How Monster Hunter Wilds Keeps the Franchise Familiar and Fresh

Many of the monsters seen in Monster Hunter Wilds so far are new, which helps keep things fresh for players. Another way the game achieves freshness for returning hunters is that it develops closer and closer to the ideal Monster Hunter game each generation, as technology improves and allows for the result to grow closer and closer to the vision. Monster Hunter Wilds is, to say the least, a leap in that direction.

At the recent Monster Hunter Wilds preview event, Game Rant spoke with executive director/art director Kaname Fujioka (via a translator) about how Capcom approaches designing new monsters but also how it treats returning monsters. A lot of it comes down to technological limitations that Capcom no longer has, letting them better fulfill the monster’s vision.

Keeping Monster Hunter Wilds Players Sharp

As technology takes steps forward, Fujioka explained, it allows the team to refine the vision of what a Monster Hunter game ought to be: how it ought to feel, how it ought to look, and how monsters ought to behave. Wilds carries forward a lot from the beloved Monster Hunter World, for instance, but sharpened with new tools in the developers’ kit.

Obviously, as time progresses, we have new technology and new ways of illustrating things that we couldn’t do in the past. For past titles, we have designs and animations that we wanted to do back then, but we couldn’t really do it because of technological issues. But when we developed titles, there was always a higher expectation of what we could reach now that many things are more capable than what we had in the past.

A good example of this from a gameplay perspective is the weather system in Wilds, which changes monster behavior, creates hazards in the environment, and even changes NPC behaviors in the game’s settlements. And long-time fans of the series will relish the ever-more tantalizing cooking animations that become more beautiful with time. Monster Hunter Wilds’ cheese pull, specifically, is something that needs to be seen.

Refining the Monster Hunting in Wilds

But one of the most important things for hunters is, clearly, the monsters. Keeping encounters with monsters fresh and interesting is a critical thing for Capcom to achieve to make each iteration of Monster Hunter feel special. Fujioka explained how monsters new and old have been designed in Wilds to ensure a quality player experience. This, of course, has to balance its tension with needing to remain recognizably Monster Hunter in execution. As Fujioka said,

When we have new monsters, we focus on how they live alongside the environment and how they live in the ecology that it is in. We don’t just think about the monster, but we also think about the environment that the monster lives in and the relationship the monster has with that environment…When we have returning monsters, we go back to what we really wanted to do back then, what we felt was important in illustrating that monster. Using the technology we have right now, we look at how we can brush up the monster.

This balance will satisfy long-time hunters seeking both a familiar but fresh challenge in Monster Hunter Wilds, and it can be seen as a series tradition. One of the few monsters confirmed to return is practically a series poster beast: Rathalos. Rathalos is so popular it has appeared in Final Fantasy 14, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Arknights, among other games. But within the mainline series of Monster Hunter, Rathalos has appeared in 18 titles.

By just watching the continued evolution of Rathalos, the design ethos behind bringing forward monsters from older titles is plain to see, and it tracks well with what Fujioka said about the growth of technology. As each game comes out, Rathalos becomes closer and closer to the ideal Rathalos, which brings new challenges from familiar fights and keeps the game new and exciting even to the most seasoned hunters. Players looking to see what Rathalos and other returning monsters will be like in Monster Hunter Wilds only have to wait until February 28 to sink their teeth in–or more likely have the great beast sink its claws into them.