Monster Hunter Wilds is full of new biomes that you can bend to your will

The Monster Hunter series has introduced players to a number of terrifying biomes over the years. Coming soon Monster Hunter Worldinvites you to live in an ecosystem with its own rules and cycles – and its own retaliation against your hostile presence.

In a hands-off session presented by Capcom during the Summer Game Fest 2024, the developer demonstrated the planning and execution of a hunt for about 40 minutes. In addition to some promising iterations of mechanics seen in recent entries – mainly from Monster Hunter World And Monster Hunter Rise — wilderness places greater emphasis on presenting environments that are full of life and considering how your actions affect those environments.

The demo began with a quick look at the new central hub. The feline Palicoes are back, running the stalls where you craft and upgrade gear, cook and feast on meals to gain pre-hunt buffs, and take requests. Once you start an expedition, however, the structure is substantially different.

In older Monster Hunter games, the hub served as the starting point for all missions. You would often select a mission, grab whatever you needed, and the objective would automatically take you to another location for a set amount of time – and the whole thing would repeat. Later installments, depending on the mission type, played with the idea of ​​a more free-form approach that allowed you to do multiple hunts or gather resources in one playthrough in a contiguous area.

Image: Capcom

wilderness leans so absurdly into this approach that the hub almost becomes an afterthought. As the developer running the demo explained, you can stay on a map for as long as you want or need. Missions begin once you manually start the objective, such as by attacking the monster you need to attack. Once you’re done, a flashy “Mission Complete” screen appears and you can continue on your way.

Shortly after the protester reached the Windward Plains biome, a series of notifications appeared on the screen, indicating the appearance of monsters and other important details. Over time, their frequency became a bit too much for me. It’s not as bad as a social media feed – and certainly less toxic – but I hope that in the final game there will be options to filter information so that you’re only notified of what you need, rather than knowing everything that’s happening on the map while trying not to get trampled or set on fire.

If you just consider how much happens, but the notifications also seem like a necessary evil. A day and night cycle and weather conditions determine what you’ll encounter on a map at any given time – not just whether the Rathalos you need to defeat to craft a new pair of boots is flying around, but also what resources and smaller wildlife you can find.

There are some extreme weather conditions that heavily affect the entire map. The demo took place in a desert-like biome that was quickly overshadowed by a sandstorm. This storm also resulted in random lightning strikes that turned a beautiful landscape into a series of death traps. The wildlife was quick to notice as well, with some monsters fleeing to their nests in a cave for protection and birds flying away from trees.

Image: Capcom

Such conditions may lose their element of surprise after a while. Much like notifications, I can imagine sandstorms becoming annoying when you’re hit by them every 15 minutes. However, if the finished game is paced properly, the illusion of this living, breathing ecosystem will be much more believable.

Players can also take advantage of the environment and its dangers when hunting. Monster Hunter Worldyou can use your gadgets to set traps in the environment, such as luring a creature that’s been chasing you to a pile of rocks, which then falls from the ceiling of a cave onto its head. There are also other recurring mechanics, such as monsters fighting each other, that seem to tie into the biomes’ protagonist role in a nice way; for example, one monster in the demo created a sand pit beneath the sand that became a trap for other nearby creatures to get sucked in. I’m also curious to see how the herd system, where a group of creatures of the same type patrol together with an alpha leading the attack, will play out in the final game.

It is difficult to judge how the overall experience of wilderness will feel a little tedious considering that repetition is a pillar of the series. Some of the new additions seem to surprise the player at first glance, but one doesn’t know how much they will affect your subsequent visits. However, from the little presentation I saw, it seems that the new structure of the biomes invites you to stay for quite a while, especially with the new mounts that speed up traversal.

After the improvements made to the series in recent years, putting the focus on the spaces where you wreak havoc seems like the logical next step. With all the wonderful detail packed into the biomes, I hope there is a stronger message about the environmental impact of taming not just wildlife, but an entire ecosystem, using its resources and rules to your advantage. As much as I enjoyed seeing Palicoes making cheese next to a monster farm, or baby versions of creatures in their nests, Monster Hunter was never about sightseeing. Even though the environments of wilderness pose a challenge, in addition to the already deadly creatures that inhabit them, the tools available to overcome these obstacles are becoming more and more numerous. Once again, it seems that the point of the game is to damage the ecosystem in order to create better equipment and become more successful in hunting.

Monster Hunter World will be released sometime in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.