Capcom @ Gamescom Asia 2024: The faces behind Street Fighter and Monster Hunter

Gamescom Asia 2024 was held just over the weekend, coming hot off the heels of the main Gamescom convention in Germany that happened in August. The event drew game developers, big and small, to the halls of Suntec Convention Centre, to show off their wares to business delegates and gamers at-large.

One of the big names of Gamescom Asia this year was Capcom. The company was eager to show off two of its titles: Street Fighter 6, the latest in their iconic fighting game IP, and the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds, set to be the most advanced game in their fantasy franchise yet.

Long-time Monster Hunter producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and Street Fighter 6 leads Takayuki Nakayama and Shuhei Matsumoto were among those who arrived in Singapore to represent Capcom at the event, and they took some time away from their busy schedules to talk, through a translator, to the media about their games.

How Monster Hunter Wilds one-ups its predecessors

Monster Hunter Wilds, set for release for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Steam on 28 February, 2025, is currently being touted as the biggest game in the Monster Hunter franchise. And it makes sense, given the immense popularity of the past two games. Monster Hunter: World was a windfall for Capcom, with 25 million copies sold as of this year, while the Switch-exclusive Monster Hunter Rise garnered 15 million.

Stepping up their game (literally) is a daunting task for the development team, and Tsujimoto spoke about some of the goals they have for Wilds, one of which was player immersion. An aspect of this that the team is particularly proud of is a more diversified environment that the player can find themselves in, stating that:

“... in the past games, the games have mostly been focused on Hunter vs. Monster… But this time in Wilds, there’s a lot more involving past civilisations, people and villagers and whatnot. So one thing that was a goal in Monster Hunter Wilds was to meld together Monsters, people and the ecosystems altogether.”

This immersion is also the reason the Palico is now voiced, as the team figured that auditory instructions and advice would be less disruptive to gameplay compared to visual cues, though he also said that players will also have a choice over whether the Palico is fully-voiced or not.

Tsujimoto explained that this goal of immersion was also the rationale behind some of the changes Wilds has compared to its predecessors, including seasons and the protagonist being voiced. On the latter point, Tsujimoto stated the lack of a voiced Hunter in previous games had “some limitations in expressing the types of immersiveness they wanted for the player”. However, he clarified that the Hunter won’t be interjecting in every situation, stressing that the team worked hard to strike a balance between keeping the tone of the previous games and showing more of the Hunter’s personality.

Another topic he touched on was the technical challenges associated with crossplay, which he stated has been worked on since the inception of Wilds, and the challenges that come with designing such an expansive world. The inclusion of the Seikret, a Monster that the Hunter can ride into battle and explore with, was added as a way to more easily navigate Wilds’ large biomes. Tsujimoto stated that the Seikret “would help to smoothen that transition for people who may not be able to navigate without some help”. He also shared that the reason for the Seikret being able to equip a second weapon was to expand the player’s range of strategy as they traverse different locales.

Aside from catering to experienced Hunters, Tsujimoto also stated that bringing new players into the fold is something that they wanted to achieve with Wilds. But with this comes a challenge, as the team had to find ways to make such an expansive world more palatable to newer Monster Hunter players. “Thinking about new players coming into the series is something that actually exists as a concept in every single iteration of Monster Hunter,” Tsujimoto stated, and for Wilds, features such as choosing how detailed a player wants the tutorial to be, a quiz with Alma, the Hunter’s handler, that determines a suitable play style, and easily accessible NPC hunters, were implemented to guide less experienced players in tackling the world of Wilds.

Ultimately, while Tsujimoto discussed the desire to further the Monster Hunter franchise with bold ideas, a theme that bridged the discussion was the need to balance new, innovative ideas and technical impressiveness with the image that fans have of the Monster Hunter franchise:

We want to put out a game that, when fans see it, will know that ‘This is Monster Hunter’. But at the same time, we also have to add new components to take the games further and evolve the series.

If you're interested in Street Fighter 6, we'll be speaking to two of the game's team leads on the next page.

Street Fighter 6: For the love of the game

Unlike Wilds, Street Fighter 6 has been out for more than a year now. But as a fighting game with decades worth of legacy behind it, Capcom has been eager to keep it in the spotlight, including a Capcom Pro Tour tournament that happened right at Gamescom Asia, and the recent introduction of Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard to SF6 as a DLC.

Coming to Singapore to talk about Street Fighter 6 were the game's director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto. A portion of the interview was centred around the legacy of the Street Fighter series, and the important relationship between the development team and the fans that has kept the series popular for so long.

Speaking about the player reactions to Street Fighter 6 and whether it met the expectations of the team, Matsumoto stated that they were “very thankful” for how well it’s been received by fans, especially as the team had “put in a lot of effort to make this iteration the best Street Fighter it’s ever been.” In particular, a surprising aspect of the response towards SF6 was how well it was received in Japan and Asia as a whole, as according to him, Street Fighter usually draws its popularity from the United States and Europe.

Matsumoto also spoke about their opinion on independent tournaments organised by players and content creators outside of Capcom:

We do think it's really great that content creators have been taking it up to participate in fighting game culture and spreading word of the game... it's really helped to meld together the fighting game community.

Gathering fan responses is not without its pitfalls, however. The two also shared about how feedback from professional players often lags behind the development timeline, and stressed that the development team tends to look to the general player base when looking out for comments about their game, stating that "In general, when we go to SMS and various social media, we'll see everybody's feedback."

On the design process for Street Fighter 6, director Nakayama spoke about what the team decided to do differently for this iteration of Street Fighter compared to past iterations of the franchise, stating that the team was “focusing on bolstering the characters and the stories, to make sure users have a great experience in playing the game” outside of the fighting portions. 

In addition, Nakayama also talked more in-depth about the process of choosing returning fighters. Specifically, he touched on how a character's background takes precedence over whether their mechanics fit in the context of the game:

Whether it makes sense for this character to come back in this iteration timeline-wise, background-wise, whether or not they're popular... Because each character can be finely tuned in the newest iteration to match the balance that's needed for the entire game, when comparing the two, the character is more prioritised than the game mechanics.

On the characters, though, one remark that stuck out was on who they would want to bring back if they had no restrictions. Professing their love for the Street Fighter series, they stated that if it were up to them, they would want to see more of Street Fighter's own characters make return appearances, adding that:

There's so many characters that we want to bring back, that we cannot possibly choose.

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