Monster Hunter Stories 3's director has confirmed that the JRPG sequel takes place centuries after the previous entries.
Monster Hunter Stories 3 was only announced around two months ago (much to the chagrin of one fan's underwear) at the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase. Following a showing at the Tokyo Game Show, more details have been confirmed about the game, including the appearance of monsters that debuted in Monster Hunter Wilds, and crucially, when the game actually takes place.
During an interview with 4Gamer (translated via machine translation), Monster Hunter Stories 3 director Kenji Oguro confirmed that the subseries' mascot, Navirou, will not appear in the game, nor will anyone else from the original titles. "The timeline is set in a future world more than 200 years after the previous work." This jump in time has allowed the role of the rider (the monster-taming squad separate from the hunters found in the main series) to take a significant place in the Monster Hunter universe, and as such allows the game to delve into the rider society more.
And clearly this is a more confident Capcom as Monster Hunter series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto explains a decision was made "to focus more on the RPG aspect," for this entry. Oguro explains that the previous two entries were developed with a mindset of making Monster Hunter into an RPG, whereas this time "we started by asking, 'What kind of RPG do we want to make?'" Which resulted in this "more RPG" approach the developers speak of.
Granted, Monster Hunter Stories and its sequel weren't exactly too connected; some characters appeared in both titles, and the events are referenced, but for the most part, they were individual stories. And while I wouldn't expect there to be absolutely no reference to past games in it, it sounds like Monster Hunter Stories 3 is wholly disconnected from the events of the previous entries, so you don't need to catch up before March if you don't want to.
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