Monster Hunter Wilds could’ve been a completely different game if Monster Hunter producer Ryozo Tsujimoto had his way. In a recently unearthed interview with Japanese media Game Watch, Tsujimoto recalled that he tried to recruit Final Fantasy MMO FF14 director Naoki Yoshida. Right before the online game clawed its way back from financial disaster with the A Realm Reborn update.
The story actually goes back to 2010; it was not long after Yoshida was announced as the new director of FF14. Ryozo Tsujimoto spotted him at an event and yelled, “I saw the announcement, what were you thinking? I wanted you to make Monster Hunter!” Yoshida then added, Tsujimoto basically told him that if A Realm Reborn doesn’t work out, he’s free to work for Capcom.
“If FF14 fails, come and make Monster Hunter. If it succeeds, bring that success with you and come make Monster Hunter,” retell Yoshida. “You’ll do anything to get things back on track, so if you can lend Monster Hunter that kind of strength, just let me know.” I don’t think you can get that kind of job offer just by handing out CVs on LinkedIn.
It’s not surprising that Tsujimoto had an eye on Yoshida as Yoshi-P had quite an experience on online games even long before FF14‘s rebirth. Back at Hudson, he pitched three separate online projects. Pre–Square Enix merger, he teamed up with NieR Replicant producer Yosuke Saito on a Diablo-style online PC RPG. Then he worked on a cancelled asymmetric multiplayer project with FF Tactics art director Hiroshi Minagawa.
Of course, as history shows, Yoshida stuck with the troubled MMO and somehow turned it around into Square Enix’s biggest moneymaker. Meanwhile, Tsujimoto and his team forged ahead with Monster Hunter World, which also would go on to be the series’ biggest hit. Yoshida, humbled by that comment, simply said that it became a driving force as he took on the challenge to helm FF14.
Nevertheless, the two producers stayed close. They bond over PSP hunts, trading war stories about impossible deadlines, and joking about which studio could make the ‘craziest’ crossover. It seems that talk is what eventually birthed the World and FF14 crossovers in 2018; where Behemoth comes into Astera and Rathalos into Eorzea.
It wasn’t just a simple content swap, either. Both developers gave each other full access to models, animations, and even shaders to make the monsters feel ‘canon’ in both universes.
Now, both Monster Hunter and FF14 teams are preparing for another big crossover event for Wilds. Speaking with Techradar, Wilds director Yuya Tokuda and executive director Kaname Fujioka admitted the idea came when they were drinking with Yoshida during Gamescom 2017. The name ‘Omega’ came up because they were cooking up stories about new worlds with unknown civilizations for Wilds.
The version coming to Wilds isn’t the FFXIV‘s original Omega, though; it has the same body but a different brain. Hence the name ‘Omega Planetes,’ from the Greek planētēs or ‘wanderer.’
Looking back, it’s wild to imagine what a Yoshida-directed Monster Hunter could have been. An actual game where 100 people can run around freely in hunting areas, complete with MMO-style raid quests? Something similar to the Chinese-exclusive Monster Hunter Online? What do you think?
