over and over for nothing more than getting slightly better loot, to do MORE grinding, what then?

I mean, how do you look at yourself in the mirror after that?

The rAt
The rAt
5 years ago
Reply to  Tim

This sounds a bit like Breath of the Wild, post-shrines and Divine Beasts. It’s still a challenge to go out and kill Lyonels and other boss creatures to farm for armor materials, so I’ve had a lot of fun with what could have been annoying grinding. Ironically, what made that work, for me anyway, was the preceding story and mythology as baked into the quests and sub quests – along with the puzzle of the shrines and divine beasts, and the joy of sheer exploration. It sounds like Monster Hunter does not set out with some/several of these experiences in… Read more »

no thanks nintendo
no thanks nintendo
5 years ago
Reply to  Tim

Eh. Just because I can lose doesn’t save it from being any less of a dull monotonous grind for drops to me. That just makes it a dull, monotonous grind that I might have to start over. That makes me want to play it even less.

Different strokes for different folks and such.

Luc
Luc
5 years ago

Most of the time, yes, I care about story. But for the love of god the Monster Hunter World story was one of the worst stories I’ve ever had to suffer through. And to make things worse, you can’t even skip them (in case you wanted to restart a character, which I kinda did want to leading up to this expansion). If you pay attention to the story though, the game becomes almost incredibly sad haha. “Go kill those monsters” leads to “Hmm, the monsters seem really agitated, we better keep killing them”. After that “We’ve killed so much and… Read more »

Salmonman
Salmonman
5 years ago

When you press x to skip the conversation

Merendel
Merendel
5 years ago

Ok now you just gota do a bonus pane of that guy wearing literal monster meat pajama’s and a Rump hat.

Roborat
Roborat
5 years ago

And I am the opposite, I mainly play games that have strong stories, that is what interests me; which is why I played the crap out of Fallout 4 and recently Skyrim, and why I liked MMOs like Swtor and FF14. I am currently obsessed with Divinity OS 2, and Witcher III will be next. My one exception, because there isn’t much story, aside from what you make yourself, No Man’s Sky, playing it a lot again since the Beyond patch dropped. My son plays monster hunter, and I have watched him play it, and it doesn’t interest me. WOW… Read more »

ArdentSlacker
ArdentSlacker
5 years ago

Monster Hunter was ruined for me when I watched a guy fight the same thing a few times in a row… to kill it once. See, it ran off, hopped in a mud bath, and was taking a nap by the time he caught up with it.

And… I was like… “It ran away from this person to have a nap. I identify WAY more with the creature.”

MasterofBalance
MasterofBalance
3 years ago

This is me in most games. Like in Borderlands. Sure the “Vault” business is intriguing and mysterious, but at the end of the day I live for critical hits that send bits of enemy entrails flying into the sky.