OhBut out in the desert, the sky is starting to darken. You’re here to hunt the Doshagama, a scaly, flat-faced lion of sorts that roams the dunes in small groups – an intimidating beast. But the approaching storm suggests something bigger is on the way. Before long, a giant silhouette descends from the skies – King Dau, a horned, golden-fringed dragon with command of lightning. Are you strong enough to face him? Or is it time to run for the hills?
Monster Hunter is one of Capcom’s most successful game series, though it wasn’t always that way. When I first started playing it, back in 2006 on the PlayStation Portable, hardly anyone else was interested. It was complicated, demanding, notoriously difficult, and online play didn’t work well. Meanwhile, back in Japan, when I moved there in 2008, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing someone playing Monster Hunter on a train or in a cafe. It was 2018’s Monster Hunter: World that really turned the game into a global hit: technology had finally made possible the kind of expansive natural environment that did justice to its huge, intimidating, eminently believable monsters, and frictionless online play was a reality.
“It was a challenge to bring the series to a global level that it hadn’t been up until that point,” reflects Ryōzō Tsujimoto, who worked as a designer on the original Monster Hunter, released in Japan and North America in 2004, and has led the series ever since. “There are certain things you have to have in place to be a success on a global level that we hadn’t been doing before… One thing that might not be as visible to players is that, compared to the old days, we’re in much closer communication with our Western offices and our staff around the world, so we’re in a much better position than we were before in terms of listening to player feedback and responses to the games, and taking that into account when making decisions about how to approach the next title.”
The next game in the series, Monster Hunter Wilds, is due out next year, and its creators are eager to build on the 20 million-selling success of Monster Hunter: World. Set in an equally massive environment, with regions varying from desert to a rainforest whose waters run red, Wilds is considerably more chaotic than its predecessors, with extreme weather events and correspondingly extreme threats.
“The game has a lot of different environmental aspects,” says Wilds director Yuya Tokuda. “This time around, there are periods of plenty or abundance, where the natural world seems relatively calm and bountiful, and monsters will be hanging around the ecosystem, doing their thing. And then, as extreme weather events change, the environment becomes harsher. The gameplay itself also shifts towards high risk and high reward – there’s more going on, there are more environmental effects that can be used to harm monsters or that could cause harm to you.”
“We always want unique monster designs that look like living, breathing creatures, and not just, you know, a boss you have to defeat,” adds art director Kaname Fujioka. “We want the monster designs to reflect the environment we find them in, so it seems obvious that they would be there at that time, so our monsters are going to extremes this time around, too. Our menacing, ferocious-looking monsters are even more so than before. They have a bold silhouette and design, but they also feel like they really are a creature. There’s a level of detail we can get to now with modern hardware, like rippling muscles beneath the flesh — the kind of things that make you feel like what’s in front of you is alive.”
The sense of living creatures and a living environment is what has always made Monster Hunter stand out from the crowd of action games where you have to take down big beasts. Monsters aren’t just for hunting – there are creatures everywhere in Capcom’s world, some living in harmony with humans, some minding their own business in the environment, others aiding you in your quests. There’s the Seikret, on whose feathered back you ride. And of course, the Palicoes, the charming and brave feline companions who are like comical squires to your hunter’s knight. They can now talk, warning you of what awaits you in a fight.
The other thing that makes this series great, of course, is the feel of combat, whether it’s with a simpler weapon like a longsword or spear, or something eccentric like the Insect Glaive, a kind of spinning pole that can fire a beetle at huge monsters to steal their essence. (Here, you can carry a long-range weapon like a crossbow and a short-range weapon at once, which will add some welcome flexibility — previously, no one in my hunting squad wanted to be the gunner.)
When the hits connect, in any direction, the experience is thrilling and meaningful. When you get beaten (and you will get beaten), you always know whether it’s your gear or your skills that aren’t up to par. Any new player needs a few hours to get used to their chosen weapon and gain confidence, but more experienced players, Tokuda says, will be able to take on bigger challenges earlier in Wilds, running into the storm.
“I think this variety of environmental effects gives the player control over the kind of experience they want to have, because as you go out into the world, you can tell what conditions to expect,” he says. “If you’re heading into a storm, there’s going to be a lot going on, it gives you a lot of options. Or if you just want to target a monster on the plains, avoid trouble, and take it down at your own pace, you can do that too. I think the player will be able to set their own level of chaos.”
I couldn’t help but see a reflection of our collective climate anxiety in Wilds’ weather extremes, given that we live in times when parts of the world are burning at any given moment, and extreme storms are occurring where they never happened before. But Fujioka says this didn’t particularly matter to them. “It wasn’t really influenced by real-world conditions,” he says. “Monster Hunter has always had a history of showcasing a rich natural ecosystem. It’s obviously compressed and gamified, but we tried to express the color and bounty of nature in the game.
“This time, we wanted to expand the spectrum of possibilities, to take it to opposite ends of the same scale, to see the abundance of color and the relentless harshness even within the same area. Our desire was to see how the possibilities of play expand through that kind of expression, rather than reflecting reality.”
Like me, Tokuda has been playing Monster Hunter for nearly 20 years. He tells me that his experiences with the first game made him want to become a game developer and join Capcom. He was greatly inspired by it and is now inspired by the increasingly cross-generational nature of the game. He looks forward to welcoming even more players into the extreme world of Wilds.
“We’ve always had friends recommending the game to each other, but now we have kids who have seen their parents playing it and want to try it out,” he says. “There are a lot of veterans on the team, but there are also people who were inspired to get into the industry by playing this game.
“It was a huge relief and vindication, in a way, when Monster Hunter: World became such a huge success, because it showed that we were heading in the right direction and taking the right steps to open up the game to more players. And with Monster Hunter Wilds, I want to continue working to make the game even more open, so that all kinds of players can participate.”
