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.
Thanks for the info, do you know why Jin Dahaad was a developmental clusterfuck? It feels like a straight up fight to me with a lot of mechanics we've seen before (like the aoe ulti), and the fact that it has its own arena makes it more predictable to design.
I don’t think it was originally intended to have its own space, I think it more or less was going to be a siege monster that could roam around unlike all the others where you load in somewhere, they kinda found a middle ground here but it’s definitely not the Vision I believe they had. This is all speculation but without him there is no siege monster and that is a staple of the series even if he’s weaker than most in presentation and execution really and not quite a siege he is as similar as wilds has currently
He did at least have an arena well before the last few months of crunch hit- the first beta build, itself at least six months old, probably closer to a year old, when we got it, had data for his arena included. It's probable he's not executed as seamlessly as they wanted, but they did seem to be planning for him to have his own arena from more or less the start.
For a minute, his weird spawn parameters and behavior compared to the other apexes made some people think that EM162 (his monster id, before we got his name) wasn't actually the Cliffs apex at all. A couple of people thought that meant Gore would be the Iceshard apex and Frenzy would be its Inclemency, but that never really made any sense whatsoever.
It's a combination of factors, as far as I can tell. The pseudo-siege mechanics he has, where he can show up as an environmental hazard and be driven towards his arena, plus some ability to interact with other monsters, plus conventional fight mechanics, plus his sheer size, just made him immensely complex to develop.
He's essentially a standard fight, but with a whole bunch of extra mechanics rolled in, that change what he needs to do and when, and those added variables means there's a lot more that can go wrong versus just "regular monster that spawns at x time". It probably doesn't also help that he also uses a spin on the Lagiacrus rig, but considerably larger.
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u/AdmiralTiago 12d ago
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.