- Most part of this actually finds support in official, supplementary material. It seems that, indeed, there once was a highly advanced civilization in the setting, and they didn't have the same environmental concerns that current MH society has: they have designed a lot of powerful weapons (most fortress defense systems such as the Dragonator come from them) and killed a lot of dragons in order to create many of their inventions (such as the "Equal Dragon Weapon", a huge Frankenstein-like creature made from the corpses of many dragons). This caused a massive war between this civilization and the Elder Dragons, driving both sides to near extinction. That's when the current society has risen, with a much more sustainable approach to hunting and scientific development.
- If that's the case, it could be a Lost Colony on a Death World. And somehow the descendants of the colonists haven't lost their Heavy Worlder muscles yet. Which would also explain how a Bronze Age civilization even has guns.
- If you go to Area 9 of the Volcano in Tri, you can see a planet/moon that looks far too large to be the moon we all know. It's also a different colour (kind of purple), although the volcano might have something to do with that. So perhaps the MH series is set on a different world. It may just be a severe case of moon illusion (somehow), but the colour and size don't really seem to fit those conditions exactly.
- It's implied that they're eating bits of the monsters that they hunt, so the hormones and whatnot from various giant critters are probably having some kind of effect...
- Alternately, if we're going with the Lost Colony theory, Hunters were deliberately designed to ward off the megafauna that runs wild, kind of how some of the firelizards in Dragonriders of Pern were genetically augmented into dragons in order to ward off the Thread. Maybe early settlers used DNA from more primate-like monsters like the Congalala, Blangonga or Rajang in order to create the first Hunters, giving them the kind of endurance and strength you'd find in the megafauna. With regular interbreeding with ordinary humans, Hunters became more humanlike in appearance while still maintaining their nonhuman capabilities. Either that or they're the offspring of super soldiers who settled on the planet in order to get away from war. Alternately...
- Alternately, they could be the result of interbreeding with Wyverians, as they are also quite human looking (long ears, toe talons, and odd aging habits aside), and are shown to be competent hunters (one piece of art shows a scrawny elder Wyverian standing over a monoblos holding up its horn), add this to the fact that most of the villages as well as the guild seem to be run by Wyverians...
- The art books reveal that they are descended from the artificially created super soldiers the Ancient Civilization created to help fight the Elder Dragons.
- Alternately, if we're going with the Lost Colony theory, Hunters were deliberately designed to ward off the megafauna that runs wild, kind of how some of the firelizards in Dragonriders of Pern were genetically augmented into dragons in order to ward off the Thread. Maybe early settlers used DNA from more primate-like monsters like the Congalala, Blangonga or Rajang in order to create the first Hunters, giving them the kind of endurance and strength you'd find in the megafauna. With regular interbreeding with ordinary humans, Hunters became more humanlike in appearance while still maintaining their nonhuman capabilities. Either that or they're the offspring of super soldiers who settled on the planet in order to get away from war. Alternately...
- That would at least explain why most monsters have evolutionary features that would be absolute overkill in the context of anything other that combat; a lot of monsters are designed specifically for combat (we all know it's due to Rule of Cool) but being able to shoot a water laser doesn't really do much apart from tons of damage.
- Stories can serve as the intermediate stage to this. Society has evolved, and people learned to raise monsters as mounts. (Note that pets already exist in the main series in the form of Poogies/pigs, and pet monsters in Frontier.)
Furthermore, I have a theory as to WHY he can't find Cheeko Sands. Cheeko Sands is stated to only be found by people who lose their way. The Elder mentions that her husband had an excellent sense of direction, and can't understand what is taking him so long to get there. Therin lies the problem. Since he has an excellent sense of direction, he cannot lose his way. If he cannot lose his way, he cannot find Cheeko Sands.
- This makes sense. If it's true, then it's both a Heartwarming Moment and a Tear Jerker at the same time. Although a bit of Fridge Logic will still sink in here: after the Capital C Caravan discovers Cheeko Sands for the first time, the group is able to return to it regularly at the player's behest. Going by this, the reason he never stumbled across his family yet may be because the husband needs to lose his way first in order to find his way to the island.
- Confirmed in one of the G-Rank event quests, where the client, listed as Sword and Shield Hunter, asks you to slay "an old adversary", an Akantor. Said client says he's looking for a village, and that "someone is waiting for him".
- There are many factors in BoF3 that could easily lend themselves to the Monster Hunter world:
- After Ryu finally defeats Myria and sends her space station crashing down, whatever remained of the technology from Space Station Myria and Caer Xhan may have made its way to the rest of the world, and humanity may have found a way to create vehicles that can traverse places like the Great Desert, which eventually turned into what we know as the Sandsea (with the Oasis town turning into Loc Lac City).
- However, this doesn't mean that monsters and malevolent dragons no longer exist; some Dark Dragons may have resurfaced to threaten the world, such as Fatalis which is shown to have a cunning intelligence—they may have only lost the power of communication over the ages due to some deleterious influence, or they choose not to speak. That, or judging by the existence of Gogmazios, some of them may have been engineered by military scientists as biological weapons, using methods similar to what Dr. Palet attempted. In this case, Myria would have been correct about humans abusing her technology for wicked ends, similar to what she described happened in the city of Caer Xhan.
- The Brood, on the other hand, had recovered and managed to live on as the Wyvernian race, having been De Powered by the sacrifice of their draconic abilities. This would explain why they possess reptilian features. Note that their Japanese name is the Dragon Tribe (竜人族)trans .
- Structures like the Tower, which is described in the game as battlements created by an ancient civilization to help ward off powerful elder dragons, may have been fortresses built by Myria to combat and contain the Brood. Note the "contain" part: in Frontier, there is an entire section of the Tower filled with traps and holding cells, notably the one where you fight rare creatures like Mi Ru.
- Certain Ancestral Weapons that you get from mining Rustshards and Ancient Shards seem to possess extremely advanced technology, similar to the Chrysm-powered machines in BoF3: examples are the Obelisk Gunlance, which has visible glowing circuitry along its damaged sections, or the Skyscraper lance which has independently moving drill parts. Note that these advanced-looking weapons also possess the Dragon element, which would be lethal to Ryu's kind.
- The Dragongems that hunters occasionally recover from elder dragons may in fact be Chrysm, which would explain why they're needed to craft certain endgame weapons and armor—they act as a power source.
- Conversely, BoF4 appears to match the world of Monster Hunter better in some regards, since at the end of 4 the Ryu/Fou-Lu hybrid proceeded to De-power all the dragons, thus removing most traces of whatever would be considered High Fantasy from their world (although this wouldn't fully explain the seeming total absence of anything related to practical magic). However, note that the renegade Mad Scientist Yuna managed to escape Cray's wrath near the end of the game, which would mean that he's the mastermind behind the existence of malevolent elder dragons: he'd been reverse engineering their power as weapons of war—possibly to try and profit off of them—but they may have proven too much to control in the end, leading to them running wild and taking over many habitats around the world. That, and an actual Sandsea exists in the Eastern Kingdom.
Yep, you're not collecting tears, you're collecting spit. As for whether that makes it better or worse...
The Seneschal began to create more and more devastatingly powerful monsters, pulling all of the world's magic away to use to create those monsters, but humanity continued to persist in defiance.
Additionally, the aura is what allows Hunters to not take fall damage. They don't protect you from everything—get knocked around enough and you'll get Stunned, get hit by certain attacks and you'll get paralyzed, etc. Certain buffs and debuffs are a result of things interacting with the hunter's aura rather than their body. Potions don't heal your body, they restore your aura. The aura would take damage from poison as it works to prevent it from harming your body. The oxygen gauge is a function of your aura too, allowing you to breath under water, but requiring occasional infusions of air to keep the process up.
When it comes to restorative items, you do actually consume them. The aura isn't just a magical shell, it goes through your entire body. Ingesting Antidotes and other things is just how you apply their effects to your aura. Nulberries, for instance, might catalyze a reaction in your aura that makes it purge your aura of Blights. The sound waves from Hunting Horns and the dust from Lifepowders effect you because they effect your aura. I also figure that Dragonblight is a unique element that is designed to work against auras specifically.
It would also explain KOs, carting, and how NPC Hunters have been injured on hunts. Having your aura reduced to zero could be enough of a shock to the system to make you faint—or it could be that Guild Hunters are trained to play dead when their aura breaks so they can be safely carted away. But if a Hunter decides to hold their ground after losing their aura, they take the injuries to their body. Considering the monsters, this is easily fatal or at least maiming. It might also explain the 3 cart limit—after your aura gets beaten out of you three times, it might need time to stabilize before it can reliably protect you again. For multiplayer hunts, the Guild just decided it was safer to not count KOs separately.
I think that the Guild (or the Wycademy, probably) got the idea to create auras for Hunters from monsters. Monsters have natural auras—they aren't as good as the manufactured ones for Hunters, but they have them. Monsters can still lose limbs and have parts of their bodies break, but their aura protects their core functions (i.e. you can cut off a monster's tail but not their heads). That and the fact that they take different amounts of damage on different parts of their bodies.
Armor skills also effect you via your aura. Most obvious are the ones that effect your health bar. But it makes the most sense for most armor skills to effect you via your aura, since you can get their effect via interchangeable Decorations.
This is also at least part of why monsters recognize you as a threat. Civilian humans have no aura, only the Hunters do, and monsters are able to sense that.
As for how the aura can even exist...
Basically, the Guild developed a method to give humans a fighting chance against monsters (which includes the aura thing I explain above), and that method utilizes Elder Dragon Blood. They might consume it, or bath in it, or have it injected—the details are unimportant.
You figure that when you kill an Elder Dragon, you're guaranteed to get some blood from it, right? Except you don't always get it as a drop. What I think happens is that the Guild will always take most of the blood when you kill an Elder Dragon, and that's where they get their supply to create more Hunters. Any Elder Dragon Blood you get is leftovers.
As a result of this procedure, not only are Hunters able to perform all the crazy feats we know and love (the aura stuff I mentioned above, plus being able to actually wield a GS, etc.), monsters can sense something Elder Dragon-ish about them, which is why even the Elder Dragons react to them as a serious threat.
I figure the real explanation as to why this all works is either A) magic or B) nanomachines. I like option B better, since there was canonically an advanced ancient civilization that went extinct and left a bunch of its technology lying around. Lots of different types of nanomachines running amok (but thankfully programmed to avoid the Grey Goo scenario) could explain a lot about the monsters themselves—basically, they're all natural nanomachine cyborgs, which is why they can perform such crazy feats. The auras I mentioned previously would be a function of nanomachines for both monsters and Hunters. The nanomachines found in Elder Dragon Blood would be especially potent.
How much the Guild or the academic community understands about nanomachines is up for debate. The Hunters themselves don't care much, as long as it works.
- The official explanation is that the humans of the Monster Hunter world are descended from Super-Soldier fighters developed by the Ancient Civilization. They were created to fight the Elder Dragons after the ancients abused their scientific prowess to hunt the Elder Dragons en mass to use them as building materials, in one case building a near literal Tower of Babel out of Kushala Daora bodies and using parts from over 200 other creatures to create the Equal Dragon Weapon. The Ancient Civilization was wiped out, and the ones who survived gave rise to the current society.
- Jossed.
- Given the previous naming scheme, it's more likely to be Generations Ultimate, or possibly Generations X.
- Jossed, it's Generations Ultimate.
And the other sentient races are just Aragami offshoots of Humanity. Because Oracle Cell evolution or something.
Part of Monster Hunter's lack of Killer App status in the West is the lack of recent portable installments, and with the Switch being a hybrid portable/home system, that means Monster Hunter on the Switch can appeal to hunters Western and Eastern alike.
- Confirmed - XX is getting a Switch release, but only in Japan.
- Double Confirmed, it's now being exported to the US and Europe.
After several major missteps, including two island theme parks and a nature preserve all going pear shaped, they kept going with Jurassic World. Then they created the Indominus rex from scratch to be a bigger, scarier alternative to the apparently now blase T. rex. How? Grafting together genes from T. rex, Gigantosaurus, cuttlefish, Velociraptor, and possibly human.
So that Tigrex basically being a winged Allosaurus, or the -dromes being various raptors? InGen kept going and created the Elder Dragons, on whom standard weapons no longer worked. When everything went to pot, they just kept going, this time with human soldiers. They created super-strong fighters who were able to fight back, but then someone took the nuclear option (i.e., actual nukes) and resulted in an Apocolypse How. Of course, this would all be decades or even centuries after the movies take place.
- Monster Hunter World seems to further support this, given the Anjanath is basically just a Tyrannosaurus rex but with the ability to breath fire and a weird fold-out nasal structure. Others make no sense physiologically, suggesting intelligent design; Paolumu looks an awful lot like a bat but is confirmed to be a Flying Wyvern, AKA a small dragon. Plus, it's specifically mentioned Elder Dragons have no known evolutionary ancestry, and have existed as long as recorded history. However, they breed and die like any normal animal and the plot it driven by that fact.
- Lunastra is confirmed. However, they are also introducing new Elder Dragons native to the New World, such as Kulve Taroth.
“Humans” in the Monster Hunter world are not 6 ft tall, but rather about 2 ft tall. This explains how they are able to wield comparatively oversized weapons and fight comparatively oversized monsters.
Long version:
Let’s look first at weapons. According to one of the above WMG entries, hunters are supposedly the descendants of super soldiers created by a fallen ancient civilization. It seems like this theory is supported by supplemental materials, so I will assume it is the official explanation. However, even if you take into account the Super-Strength, it would still be difficult if not impossible to wield giant weapons like we see in the game.
I’m going to use the greatsword as an example because I feel like it’s fairly easy to quantify. Based on the in-game models I’m estimating the blade size (without handle) at 2 m long by 0.5 m wide by 0.1 m thick. If you made something this big out of steel then it would weigh 805 kg (approx. 1775 lbs). If you made it out of aluminum instead then it would be 270 kg (approx. 595 lbs). I don’t know the densities of monster bone, machalite ore, dragonite ore, etc., but I would assume they would probably be somewhere between these two.
So if we think of a greatsword as being somewhere between 270 kg and 805 kg, even with genetically enhanced strength it would still be nearly impossible to wield. According to Newton’s third law, as you try to swing the sword forward it would push you backward with the same amount of force. I don’t want to figure out the physics equations for friction, but I’m pretty sure that a human wouldn’t be able to generate enough friction with the ground to avoid sliding backwards when trying to swing their own weapon, even if they had super strength.
(Side note: with the greatsword specifically, some of the attack animations look like the hunter is not so much swinging the weapon as just lifting it up and then dropping it back down to attack, so an attack like that is more plausible than actually swinging it. However, the same does not apply to most other large weapons like switch axe, charge blade, etc., which use actual swings.)
Next, let’s look at monsters. Most of them are dinosaur-sized or larger, which if the Monster Hunter world has atmosphere like our own then it is implausible to have megafauna that big. However, an accepted theory among paleontologists is that in prehistoric times there was a higher percentage of oxygen in the air which allowed for larger lifeforms to exist. Let’s assume that’s the case because it explains the dinosaur-sized monsters, and it also plays into the hunters having super strength because the higher oxygen content would affect their circulatory system and make their muscle tissue function more efficiently.
However, it is still implausible to have wyverns like Rathalos, Rathian, etc., be able to fly. With an atmospheric density similar to our own, anything human-sized or larger cannot fly under its own power. The amount of wing area and muscle strength required are just too great. Even if we assume that the atmosphere in the Monster Hunter world is thicker than our own, it is still highly implausible for something like a Rathalos at 18 m long to be able to fly under its own power. The largest flyer in prehistory was the Quetzalcoatlus which had a wingspan of approx. 11m and a MUCH smaller body than flying wyverns in Monster Hunter.
In the case of Elder Dragons, they all have pseudo-magical abilities (like Kushala Daora’s wind or Teostra and Lunastra’s explosions). You could argue that maybe those pseudo-magical abilities also help the dragons fly. In any kind of fantasy movie/TV show/book/video game I always assume that dragons can fly because of magic. I know that chalking it up to magic is unscientific, but it seems a plausible explanation based on the kinds of abilities that Elder Dragons are shown to possess. However, that still doesn’t explain how flying wyverns who are not explicitly or implicitly magical can fly just as easily as Elder Dragons.
There are also the kaiju-sized elder dragons (like Lao Shan Lung, Jhen Mohran, etc.) which are simply too large to exist because they would be crushed under their own body weight. In addition, there are oversized invertebrates (like crabs and insects) which could not grow to that size even with the higher oxygen density.
One of the above WMG entries suggests that Monster Hunter takes place on a planet with low gravity, which supposedly explains how large monsters are able to fly and how hunters can wield oversized weapons. However, this theory doesn’t hold up because if the gravity is lower, it would also mean that the atmosphere will be thinner and flight will still be difficult, and hunters will still have trouble wielding large weapons because lower gravity means less friction with the ground.
My theory is that it’s simply a problem of scale. If you scale down the “humans” from 6 ft (1.8 m) to 2 ft (0.6 m), then you can also scale down weapon and monster sizes proportionally which makes the whole thing more realistically plausible because you're taking advantage of the Square-Cube Law.
That greatsword that weighed between 270 kg and 805 kg? If we divide the length, width, and thickness by 3 then that reduces the weight by a factor of 27, so it now weighs between 10 and 30 kg. It is very plausible for a 2 ft tall person with super strength to wield a weapon of that size and weight without having the friction issues mentioned earlier.
That Rathalos at 18 m who was too big to fly? He’s now 6 m long instead. With his relatively bulky body it might still be difficult for him to fly under his own power, but it’s at least a bit more plausible than before. (You still have some monsters like Fatalis who even when his size is reduced is still too big to fly, but he’s an Elder Dragon so maybe he uses magic.)
That Lao Shan Lung who at 75 m long is too big to exist without being crushed under his own body weight? He’s actually only 25m long, which isn’t even as big as the largest dinosaurs. (You still have some monsters like Dalamadur who even when his size is reduced is still too big exist, but again, he’s an Elder Dragon so maybe it’s magic.)
Anjanath goes from 18 m long, which is much larger than a T-Rex, to 6 m long, which is about the size of a Utahraptor. Larger bird wyverns like Velocidrome or Tzitzi-Ya-Ku go from 10 m long to 3.3 m long, which is almost exactly the size of a Deinonychus. Smaller bird wyverns like Velociprey or Jaggi would be about the same size as a Compsognathus.
A lot of the plant life in Monster Hunter is overly large just like the monsters, and if you consider that the “humans” in that world are actually very small compared to real-life humans then the comparatively large plant life makes sense. The same applies to huge invertebrates like vespoids and stuff.
One of the places where this theory breaks down is in jump height. A 2 ft tall person with super strength should be able to jump comparatively higher than a 6 ft tall person with super strength. However, we don’t see a lot of very high jumps except in a few specific attacks like the insect glaive’s pole vault or the longsword’s Spirit Helm Breaker.
Also, the felynes/palicoes would have to be smaller than a regular sized house cat, because if a normal house cat learned to walk on its hind paws then it would be about 2 ft tall itself, and thus would be as tall as the hunters.
- Sorry, but World and Iceborne did not get Valstrax. Rise, on the other hand...
- World is already finished adding additional content, and they abandoned poor Lagiacrus.
- Confirmed: Monster Hunter: Rise is coming to Switch.
The Hunter will have a Stance System where they can change weapons for different sets of attacks and movement patterns: likely the Dual Blades for weaker but faster attacks and swifter movement, and then the Great Sword for stronger hits and overall reduced speed. For their Final Smash, they'll switch to the Charge Blade in its axe form and unleash a Super AED.
- Maybe the Hyper status is a mutation of the Frenzy Virus/Apex status. In Generations and Gen. Ultimate, some quests from 4 Ultimate return, including quests that had Frenzied and Apex Monsters in their origin game. Here, the Frenzied and Apex Monsters are replaced with Hyper Monsters. In addition, the Hyper Monsters are shrouded in a dark aura, similar to the Frenzy virus. If these Monsters are also in pain, just like the Frenzied and Apex Monsters, then the Hyper status must be a variant of Frenzy.
Occam's Razor would suggest that Wyverians are close relatives of humans rather than the descendants of wyverns like is claimed in-game. The traits that distinguish wyverians from humans (Pointed ears, digitigrade legs, four-fingered, clawed hands, diminutive size.) are also traits lynians have, so perhaps both humans and wyverians descend from a lynian ancestor that evolved to become hairless and grow unusually tall, but Wyverians retain more signs of their ancestry.
Back in 2010, I noticed both Ceadeus and Ludroth share much more than a skeleton and attack patterns: they both have fleshy ridges on their neck (which in turn support either a beard or a sponge-like tissue) and their teeth are actually four pairs of bony protrutions like those of Dunkleosteus. They don't seem to share this trait with other Leviathans and, given their different ecological role which would otherwise hint to a convergent evolution, it's possible they share a common land ancestor.