Capcom has had such an amazing run for the past few years. At Summer Games Fest, we got to see a demo of their next big game in Monster Hunter Wilds. As someone who has only dabbled a bit into previous Monster Hunter games, Monster Hunter Wilds had me hook line and sinker wanting to jump in and play it since it looked so amazing.
The demo we got to see was manned by the game’s director where he took on a hunt in the game’s Windward Plains. The map of the game is over twice as big as the previous map and, when you pull it up, there’s so much information displayed such as monster locations, items, and quests. In this demo, the task was to hunt the newest revealed monster; the Alpha Doshaguma. He didn’t start a quest at the hunt board or via an NPC. He just found the monster on the map and started attacking. Once he attacked enough, it automatically triggered the start of the mission.
Battling the monster was an intense fight that you would expect in Monster Hunter. First, the fight started while the monster was still surrounded by a herd of other Doshaguma. Thus, it became overwhelming odds for the Hunter, so he led the herd to the territory of another monster that basically wiped out all the lesser monsters of the herd and leaving it one vs one again. As the fight drug on, there would be points where red markers would appear which are wounds where you can deal additional damage.
Then, we got to see the game’s natural weather system as a massive sandstorm blew into the area. When the storm was changing, all lesser monsters disappeared from the are only leaving the more aggressive types. That lead to him leading the monster to another one which caused a massive fight that was visually crazy to watch. As the fight progressed, the weather lifted which lead to a weather condition known as The Plenty. This weather is very nice and far more herbivores and healing monster appear.
We finally came close to the end of the fight where the director called in a group of NPC bots to join in on the hunt. In the game, you’ll be able to team up with three other players, on any platform since this game will feature cross play, instead of bots. However, bots aren’t bad with barely doing damage. They are aggressive and know what you’re doing as the director placed a trap down and wanted to lead the monster to it. The bots knew this and also tried to help. This all lead to a satisfying ending where he finally toppled the monster.
Overall, Monster Hunter Wilds looks like an amazing experience. From the graphics to the gameplay to the sense of scale and spectacle that is the hunt, Monster Hunter Wilds is guaranteed to be another juggernaut from Capcom when it releases next year.