As the months have moved forward, we’ve all gotten pretty used to seeing things canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus has had such an impact on the world that the extreme hamstringing of production that we’ve seen is far from the most severe issues to be discussed, but it’s the one that’s popped up once more.
Capcom announced that they will have to postpone their next free title update for Monster Hunter World: Iceborne due to issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. At this moment, they’re unable to offer us an updated release date.
Additionally, it seems that the impact on production isn’t just affecting the timeline that we can expect to see the game released in. Capcom announced simultaneously that whenever this update does release, the voice-over production for Italian, Spanish, and French will be in lower quality than usual. Presumably, all other languages that the game is available in won’t be impacted.
That doesn’t mean that there won’t be Italian, Spanish, or French, of course. The team says that they’ll be replacing the normal voice lines with “simplified recordings.” This likely means that instead of having a full voice over with the text, it’ll be the character simply saying a few words to indicate that they’re speaking, similar to how games like Fire Emblem: Awakening handle voice acting during gameplay.
“We would like to apologize to all of our fans eagerly awaiting Alatreon’s arrival in the New World, and will provide updates once we have new information to share,” Capcom writes in their announcement, which we’ve linked to above. “Thank you very much for your continued support and patience. From all the development team at Capcom – happy hunting and stay safe!”
It’s certainly unfortunate to see the delays, but it’s far from unexpected. The pandemic has put such a strangle on productivity that it’s almost become a rarity to see a development team that hasn’t had their productivity slashed in some way.
The release was originally set for May, but Capcom isn’t going to be able to let us know how far back it’s been pushed back. Hopefully, the team will be able to get it out in a matter of weeks, but given that they won’t give a release date yet, there’s a good chance that it’ll be a considerably longer time. At this point, it’s best just to hope we’re able to receive the new title update while it’s still the summer.