How Omega Force expanded the monster hunting genre with Wild Hearts

Then the developers of Koei decided to make Tecmo and Omega Force Wild heartIn 2018, they felt there was still room in the monster hunting genre besides Monster Hunter.

And so they set out to create a triple-A title that took the genre in a new direction. And now Wild Hearts is going to put their theories about the market to the test.

The developers built a new world called Azuma, a place similar to feudal Japan, except it’s fierce kemonoh, or monsters that combine nature and animals. Azuma has expansive environments, although it’s not quite a full open world with a huge continuous map.

The game features giant monsters fighting in four different environments that reflect the seasons of the year. This Kemono includes the volcanic body lavaback and a wide variety of others. There is also a lot of tinkering in Wild Hearts carakuriwhich resemble giant wooden cabinets that players can use to capture, trick, or protect the creatures.

You can make a giant hammer that can hammer a Kemono, or make a rolling wheel that will let you run circles around the monster. Players can also simply build platforms to jump from and small Kemono with a deadly katana or other types of weapons.

The solo or three-player co-op game will debut as an EA Originals title on February 7 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the EA App, Steam, and Epic Games Store. I spoke to Omega Force game directors Kotaro Hirata and Takuto Edagawa through a translator.

Omega Force is a division of Koei Tecmo in Japan and EA will publish the title under the EA Originals label.

Here is an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: What did you think of the comparisons people have made to Monster Hunter and how this is different? One observation some people have already made is that it’s easier to start Wild Hearts and get familiar with it. It’s easier to get on board and start the game. But what are the differences with Monster Hunter in general?

Kotarō Hirata: You talked about the starting point here being a little easier when you get started. When we were developing this hunting action game, we wanted to make it possible for as many players around the world to enjoy it. That’s why we’ve made getting started easier. We were very conscious of making it as intuitive as possible to play. When you perform any of the actions here – sprinting, jumping, grabbing, sliding – you can easily learn how to do it with your controller. We wanted it to be something that could appeal to any action game fan.

How does it differ from Monster Hunter from there? The craft system we’ve included here, the karakuri system, makes a huge difference. You use the karakuri system to defeat the kemono. That kind of crafting system incorporated into a game is something that’s still pretty rare in the hunting action genre, or action games in general. While you’re battling it out, you may suddenly have an idea that pops into your mind. “Maybe I can use this.” You can include the additional karakuri features in the attacks you perform. Being able to do that is quite addictive, actually, once you learn how to do it.

Takuto Edogawa: A feature of the game here, something that we take very seriously, is the idea of ​​change. Many hunting games have you going back to the same places to fight the same monsters again. There is some repetition in the hunting genre. We wanted to make sure you don’t always go back to the same situation. When you go into battle in Wild Hearts and build karakuri in different areas, you’ll see those karakuri stay in place. You have all these extra features left in the field. Also, due to natural evolution, the kemono always change and change the longer they live in the field. When you go back to a certain stage or area, it won’t always be the same place you saw before. There is always that constant change.

GamesBeat: The karakuri, is that referring to the large wooden cabinets that appear in front of you? It seemed like it gave you shelter, but at the same time set a trap for the monsters. I didn’t quite understand from what I saw.

Hirata: It is something the player can voluntarily create within the field. The whole crafting aspect, the whole repertoire of all crafting is called karakuri. It’s a very all-encompassing thing. The player can build a wall, traps, or cannons. There are many different components that go into it and there are many different things you can build with it. The system as a whole is called karakuri.

GamesBeat: Sounds like this caters to different player styles. There are probably some players who like to set traps, and then there are others who might use more aggressive weapons to fight the enemy. Where did that idea come from, that you wanted to give players those different options to use with the karakuri system?

Hirata: When creating a hunting action game, we had to come up with a core system that players can use when performing their actions. There was a lot of trial and error for us to decide what tools to give to players for the hunt. Where we got a hint from: With a hunting action game, there’s obviously a heavy focus on combat and the actual fight scenes, but it’s not just that. There are also times when players go exploring, or where they prepare their weapons for the next battle. When you think about hunting, it has multiple aspects. We wanted to make sure we incorporated things that players could do at all these different stages, which is where the crafting system would work here. That is why we have taken the direction we have taken with the karakuri system.

GamesBeat: How did you approach building Azuma’s world? How big did you want it? How is it revealed to the player?

Edogawa: We wanted to make sure that the user goes into Azuma’s world and feels like it’s a believable experience for them. Yes, it’s a fictional location, but at the same time we wanted to make it feel real. We looked back at Japan’s history and made sure that this world was built around things that actually happened. To integrate more of the “Japanese” stuff, we wanted to make sure that Japanese culture was reflected in the world as well.

We thought it would be difficult to integrate that into a hunting game, which is where the various artifacts come into play. You will see here various artifacts of Japanese culture embedded all over the world. Much of that has been swallowed up by the kemono and what they’ve done to the environment by swallowing those Japanese artifacts. But you see and feel it everywhere.

When it comes to the scale and how big the world is, it’s not completely seamless. There are four different areas that we have here. Each reflects a season in Japan: autumn, winter, spring and summer. But each stage, each area, is quite large in itself. With the karakuri you can also explore even further. Players will likely find each area a fairly large space to explore.

GamesBeat: How would you describe the development process?

Edogawa: It all comes back to where we started, designing the kemono battles and the combat system we incorporated. Everything is designed and built around those battles. That was the basis of everything. However, something that is different for us for this game was that we partnered with Electronic Arts. Throughout the development process, EA regularly hosted large-scale user reviews, where users played the game and gave their feedback. We received a lot of feedback from a global perspective, which led to many improvements that we were able to make. I think we have been able to come up with a very high quality product because of this.

GamesBeat: Was there anything that convinced you that the hunting genre was big, with room for more than one game?

Edogawa: You are correct that there is essentially one strong player. It makes you wonder: can it even be called an entire genre if you only have one huge game? Maybe it’s just a feeling we had here, but we felt that players couldn’t stay and stay attracted to only one thing. When you talk about hunting games where you’re fighting these big kemono, big monsters and stuff, going through the fighting experiences with them and growing, I felt there were more angles to explore, that we could look at this from different directions. It was just a matter of figuring out which angle suited us best. That’s the part that we spent a lot of time on, especially at the beginning of development, to make sure it was different enough that people would think, “Yeah, there’s more than one way to play these kinds of games. to play.”

GamesBeat: The side missions that take place, can you describe them a bit more? How much of that is in the game and what sorts of things do you do during those side missions?

Edogawa: We have several side missions available here. With the main storyline, we really focused on the kemono. We look at how they have impacted society or the world at large. But we have the city of Minato where all the people in the story live. We don’t pay much attention to the city or those people in the main story – what they think and what they do. That’s what we’re left with for the side missions.

GamesBeat: How about how much skill players need to be successful in the game? How forgiving or unforgiving did you want the game to be when it comes to having that skill?

Hirata: We talked in the beginning about how learning the actions and stuff is pretty easy. We decided that the actions themselves should be easy to learn, easy to manipulate and easy to move around with your character. But the difficulty level of the kemono is set quite high on purpose. The reason we set that difficulty high is because the level of the karakuri and the powers they give you – the karakuri are extremely powerful. We had to make sure the prey was challenging enough for players using the karakuri correctly.

Compared to other hunting action games, you could say that the difficulty level could be higher. But the skills that the karakuri gives you are much stronger. As you work on hunting an animal and mastering the karakuri, you will find different ways to overcome the kemono, more satisfying ways. We think it’s something players can enjoy repeatedly as they work to take advantage of the karakuri system.