Every Monster Hunter game features a "flagship monster" that adorns its box art, similar to Legendary Pokemon like the newly announced Koraidon and Miraidon. The expanded "ultimate" versions of various titles have introduced their own flagship monsters, seen with the shift from Monster Hunter 4's Gore Magala to Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate's Seregios. That trend carried over to Monster Hunter World's Iceborne expansion, which Capcom is replicating with Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak.
The flagship monster in Monster Hunter Rise was Magnamalo, but the upcoming Sunbreak expansion instead features Malzeno. This Elder Dragon is considered one of the "Three Lords" causing trouble around Elgado Outpost, grouped with Garangolm and Lunagaron as creatures inspired by western stories and myths: a vampire, Frankenstein's monster, and a werewolf, respectively. The Monster Hunter Digital Event in May 2022 gave fans more information about Malzeno's powers, which could be better understood looking at the Chariot-class machines from Guerrilla Games' Horizon franchise.
Malzeno's Machinations in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
During the aforementioned Digital Event, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak director Yoshitake Suzuki described Malzeno as a monster designed to capture the regal air of legends like Dracula - with concept art focused on "aristocracy, nobility, grandeur, and cunningness." He offers an insight into Capcom's philosophy for Elder Dragons being sketched around what kind of calamity they would cause, and says Malzeno has previously pushed the Kingdom that players now protect to the brink of ruin.
Its destructive force is characterized by "mysterious creatures" that latch onto other monsters like leeches; visually reminiscent of tiny, pink Khezu with petal-shaped wings. Malzeno appears to hold opponents in place while its subservient creatures absorb the monster's life force. According to Suzuki, the beautiful and elegant Malzeno will transform into a more vicious, powerful form once it has absorbed enough energy. This translates into Malzeno's Blooblight status effect as a game mechanic, which sees a hunters' health drain unless they can deal enough damage against the Elder Dragon in return.
How Life-Leeching Machines in Horizon Zero Dawn Resemble Malzeno
Though vampire motifs are not uncommon in video games (Capcom's own Castlevania franchise is a substantive example), Malzeno's tendency to absorb energy from afar rather than drinking blood is unique. In that way, the Elder Dragon's particular brand of apocalyptic mayhem brings to mind the world-ending machines from Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel Forbidden West.
While Horizon players follow Aloy some centuries after the end of the world, various documents reveal how things became the way they are. Guerrilla Games crafts a speculative future for modern-day humanity in which entrepreneur Ted Faro helps mitigate the effects of climate change through green robots developed by Faro Automated Solutions (FAS). Faro soon pivots his company to military contracts, developing a line of Chariot combat robots: the Scarab (Corruptor), Khopesh (Deathbringer), and Horus (Metal Devil).
These machines were developed with an unhackable operating system that becomes problematic when a swarm of Chariot robots goes rogue. The war machines were designed to self-replicate by consuming biomass from the environment, as well as take over the programming of other machines (corrupting them, as future humans would see it). It becomes apparent to scientist Elisabet Sobeck that this swarm - which comes to be known as the Faro Plague - is unstoppable, so she spearheads Project Zero Dawn to shut it down and repopulate the planet after it has been stripped of life.
Horizon Forbidden West takes Aloy to the Greenhouse, an FAS facility on the California coastline where she and Quen ally Alva discover how the biomass-leeching technology was developed. Watching a test for this ability at the Greenhouse shows how devastating it was, though Aloy saw a glimpse while battling HADES at the end of Zero Dawn. Guerrilla's series could serve as an interesting companion to Capcom's upcoming Sunbreak expansion as a result. With Malzeno similarly able to absorb life from afar, one can only imagine how an army of the Elder Dragons would tear down civilizations akin to FAS' Chariot line.
Monster Hunter Rise is available now for PC and Switch. Its Sunbreak expansion launches on June 30, 2022.