Based on the first trailer, Monster Hunter Wilds is looking INCREDIBLE. I’m excited to talk about some of what was shown, and what I’m expecting to see more of.

But first, please consider subscribing to this blog. This is a new adventure for me; I have a lot of Monster Hunter worms in my brain and I’m looking forward to expressing some of them here.

I’m also somewhat active on mastodon where I post monster hunter and game development stuff. My game dev blog is here: https://nuzcraft.substack.com. Finally, I try to cross post everything to my website https://nuzcraft.com.

Overall Opinion

It looks great. Each of the MH games has their own artistic flair, and based on this trailer we’re in for a treat with the visuals. The monsters and combat look great as well. I am happy to see all new monsters with interesting movements and mechanics as well as a more methodical and intentional combat style when compared to what we’ve seen in MH Rise. I’m very interested in learning more about the story, especially with the plethora of callbacks to MH 4. We also see a glimpse of a baby pukei-pukei, which is utterly adorable, and may point to the return of something similar to the MH World endemic life system. The hunter and palico will be fully voiced, which is an interesting change that I’m not sold on yet.

Combat

The combat we see from the hunter looks similar to that of MH World with some cool new moves. If MH Rise added some speed and pizazz to the series, this (for now) looks to have turned it back a notch. It’s possible that the somewhat less stylized visuals make things feel more grounded. The website gave some details about Focus Mode, but not nearly enough to feel like the mode is understood. Suffice to say that the focus mode moves look dang cool. The slinger is back in some form, and it may be tied to focus mode somehow. We may be relying on the seikret for vertical movement instead of the slinger or wirebugs. The seikret may also serve as a substitute non-combat palamute (MH Rise) or as a more advanced raider ride (MH World). We see the ability to swap weapons while riding the seikret as well as use items and attack coming off of it, so while it may pull inspiration from palamutes and raider rides, it will more likely be its own thing.

Monsters

The trailer shows 2 brand new large monsters: the Doshaguma and Chatacabra. Doshaguma looks to me like a giant cross between a bear and a dog of some kind? They seem to stick together in packs, so there are potentially different kinds of doshaguma. I don’t like their faces, I think because I can’t really see the eyes. As we get more information on them, I may change my mind, but for now I’m not enthralled. Chatacabra, on the other hand, looks like a wonderful strong frog. I have a soft spot for monsters with big tongues and immediately thought of pukei-pukei when I saw this one. Combat wise, both monsters look to have slower, heavier hitting movesets, with the doshaguma using its pack and the chatacabra using its saliva to gain an advantage. Throughout the trailer, we also see a bunch of other ‘small’ monsters. Some of them are actually small and some like the ceratonoth are still huge. Regardless, we see that horde/herd mechanics are going to be very important in this game, with lots of monsters moving together and reacting to threats or storms. It’s possible that some of the smaller monsters we saw will be more like the ‘endemic life’ of MH World. Even though it wasn’t shown in the trailer, the sand ship at the beginning had me thinking that we might see Jhen Moran or Dah’ren Moran return from MH4U, which would be really cool.

Story and Callbacks

The trailer introduces us to Gemma the smithy and Alma the handler as companions on our adventure. I really like the designs for both of them. We are also introduced to some of the story surrounding the boy, Nata, and something or someone that we’re looking for in the Forbidden Lands. MH World had a strong focus on the locales in story progression, and we might see something similar with this game. Now, I have to call out MH4, as the trailer has A LOT of references to that game specifically. Gemma might be an older version of Little Miss Forge - she’s a smithy sporting the same hairstyle wearing the Caravaneer’s jacket with a plush yian kut-ku from the Guildmarm. In a flashback, we see a man who looks a lot like the Ace Lancer giving the hunter this assignment. Back in MH World Iceborne, we got some exposition on Aiden (the Ace Cadet) and a glimmer of information on Julius (the Ace Commander), so it’s possible the MH team is looking to use those characters again! Don’t forget about the Netflix movie Legends of the Guild where we saw a bunch of these same characters!

What’s Next?

• My history with the series
• Summaries of what I’m currently playing: MH4U and Sunbreak
• A guide to modded MHFU emulation
• MH Stories?
• Follow-up with more MH Wilds news/speculation
• Ideas for some Monster zines
• WILD HEARTZ?

Image Credits: monsterhunter.com & ign.com