The Monster Hunter series may be known for hunting monstrous beasts, but Capcom wishes to emphasize the game’s central theme: the relationship between hunters and nature. Read on to find out more about what’s coming for Monster Hunter Wilds!
Monster Hunter Wilds Will Focus On Humans And Nature
A Deeper Understanding Of What It Means To Be A Hunter
The Monster Hunter series reinforces the fact that you’re a good hunter, making sure that monsters and humans in their universe work together in a symbiotic relationship—and the development team at Capcom are pushing for that theme to be more showcased, as well as giving the player character a bit more personality.
The thematic focus of Monster Hunter Wilds (MH Wilds) will be the overarching relationship between the world’s nature and the people living in that environment. "The relationship between people, nature, and monsters, and what exactly is a hunter's role in a world like that…We wanted to illustrate that not just through the gameplay, but a very deep story. There are many other things we have planned down the line that are aligned to the concept of Monster Hunter Wilds, and we're confident this game was able to achieve what we wanted to express with it," said game director Yuya Tokuda to an interview with PC Gamer.
For that to happen, there will be more focus on dialogue in the upcoming game, which enables players to bring out more personality into their hunter characters. Tokuda noted that in Wilds, there are various people living in that world, all from different walks of life and with different perspectives. He took the characters Nata and Olivia as an example, for they come from differing backgrounds and would want to tackle the monster situation their own way. "There are many people with different perspectives living all together. And we also wanted to illustrate how the hunter would feel in a world like that. What would they feel? How would they think? Everybody is different, so we decided to add those kinds of elements to Monster Hunter Wilds."
This feature is rather new as the series traditionally has silent protagonists for players to control and minimal dialogue choices. However, for hunters who prefer the silent character and will focus more on gameplay, this shift of focus will not be at the expense of the combat system.
"There may be players who prefer to skip all that and just go keep on hunting the next monster—that's possible too. The volume of the text that's available in the game will not affect the number of monsters available, so we can satisfy everybody," Tokuda reassured. This seems to just be the beginning, as the director also shared that they have "many other things planned down the line" that centers on the core theme of human and nature’s bond with one another.
If you’re interested in a deeper understanding of how Monster Hunter’’s underlying themes and narrative goes, check out Game8’s featured article on What Monster Hunter Is Really About.
The highly-anticipated title is set for release on February 28th for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and is notable for being the first Monster Hunter title to feature an open-world concept.
