Monster Hunter Rise is a game that has surprised many with its spectacular technical performance on Nintendo Switch, which has undoubtedly been, at least in part, responsible for the success that this game has already achieved on the hybrid console.
In a recent meeting with Nintendo Life, the director of Monster Hunter Rise, Yasunori Ichinose, spoke about precisely this aspect and how they achieved such extraordinary performance on Nintendo Switch thanks to Capcom’s RE Engine. Here’s what he had to say:
Nintendo Life: What was the main technical reason for using RE Engine for Monster Hunter Rise on Nintendo Switch?
Yasunori Ichinose: The main technical reason is that we can use RE Engine’s powerful C# scripting system, not to mention RE Engine’s latest graphical features (hardware specs permitting). In MT FRAMEWORK, all game logic was implemented in C++, so compile time was an issue; in RE Engine, game logic is implemented in C#, so compile time can be reduced considerably (approximately 10 seconds, which would take 100 times longer in C++). This allows for quick trial and error iterations to make the game more interesting. It is not directly visible, but it is a very important part of development and I think it indirectly contributes to the fun of the game.
[…] Thanks to this, in Monster Hunter Rise, you can now perform highly flexible actions such as wall running and using the Cablebug. You can also quickly wander through the countryside while riding a new friendly character called Palamute, which works very well with the perfect environment.
In the meeting, he also spoke about whether Monster Hunter World helped them in the development of Rise:
Yasunori Ichinose: As for the animation work, we started by making sure that the data from Monster Hunter World could be transferred. Modifying and reducing the chain and auxiliary joints was a task that required more work from the modellers and programmers. In addition to the attacks and moves from Monster Hunter World, the “Wyvern mount” was added as a new feature in Monster Hunter Rise, so the amount of moves we needed to create increased considerably. The time it took to create attacks, moves and techniques was high, and since Wyvern mount moves were also added, the enemy animation team had a hard time due to the large volume of material, creation time and post-incorporation checks.