Monster Hunter

Make another blog, or play Monster hunter... LET US DO BOTH!

Kill dragons.
Make Armor.
Manufacture weapons.

Wash, rinse, and repeat.

It’s the daily life of a Monster Hunter; put on your favorite suit of armor; choose your weapon from the cache; talk to the village elder; select a quest and defend your village from the threat of monsters.

You start out as a novice hunter, and eventually become the protégé of a retired hunter (he finds you nearly dead at the base of a mountain).

Let call him Bob.

As you get to know everyone in your village, you are given the basic tools of hunting from Bob: numerous starter weapons, beginner armor and only 1500 zeni to start (zeni being your ‘money’). After talking to your village elder, you are given numerous quests you must complete in order to increase your hunter rank (HR). These quests consist of gathering materials for sovereign rulers, assisting other hunters in need, and of course, protecting your village from dragons, wyverns, etc. Once you’re immersed in this world of hunting, you will eventually outrank Bob and take his role of the village’s ‘hunter’. It isn’t over yet, though. You can go online (the Guild Hall) with the character you created and complete quests with other hunters, which in turn are harder and more difficult to complete. In a way, the game never ends because you can redo those quests over and over again. The game basically had no plot, no story line, just hunt until you get bored.

There’s a problem here though: I never got bored. The ‘nothingness’ in this game is what kept me going. There was no restarting the game, you just played until your fingers cramped up. Chuck Klosterman was right: Nothing is Everything.

I first experienced this game when my grandmother gave it to me when I was 14 years old, and I still play it today (due to expansions, sequels, etc). Ever since then, I have been destroying dragons and creating weapons for nearly 5 years in this alternate reality.

Wait one minute did I just say ‘alternate reality’?

I have been playing this game for so long, I can’t even remember why I got into it in the first place. Maybe it is the fact that there are things in the game that I can’t achieve in reality. I’m not saying I want to hunt real dragons (that would seriously freak me, like have you ever seen Reign of Fire? Didn't end well with most of the people) or manufacture weapons, but I’m pretty sure you can only live once. What I mean by this is when you die in the quest, you have 3 more chances to complete it.

YOU CAN’T DO THAT IN REAL LIFE.

Imagine this: You are to hand in a paper for your boss, and you have a certain deadline to complete it. You gather the information you need, but you still end up not handing it on time; there isn’t going to be a fairy that allows you to try again. Life isn’t like that in most cases, unless your ‘fairy’ is your mom and your ‘paper’ was supposed to be taking out the trash 4 hours ago.

The game is quite enjoyable, but many questions have arisen from playing it, one being who are my parents in-game? The closest thing that comes to being a parental figure is Bob, and he's already retired. Another question that was spawned was how was my childhood? You start out as an adult in the game, so how was this ‘character’ influenced to hunt? Did my parents (hypothetically speaking) die under a dragon’s destruction? Was I sent off to another village, hunting being my rite of passage? Or maybe Bob was my father all along?! Whatever the answer is, I’m pretty sure Capcom wasn’t thinking about the way I was conceived while they were on the drawing board.

I tend to not ask these questions when I’m playing it though. How can I concentrate on killing this dragon, if at the back of my head I’m wondering how I was conceived, or if Bob is my father? It takes the fun out of it, plus you might loose a life.

Words Cited:
Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, Drugs, and CoaCoa Puffs. New York. 2003