If there is any game that is most anticipated in 2025, then Monster Hunter Wilds is definitely one of them. Monster Hunter series first met players on PS2 in 2004. In the 21 years since then, more and more players have recognized the charm of Monster Hunter series.
Although the series has a history of 20 years, when hunters hear Monster Hunter, the core gameplay that comes to their minds has never changed: hunting huge monsters, stripping monster materials, making equipment, and then devoting themselves to the next hunt.
But at the same time, few series can reflect the benefits of hardware upgrades as intuitively as Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter World in 2018 broke the traditional map format of the series, allowing players to explore the mission stage freely without waiting for loading when changing zones. It also brought other changes, big and small, but the enthusiasm of old players remained unabated, and ultimately helped the game become a global hit.
Confidence Brought By Monster Hunter World
The development team believes that the most critical turning point of this series in recent years is the new Monster Hunter World that breaks the traditional map. Although Monster Hunter series has already had many fans around the world before, these fans account for a small proportion compared to local Japanese players. It is Monster Hunter World that really brings this series to more players.
Monster Hunter World and Wilds game director Yuya Tokuda said: In games like Monster Hunter, players need to collect materials repeatedly, so the gameplay cycle is essentially a bit like agricultural activities. Some people told him that they think this kind of gameplay is difficult to impress global players.
During the development of Monster Hunter World, the most popular games in the world are still shooting games and multiplayer competitive games, and Monster Hunter World, a game that cooperates to resist monsters, seems a bit different. During that period, the developers had seriously thought about how to make more players like Monster Hunter.
They are very confident in the Japanese aesthetics of Monster Hunter, but at that time, cooperative games were not mainstream in the player market. If the cooperative game mode cannot attract other players, the development team must rethink the game format of Monster Hunter series.
After World was released, it received a lot of support from players and became a global hit. Yuya Tokuda said that after seeing the players’ response to World, he became more confident in his belief in the core fun of Monster Hunter.
Thanks to World, the developers were able to reaffirm that they did not make mistakes in the core elements of Monster Hunter, which strengthened their confidence. It is precisely because of the experience of World that the developers can take the next step in the development of Wilds with confidence and boldness, further improving the core gameplay and creating a more attractive game.
The development team has always had a firm belief in the charm of Monster Hunter and its core elements. After the update work of World came to an end, they struck while the iron was hot and started to develop Wilds. The development team said that at the beginning, their main task was to test feasible technologies with a small team.
The development team knew that when the game was released, the platform it was on would be more powerful, so their task was to depict the world of Monster Hunter with the technology that would be available at that time.
How to make full use of the possibilities provided by the new generation of consoles while making full use of their achievements in World? How to further develop the series with the possibilities provided by the new consoles? When talking about these topics, the developers repeatedly mentioned a key word: immersion.
Throughout Monster Hunter series, the developers have always envisioned a game design that allows players to fully immerse themselves in hunting, so that players can feel that they have become hunters and have entered the carefully portrayed ecosystem of Monster Hunter. In World, the ecosystem that is like the real World is the product of the development team’s efforts, and this is also the favorite part of Monster Hunter World players.
After repeated technical verification, the development team realized that they could finally realize their long-cherished vision of Monster Hunter: seamless maps and environments that change over time. This allows them to portray the ecosystems where monsters and hunters are located in more detail, further enhancing immersion. Depicting Monster Hunter World in a more nuanced way also allows Wilds to reflect the position of humans in the ecosystem.
Benevolence and cruelty coexist - these are the two sides of nature, said Yuya Tokuda when talking about the world of Monster Hunter Wilds. By depicting these two sides, they hope to create a real and vivid world that will include humans living in it, such as hunters, and reflect the interactive relationship between humans and nature.
Drama
Although Monster Hunter Wilds inherits the traditional Monster Hunter gameplay loop, that is, accepting quests and then conquering corresponding monsters, the developers hope to introduce additional elements in this process.
The scenery in front of the hunters will change at any time, providing hunters with a dramatic experience and making hunters feel immersed in the game world. This is easy to say, but it is not easy to achieve it in video games.
In the eyes of several developers, it is not the form of the game that is important, but the form of each experience that players go through. Since the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds, many players have begun to call this game open world version of Monster Hunter after seeing the seamless map, real-time changing environment, and various other new elements.
Friendlier, Not Easier
When talking about the experience that World brought them, the developers said that many players who gave up World halfway gave up the game before touching the real Monster Hunter experience. They believe that there are many reasons behind this, but some of them may be that they can’t find monsters, or don’t know how to deal with them, or the weapons they bring are not suitable for them. In Wilds, they are very careful to guide players to feel the fun of Monster Hunter without changing the core of the series.
The developers have firm confidence in the fun of this core gameplay. The changes made in World and the improvements made in Wilds are all aimed at bringing the fun of Monster Hunter to more players. For this reason, the difficulty of Wilds is generally maintained at the same level as World.
The development team never seems to have considered lowering the threshold by weakening the strength of monsters. They have full confidence in those players who decide to step into Monster Hunter World, and they don’t want to weaken the fun that hunters can enjoy in the end. Instead of the simplest way to expand the audience, they thought about the player’s experience and designed the game based on that.
Communication
Another key element of Monster Hunter is communication between hunters. Monster Hunter was designed from the beginning to be an action game that can be enjoyed by other players and communicate with each other. This concept has continued since 2004.
From the beginning, the development team wanted to create an action game that can be enjoyed with others, both in the game settings and the gameplay. They focused on how much fun Monster Hunter can provide players through the action experience and how well players can interact with monsters. Monster Hunter is unique in that it can provide a deep action experience, whether playing alone or with 3 teammates. The expansion of Wilds to 100-player rooms based on the 16-player room in World is to allow hunters to communicate better.
The developers have a firm belief in the fun of Monster Hunter. They are convinced that hunters from all over the world will love Monster Hunter. While keeping the core fun unchanged, they continue to use hardware advances to lead hunters to new horizons. After making a leap forward with World, they launched Wilds again, hoping that this game can take Monster Hunter to the next level.
