Monster Hunter Wilds looks to be a bold statement about the series’ past, present, and future

I could have already told you with almost certainty Wild Monster Hunters will end up being my most played game in 2025, and if you know my history, there’s no surprise. There’s always been something in the monster hunting gameplay loop about getting better gear just to hunt even stronger monsters; especially once you find yourself in the classic feedback loop of wanting to hunt another monster first, creating comically large chains of dominoes to the point that you might even forget your goal in the first place. This fundamental ideal of preparation and sticking to your goals, to the extent that you might end up creating loads specific to your brand. I always think about how I kept a Spear built in Monster Hunter World for the sole purpose of hunting Diablos, and how that feels like quintessential Monster Hunter – at least to me.

Mainstream monster hunters have always excelled at pushing the boundaries of the connection between the player, the world, and the monsters that inhabit it; Monster Hunter Dos added the day and night modifiers in addition to the short-lived seasons system, expanding the conditions in which hunters can fight. Monster Hunter 4 freed players from Earth, opening up a much more vertical level design than previously seen in the series. Of course, Monster Hunter World placed emphasis on the biomes themselves and everything that lived there – an ecosystem that players inserted themselves into, rather than a flat game world in which they reigned supreme.

My first thoughts after sitting down to watch a full hunt in Monster Hunter Wilds weren’t so much about how the game clearly exists as an evolution of the world’s ideas, oddly enough – but more about a quaint fishing village of Monster Hunter Tri and 3U. I can’t help but see a trace of the lineage of these games, and it’s not just because we know Wilds reintroduces the Leviathan skeleton type. Rather, it’s about how some of the ideas from the era seem to be re-explored and potentially fully realized now that the hardware has caught up with that vision.

While players could go on expeditions in Monster Hunter World, Generation 3 was the first time that players could simply walk out of a village and straight into the wilderness. It was an enlightening idea at the time, especially coming from Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on the PSP. Back then, preparations were much more of a chore – and much more necessary between hunts. Yet at the same time, those same drawbacks helped ground you in the game world and really made you feel like you were playing the role of a self-sufficient hunter every time you returned to the farm and manually take care of your installations.

In many ways, what we’ve been shown of Wilds seems to me to be a return to those same ideals. While players can still travel back and forth from pre-established camps, with the new scope of environments and weather effects – not to mention the vastly increased monster density – we’ve been told it’s possible that these camps are destroyed and it is necessary to destroy them. be rebuilt periodically. Players can now prepare a meal anywhere, but will need to provide the ingredients for the buffs they desire. Maybe you grab a specific type of cheese from the cheesemonger before you walk through the doors; It wouldn’t shock me if some ingredients could also only be found in the field.

For the first time in the series’ history, leaving a village’s gates to embark on a hunt feels seamless, with the villages becoming part of their surrounding environment. As a sandstorm approaches, you may notice fewer NPCs in town, as they hide for the storm; Before our presentation, I wasn’t really sure how Wilds was supposed to evoke a World expansion as a subtitle, but I think I now understand what the team was going for. There is a kind of chaotic beauty in the idea that the world itself is actively changing around you and that in turn you must be willing to adapt and prepare for it.

On that note, Monster Hunter Wilds is not open world; the maps are still large areas, although this time they are advertised as being about twice as large as the World maps. My best comparison would be something akin to a Xenoblade zone mixed with the biomes of Monster Hunter World, given how they too adapt and change over time – with things like weather effects having an impact particularly strong on the environment. We’ve all seen the raging sandstorms in caravans, and some monsters in particular will appear in these conditions; one of which, I suppose, might just be the game’s flagship monster.

Some other changes I noticed while watching the gameplay demo were more subtle, and many of them were impossible to assess with the given context. We already knew about Focus Mode offering new abilities for weapons, but it’s also presented as a way to target a monster’s wounds – a system clearly derived from Iceborne’s clutch claw mechanics due not only to of the concept alone, but also of the same visual flourishing on the damage figures. . On the face of it, there should be a lot less emphasis on monopolizing attention on a hunt, although of course I’m very curious to learn more in the coming weeks and months about exactly how it works .

Likewise, endemic life has clearly made a comeback – and with that, I must sadly announce that everyone’s favorite baby Pukei-Pukei was actually an unrelated bird upon closer inspection. I imagine players can still capture endemic life for their personal use, although with the demo’s limited time and scope we weren’t able to verify any of that for sure outside of the items obvious ones related to gameplay. Likewise, the environmental reactions are still relevant, with poor Doshaguma flattened by a frankly ridiculous amount of stalactites during our demonstration.

It feels like we’re finally reaching the point where the full scope of the game starts to come into its own; it was easy enough to figure out what World was looking for at the reveal, but admittedly I’d had a hard time pinpointing exactly what Wilds was looking for until now. I’m not sure how all of these changes will affect specific fans, but one thing I can say is this: Monster Hunter World is currently my favorite game of all time. I have devoted more than a thousand hours to it and I have not regretted a single one. While it’s definitely too early to say anything definitive, especially without having had the opportunity to play properly for myself, I wouldn’t be shocked if this ranking changes next year. We will see how things develop in the full version, when it launches in 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam).