You tricked me for a minute, Capcom. You joined this week’s Nintendo Direct with a final trailer for Monster Hunter Rise’s Sunbreak expansion, which hit both the Switch and PC this week, and got me all excited about taking down new monsters alongside human NPCs for the first time. You reminded me of how wildly acrobatic Rise’s movement system is, and how sickeningly satisfying it is to vault over the handle of a greatsword and smash it into a dragon’s face. You got me psyched.
And then you ruined it. You just had to end your trailer with one more thing, didn’t you? One last bit of news: an update coming to Sunbreak in August. That should be good news, but instead it’s guaranteed to make my life hell. The second I saw that scaly bomb fall from the sky I knew you’d done something unforgiveable. You added an even more miserable version of Bazelgeuse to fight, just to torment me.
Really? This scumbag? This conceited prick who loves to horn in on fights he wasn’t invited to and crap bombs all over everyone’s heads? Did you cackle when you decided to arm this explosive asshole with even greater power? Despicable!
There are no doubt legions of Monster Hunter players who saw Seething Bazelgeuse appear at the end of the Sunbreak trailer and thought, yesss, another savage beast for me to kill. Meanwhile, here’s me yelling GTFO at my screen:
Am I salty? Oh, I’m salty. I look back at 2018 as a great year: Not only could I go outside without worrying about catching a deadly virus, but when I stayed inside I had an obsession with Monster Hunter: World to keep me busy. It was my first Monster Hunter, and I loved it—until World’s supervillain, Bazelgeuse, started making my hunts a living nightmare. In the earlier hunting ranks in World, most of your expeditions only feature a few monsters in the environment at one time, and they don’t tend to cross paths too often. When they do, they have a little scuffle and then one scurries off defeated.
But Bazelgeuse doesn’t play by those rules. Once you hit a high enough rank to start encountering him, Bazelgeuse starts showing up to carpet bomb you all the time. Any biome, practically any hunt: He shows up at the door with a gift, and that gift is him ruining your day.
I’d be having a nice casual hunt, slicing a weak little Pukei-Pukei or Great Jagras to ribbons, and then there’s Bazel, dropping bombs on my head out of nowhere. All of a sudden I had to run through a minefield of explosive scales waiting for an opportunity to hit Bazelgeuse enough times in the face to make him fly away—for all of five minutes, and then he’d come swooping back in to be annoying again.
Bazelgeuse’s ubiquity became a running joke among Monster Hunter players when World came out. This Reddit thread asking “Why is the Bazelgeuse so intrusive?” is a prime example. “Seriously, this fucker will show up to any party he’s not invited,” the Redditor says. “Ten hunts today, all ten times he showed up, bombed the party then left covered in shit.” (That last bit is literal: you can hurl dung at monsters to drive them away.)
Bazel, Bagel, the B-52 Bomber, the Flying Asshole—he goes by many names. His musical theme is practically Monster Hunter’s version of the Imperial March warning everyone that Darth Vader’s about to show up. Bazelgeuse’s villainous behavior won over plenty of Monster Hunter players: He earned begrudging respect, fan art, and the love of everyone who appreciates absolute trollish behavior.
But here’s my theory. All that love? Stockholm Syndrome. Bazelgeuse is actually pure evil, and putting an amped-up version of him in Sunbreak is Capcom torturing its fans and getting thanked for it.
Wake up, hunters! Reject Capcom’s tyranny. Don’t allow Seething Bazelgeuse onto your SSDs come August. He’ll only make your hunts waking nightmares, setting your nerves on edge the entire time as you wait for that music to signal his arrival. Any fun you have fighting him is definitely a figment of your imagination, and this whole article is definitely not just me projecting because I’m very bad at fighting Bazelgeuse and he scares me.
Just promise me one thing if I endure this burden, Capcom: Please, please don’t make me fight Lunastra again. Anything but that.