Flagship monster for MH Tri. He was a fan favorite and was supposed to be in Wold, but got cut essentially due to technical limitations, then people were expecting him to show up in Rise, but he never did, and it’s kind of become a bit of a meme.
I'm pretty sure we know the reason was mostly Jin Dahaad being an absolutely buggy nightmare, and that they were in turbo crunch after the feedback from the first open beta test being so poor
From what we understand (there's a lot of research that's gone into it; you would not fucking believe how much of a hot topic Lagi was in the leaks sub) he and one, maybe two other monsters WERE intended to be base-game, and really did just get cut at the last minute. The roster leaked months before we had the beta to confirm it, and according to that leaker, they saw gameplay footage of Lagi itself in a huntable state.
Jin Dahaad was a developmental clusterfuck (basically, Zorah again) and that, plus the beta feedback, plus the fact they wanted a summer release anyway, meant they had to chop a lot of stuff last minute to send out something reasonably complete. That's also why marketing went fucking dead for a couple of months, and why we had so many anticlimactic reveals towards the end- the devs were in serious crunch mode. The final trailer would have showed Lagi and the other monster which was cut.
As to why Lagi, we're pretty sure it's not a tech issue. We've known for awhile the tech issues with the Leviathan rig are solved; Balahara, which uses the belly-dragging Leviathan rig (including a shared animation with Agnaktor iirc), navigates extreme terrain and slopes remarkably well, even if it "cheats" some of the time by swimming in the sand; and Uth Duna, while possibly not using the belly dragging rig (it shares animations with Somnacanth of all things) still manages to pull off a monster with immense bulk that drags itself along the ground. Most notably, one that interacts with water in a very dynamic fashion in a way that makes movement and combat asymmetrical, skewed in favor of the monster in lieu of the player. Sound familiar?
Anyway, based on THAT, the current theory is that Lagi was cut because it's without a doubt the most compelling returner they could possibly include in a TU among the options they had. The other options were either essential/quasi-essential in some way, or would make for a really, really lame TU. "Blangonga is back!" doesn't carry nearly as much hype.
Gotta love late stage capitalism, enshittification of everything we love. Sometimes the workers/developers win though, and when they win, we the players win
I doubt it’s even that, the game is just blatantly unfinished. No way they purposefully cut a 90% complete Lagiacrus to “drip feed” content when HR Zoa Shia wasn’t even finished for the base game.
Capcom pushed this game out the door to meet the fiscal year deadline when it obviously needed more time.
this is lagiacrus, right? i’ve never played tri so my lagiacrus identification skills are lacking, but if it is, i’m overjoyed. i don’t even have a system that can run wilds, im just happy such a great design is back. namielle feels like it was meant to fill that void in world, and although it’s probably my favorite elder, it’s not the same.
Here is a little run down, copy pasted from what I sent to one of my friends:
Lagiacrus was something they wanted to add to MH World. It was in the very first REVEAL TRAILER for the game. But it never got added- they couldn't figure out a way to get it to stop clipping into the environment. Come the DLC, Iceborne, they tried again but STILL couldn't get it to work.
Next game comes around, Rise. They made it their MISSION to try to get Lagiacrus in. A huge portion of the base roster are Leviathans, which is what Lagiacrus is, so it was clear they were working hard on the skeleton.
it was obvious from the get go getting Lagiarcus in was a important to the devs, so much so they made ALL the maps areas that monsters can enter near completely flat, that way there would be no clipping.
Then, Lagiacrus couldn't get added. It was too large, which caused clipping issues despite ALL this. Come the Rise DLC, they try again. Didn't work, they coulden't get Lagiacrus to work properly.
MH Wilds comes around, people are expecting SURELY they will get him in this time, right? Nope. He didnt come with the release, despite almost half the population of the base game being Leviathans. It was obvious Lagiacrus was another major goal on the devs mind.
First title update announced; Mizitsune. A Leviathan. But also one from Rise. No signs of Lagiacrus
If I recall, Agnaktor was going to be added in Sunbreak but the volcanic map was too small and tight for him. I believe Magma Almudron was explicitly made to replace Agnaktor in the roster slot. It was made smaller then base Almudron specifically cus they needed a small fire leviathan for the volcano.
I do not remember where I got this information however and I have heard plenty of people argue otherwise, so its possible this was common fan theory that was never actually confirmed by the devs. If anyone has a link to a dev talking about Magma Almudron and Agnaktor in Sunbreak please LMK.
Regardless, but I am certainly happy to transfer my Lagiacrus cope to Agnaktor.
lmao imagine if uth dunas whole purpose is lagiacrus test run the biggest fattest fuck of a leviathan, surely they can add lagiacrus and finally they are going to
Two of the four regional apexes are massive fucking leviathans. You can FEEL the devs frustration with Lagiacrus lmao. They were definitely forcing themselves to learn the skills needed to make him work.
Even the other leviathans feel like they're trying to test the waters, forgive the pun. Balahara has movements that would be analogous to swimming near the surface of the water, while Hirabami's movements tests how one would freely swim in water
Jin Dahad was probably the proper test. If you pay attention during the fight, you can see how he adapts things like foot position, head movement. If you knock him out and he's against a wall, his head leans up the wall rather than clip into it to meet the "standard" knock out position for example. It's quite impressive work compared to where they started with World
So I guess with Jin they just completely gave up on caring about clipping? It spends most of the fight with its tail clipping in to the walls in my experience. When it doesn't it spins like a top to constantly keep it's tail away from people. Then he sticks his head in a wall once in a while for no reason.
I've not seen that happen myself (don't doubt it though), but it may be that part of Lagi's problem was that its torso was clipping into the ground, which is a bit harder to ignore than the ends of tails
I've really not see that much clipping with Jin, though I did notice there's a lot of work into making sure his feet can adapt being in different terrain levels, and if you knock him out when he's close to a wall his head and/or tail go up the wall rather than clip into it which is a lot of progress
Since it's now been officially unveiled this ain't a spoiler any more.
Lagiacrus was actually meant for base Wilds, it had to be delayed because after the OBT they had to crunch on preformance as well as Jin Dahaad who was near unplayably broken just 4 months before release.
So technical difficulties got in the way again, not even its own this time. But yes, finally, Lagi will be here!
(Also before you assume, Mizutsune was actually always meant to be a TU. Lagi likely got pushed later cause they'll have to re-balance it for postgame instead of progression.)
I don't think it's really leaks to say this now - analysis of the game files suggested that Lagiacrus was basically guaranteed to come. In fact I believe he was originally intended to be part of the base roster.
Lagiacrus is a fan favourite monster that hasn’t made an appearance in roughly 12 years since Monster Hunter Tri (and in 3U, Gen and Gen U, thanks to those who pointed it out to me)
A fan favorite monster, BUT he was fun because of the underwater mechanic. Dude probably is getting entirely reworked for dry land combat, so he's kind of just a new monster
He was in GU, which doesn't have underwater combat. They also had ivory lagaicrus, a variant that prefers the land to water as a base to work off of when they put lagi in a game with no water combat
The creature teased at the end of today's presentation is known as Lagiacrus, a leviathan known for generating lightning and is often the apex of many an aquatic ecosystem.
Lagiacrus is the flagship monster of Monster Hunter Tri, which was released in 2009 for the Nintendo Wii. The game introduced the Switch Axe, the Leviathan and Brute Wyvern classes, and underwater combat.
- Though underwater combat felt clunky, there remained hope that the mechanic would return with the refinements to movement and combat that later generations brought- that, sadly, had not come to fruition (yet), and Lagiacrus's future past Generations Ultimate (his most recent appearance in mainline before Wilds) remained uncertain.
Lagiacrus's subsequent appearance in the expanded Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate gave us two variants of the leviathan: Ivory Lagiacrus, a more land-based version; and Abyssal Lagiacrus, a rare species only fought in a special arena.
Generations and Generations Ultimate, which were his next appearances, did not have underwater combat. Lagiacrus here was closer to his Ivory subspecies, and is somewhat regarded as his worst appearance.
Prototype footage of Monster Hunter World showed Lagiacrus taking down an Anjanath in a flooded version of the Ancient Forest. This indicated that he was considered for World at one point, but the leviathan skeleton proved to be troublesome, resulting in Leviathans missing World and Iceborne. Leviathans returned in Rise, but no Lagiacrus was to be found.
Despite not making it to the 5th generation of Monster Hunter, Lagiacrus is still a beloved monster. He would rank as the third most popular monster in the franchise's 20th anniversary poll, with Nergigante and Zinogre taking second and first, respectively.
Many in the MH fan base and even some of the dev team have expressed a desire to see Lagiacrus and underwater combat return.
Wilds will mark the long-awaited return of Lagiacrus since Generations Ultimate- a near 7-year gap.
My first urge was to come here and scream "Somebody go tell my mans BannedLagiacrus", thanks for validating me
I wasn't even around before Lagi got sealed and all the memes had me just as excited as everyone else for this moment. Everyone focus and manifest the liberation of the other missing monsters.
If you look closely, there's a few flames in the background, so I imagine this shot is the aftermath of Lagiacrus stealing Rathalos' kill (something it already tried to do in the Tri opening cinematic, if you recall), with Rathalos having shot some fireballs but eventually being forced to retreat.
I find it a bit weird that the first 2 updates bring 2 monsters to the same locale though. I really wanted to see what they could come up with in oilwell bassin or some more monsters that can make use of the desert and dune areas in the plains
That's because Lagi was supposed to be a base game, with Mizu always being a TU, but Lagi was pushed back due to development issues. Locale overlap might happen again, given who else was pushed back, but the other areas are going to get more fleshed out as well
Nah, Lagi was unexpectedly delayed, not deliberately dripfed. It has all its weapons and a modelled armor set, HRP values, coding for swimming through areas like Uth Duna, a Seikret Pouch loadout and recommended meal for its quests etc.
Whereas Zoh Shia even in the year-old Beta had two placeholder weapons and they were grouped with the TU stuff. It was never meant to be base game, but seemingly wasn't meant to be TU1 either (guess they underestimated the negativity).
You can actually use freecam to go into their nest in the scarlet forest right now, they were prolly cut pretty close to launch to be dripfed as TU content.
That being said, I have a prediction that Lagiacrus will be a weird situation where they may actually drop in popularity after they release - the recent fan push due to their absence has dramatically inflated their popularity. Hopefully a much more fun fight than 4th generation Lagiacrus lol
It definitely was. The last few months of development had a lot of issues (namely Jin). Lagi and another were pushed back to focus on getting Jin in at least something resembling an acceptable state for release
Oh there’s definitely still more info for future updates, because like a comment above said, there’s another cut monster that hasn’t been revealed yet. No telling if it’ll be a secondary monster in TU2 or a further update, maybe even just straight scratched from the game, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Ivory Lagiacrus was made specifically as a landlocked battle, they'll probably roll some of the differences into base Lagi since there's no underwater combat.
I could see him being reworked into a menace like R.Brachy or Rajang in World. If they do that his popularity would still remain high until they kneecap him in future games
considering mizutsune has gotten moves from soulseer (or there just is a soulseer mode in its fight now? unclear exactly as of yet) it's incredibly likely that they will in some way buff or change lagiacrus' fight to be more difficult, maybe by ripping moves from ivory or even abyssal lagiacrus.
Prolly not, its HRP/zenny values and whatnot are already in the game and it is unlocked before the HR apex monsters, same tier as the HR guardians and Xu Wu
Mizu has some flame attacks a la the harder Mizu versions like Violet and Soulseer, so I would be shocked if the difficulty was much lower than Gore Magala.
A real Tri veteran would know that GU Lagi is but a shadow of its former, glorious water dwelling ancestor.
That game came out 16 years ago and it is where Lagiacrus was at his prime. The wait has been long. Welcome home old friend. I will cherish our clash the same way I've cherished it on my 3DS just this morning.
Good to know that MH Wilds finally becomes a good game in the Summer /s
But for real: FINALLY, MY BOY IS BACK. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I will not lie, I saw him in the datamine (caved post launch) and was pissed at myself for looking, but just hearing the water noises in this teaser gave me goosebumps big time and I was not disappointed in the slightest. Good to have you back, old friend
unrelated: my question is... did they plan zho shia as a title update (most likely) like... why didnt they give low rank armor OR HIGH RANK but now are adding it as a title update? or something wrong with capcom
The game was rushed for the release before fiscal year ends to get the profits needed for the investors data miners technically proved this it was all planned content for the release
1.7k
u/PicossauroRex 11d ago