Monster Hunter Wilds Doesn’t Sacrifice Depth In Streamlining The Experience

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Monster Hunter Wilds Doesn’t Sacrifice Depth In Streamlining The Experience

******* under Capcom’s Osaka, Japan headquarters is a small foley studio. Dozens–if not hundreds–of shoes are tucked into cubbies outside the door. Inside, the space looks more like an antique store than the high-end recording studio responsible for the sound effects from nearly every Capcom game. The walls are adorned with household appliances, fabrics, and tools of every kind. The foley artist that greets us is holding what appears to be a PVC pipe with a mouth piece haphazardly mounted onto the side of it. The team calls this strange gray tube Murmurs of a King; it’s an instrument Capcom created specifically for the Rey Dau, a ferocious ****** that players will hunt in Monster Hunter Wilds.

Unlike most instruments, Murmurs of a King does not sound pleasant. Its bass-y screeches don’t even sound like an imposing monster, at least at first. After recording the instrument a few times, a sound editor goes to work and within minutes they’ve created a guttural monster’s cry. This approach to monster sound design is new for the series, they tell us. While 2018’s Monster Hunter World used natural sounds from real animals, the team wanted the monsters to feel imposing and unfamiliar in Wilds.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to square up with the Rey Dau during my five-hour play session, but under-the-hood changes like these were emblematic of my experience. Monster Hunter Wilds is still a Monster Hunter game; ******** monsters net you monster parts that can be used to craft new armor and upgrade weapons, iconic weapons like the Switch-Axe and Insect Glaive return, and hunts can be undertaken with up to three friends. However, what makes Wilds so enticing is how Capcom has streamlined the experience without sacrificing its depth.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Chief among these changes is the seamless open world. Up until now, Monster Hunter’s hub area has been cordoned off from its hunting maps. In between each hunt, you’d load back into the hub, craft armor, upgrade weapons, cook meals, and pick up new quests before loading into another hunt. In Wilds, however, everything is connected. This may seem like a small change, but it fundamentally changes the pace of the Monster Hunter experience. Hunts begin and end organically–if there’s a specific monster you want to ******, you pull up your map, mark its location, and track it down. Once you’ve defeated the ******, you can continue exploring the world or fast travel back to camp.

To help you get around the world, you have a trusty steed called a Seikret. Like the Palamute from Monster Hunter Rise, Seikrets can be summoned at any time and–aside from fast traveling–are the most efficient way to get around the game world. Your Seikret can even auto-path to your destination so you can heal up and sharpen your weapons without dismounting. The auto-pathing feature was a little unreliable during the preview, so I didn’t use it much–we’ll have to wait and see if the feature works as intended at launch. Unlike Monster Hunter Rise, though, Wilds is much ******* in scale. Wilds’ first area, the Windward Plains, is significantly ******* than the Shrine Ruins from Rise. While Capcom hasn’t officially revealed the scale of Wilds, it seems like there will be plenty more to explore and your Seikret will be an instrumental part of that.

Hunts begin and end organically–if there’s a specific monster you want to ******, you pull up your map, mark its location, and track it down.

Alongside Wilds’ ******* world, it introduces seasons called Fallow and Plenty. In between each season, there’s a turbulent ******* called Inclemency. The environment, the fauna, and monster behaviors change depending on the season. During the Fallow season, the environment is more barren and monsters might be more aggressive as they hunt for food. During Plenty, the world is lush and monsters may be a little more docile. These seasons could make the world itself feel more dynamic, but I didn’t play enough to really dig into this feature or see its impact. However, for one quest I did get to experience the Inclemency *******, which is a spectacle. A huge storm formed over the Windward Plains and bolts of lightning crashed into the sand as I chased and fought the Alpha Doshaguma, which is the first major hunt of the story.

During this hunt, other changes that Capcom made further enabled the seamless open-world structure. For example, your Seikret can carry a backup ******* you can swap to in the field. According to game director Yuya Tokuda, “Once a quest is over, [the instance] is not over. You can seamlessly continue to the next quest, so the situation is constantly changing, and we found it hard to go with one *******.” This should make it easier for players to continue their journey without having to return to camp after each hunt. Admittedly, I didn’t test out this feature because I was having way too much fun bopping monsters on the head with the hammer.

Monster Hunter Wilds

In another attempt to streamline the experience, Monster Hunter Wilds also adds a portable grill that lets you cook food while out in the world. As far as I could tell, meals work the same as they did in previous entries, but now you don’t need to return to the hub area after each hunt to re-up your passive bonuses. As long as you find a safe spot to cook, you can set up your grill and cook tasty-looking meals.

A change that might be more controversial is the reduction in length of hunts in Wilds. While the fights were still intense, many of the hunts felt shorter than they have in previous games. According to the director, this was intentional. However, Capcom didn’t make the monsters easier or shrink their health pools. Instead, the focus mode and injury system are what speeds up the fights. Focus mode lets you pinpoint injuries and aim your ******* at said injuries. Attacking an injury will do extra damage, potentially stunning the monster, and causing them to drop more monster parts. If you’ve lined your crosshair up on an injury, you can even unleash a powerful Focus ***** that will knock the monster over.

In previous Monster Hunter games, I’d typically identify the safest spot to ******* a monster, but Focus Mode had me circling my foes looking for any injury I could exploit. It’s a smart system that forces you to ****** a monster from every angle, and adds a bit more risk and reward to what could otherwise be a simple ******. If you target a monster’s injuries, you’ll do more damage which could speed up the battle, but doing so could put you in a precarious position.

During my session, I fought seven monsters, and each ****** felt dynamic, deadly, and impressive. In addition to the monsters from the beta, I fought four additional monsters: The Quematrice, an oil-spitting wyvern; the Congalala, a gassy baboon first introduced in Monster Hunter 2; the Lala Barina, a red spider-like creature; and the Uth Duna, a flowing water wyvern. The highlight was the Lala Barina. Its erratic movements, weird shape, and swift attacks made it a formidable opponent. Identifying and exploiting its injuries was key to slowing the best down, but its speed and aggression made its injuries difficult to pinpoint.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Part of what makes these monsters so imposing are their animations. After our gameplay demo, Capcom gave us a tour of their motion-capture studio and showed us how they create and iterate on their animations in real time. Two actors covered head to toe in ****** tights stood in the center of the room surrounded by a team of capture artists. One was a hunter toting a foam greatsword. The other took on the role of the monster. After the director called action, the two actors duked it out. The monster actor was on all fours taking swipes at the hunter, while the hunter swung his foam greatsword with flourishes you’d expect to see in a Monster Hunter game.

Within seconds, a tech team in the back of the studio had the scene up and running in Capcom’s proprietary game engine. As good as it looked, the work is far from over. After a motion-capture ******, the raw animations are disseminated to animators who go in and adjust the animations to make them feel more fluid during gameplay. Of course, there are some animations that can’t be done in a motion-capture studio and require animators to create animations from scratch. These animations tend to be ones that require impossible acrobatics, such as the Insect Glaive’s aerial combos. There is clearly a lot of care and attention put into making monsters feel unique and distinct, and the process also allows developers to experiment with strange and unexpected movements that could catch players off guard and put their skills to the test.

The work Capcom has put into streamlining the multiplayer experience–something that the series has needed for a while–was equally impressive. Folks who played the recent beta likely already have a good idea how it works, but it seems Capcom is doubling down on that seamless experience thanks to the Link Party system, which keeps a group together throughout multiple hunts and quests.

Monster Hunter Wilds

If you do end up getting overwhelmed by a monster, you can ***** off an **** flare and other player-controlled hunters can come to your aid. However, in Monster Hunter Wilds, you can also call on support from NPC hunters that consist of key characters from the main story. While they may not be as useful as player-controlled hunters, they were certainly competent enough to be beneficial. They’d draw aggro, deal decent damage, and keep things from getting too out of hand. While it’s hard to say how useful they will be for tougher fights, I suspect they will be a great addition for players who want to experience Monster Hunter Wilds by themselves.

Wilds feels like a logical step forward for the Monster Hunter series. While the core gameplay ******** the same, Capcom’s efforts to streamline all of its surrounding systems and structure could make for one of the most compelling Monster Hunter games to date. It’s still hard to say how all of these new and updated mechanics come together over dozens of hours of playtime, but it’s exciting to see these changes nonetheless and think about the potential it could have for welcoming new players into the community. Monster Hunter Wilds comes to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on February 24, 2025.

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