Hunting Quest

Big Boss vs. Tigrex, in a promotional image for the Peace Walker—Monster Hunter tie-in.

Hunting Quests are a series of missions in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker that allow players to battle and defeat large monsters.The missions are unlocked by meeting the Felyne Trenya as Snake at Playa del Alba, in Extra Ops 029: Item Capture. The Hunting Quests are part of a tie-in promotion between Konami's Peace Walker and Capcom's Monster Hunter Portable 3rd; in the latter game, completing a download mission will grant players a special item, allowing them to craft armor that gives them the appearance of Snake.

Locations

Battles often take place in a location known as Isla del Monstruo, with the exception of Gear REX, which appears in multiple locations.

Monsters

There are three different monsters available. They possess different abilities which can be more or as dangerous as armored vehicles, tanks or helicopters.

• Rathalos
• Tigrex
• Gear REX

Tactics

• They can be defeated lethally or non-lethally (only via weapons that attempt to induce sleep). However, trying to tranquilize them will not visibly show how much stamina was decreased, unlike the commanders of the vehciles.
• They can be temporarily blinded by a Stun Grenade detonating near their face.

Velociprey

A few velociprey.

Velociprey that are present along with the large monsters are the monster equivalents of escorts that accompany armoured vehicles, tanks and helicopters and attempt to swarm and surround the player. They are only capable of attacking by lunging their head towards players, biting them and jumping from long places and have little health and stamina. In addition, Chico claimed that the two female pirates Anne and Mary encountered them when they stopped on Isla del Monstrua.

Felyne

A Felyne.

Felyne is a cat-like species, which Trenya is part of. A Felyne appears in the Isla del Monstruo, and by a battle cry, it may help the player by giving supplies.

In Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, an event allows the player's Felynes to wear Sneaking Suits and cardboard boxes.

Behind the scenes

The Monster Hunter missions usually can be playable at any time after making contact with Trenya. The sole exception is Extra Ops 128: Gear REX Strikes Back!, which requires that Mother Base's Intel section is increased by two levels and defeating Paz Ortega Andrade and Metal Gear ZEKE.

Defeating Rathalos, Tigrex, and Gear REX will sometimes award the player with the Rathalos Wing, the Tigrex Fang, and (depending on the specific instance that Gear REX was fought) the Gear REX mucous, Gear REX Concentrate, or the Gear REX Super Extract, respectively. Neither the game nor the supplementary materials such as the manual, however, officially list a specific method to obtaining these items, resulting in, to several fans' irritation, the items being awarded randomly between a significant amount of retries or the first time, with the former being the most common outcome. In addition, tranquilizing the three monsters under a certain time limit will result in the player being awarded uniforms based on their appearances, and to a lesser extent their abilities. As the battle reused the Vehicle/AI weapon health counter, which lacks a stamina counter (Captains/Commanders nonwithstanding), it's also difficult to see how much it is actually being affected by tranquilizers overall.

The Monster Hunter missions are the second inter-series crossover to appear in a Metal Gear game, the first being the Metal Gear Solid/Ape Escape crossover game Snake vs. Monkey in the initial releases of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Unlike Snake vs. Monkey, however, the Monster Hunter missions are accessible in the main game file, albeit unlockable under certain conditions.

The Monster Hunter missions were cited by Paul W.S. Anderson, the director of the Monster Hunter movie, to be the direct inspiration for the movie's plot.

Gallery

A velociprey.