Monster Hunter Wilds Ascendance devs discuss Switch 2, Wilds feedback, and the expansion’s time skip

Monster Hunter Wilds’ ‘massive’ expansion, Ascendance, is in full promotion mode, and at Tokyo Game Show VGC was able to catch up with the game’s development team.

Set for release in 2017, Ascendance expands on the world and gameplay of Wilds with new areas and monsters, new hunter actions, and the introduction of Master Rank quests.

Notably, the expansion will also release for Nintendo Switch 2 after the base game debuts on the platform this December.

At TGS, we spoke to series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, Takuro Hiraoka, director, and executive director Kaname Fujioka to learn about the Switch 2 additions, Wilds feedback, the expansion’s time skip, and more.

How important is Switch 2 as a platform for you, considering its historical popularity on Nintendo platforms and the console’s Japanese install base?

Tsujimoto: Yeah, there was definitely a big culture in Japan for getting together to hunt back in the PSP days, and also then on the 3DS. Of course, that existed in other countries as well, but I think there’ll be a lot of players in Japan and around the world who’d be happy to have that experience again on Nintendo Switch 2, where you can actually gather together around the same table or in the same area, and have a local wireless hunt.

So it’s important to us that we’ve been able to bring that because Switch 2 is ultimately, although you can also dock it, it is a handheld machine that you can bring anywhere. Another interesting aspect that it allows us to do through Crossplay is kind of mixing the online and local experience. If you have a PlayStation 5 in your house, you probably haven’t got a second one for someone else who’s in the same household to play Monster Hunter Wilds with you. You would need to both be in separate places, connecting online.

I think a lot of people have both a PlayStation 5 and a Switch 2, for instance, and that means that if you’re in the same living room, you could just connect online using the Crossplay backend, and you’re having essentially a virtual local wireless experience, even though the two consoles aren’t directly connecting. So I’m excited to see that new possibility emerging of cross-platform local.