I’m, by any lifelike metric, pretty new to the Monster Hunter sequence. I held off enjoying the video games for years, as a result of they have been locked to handheld consoles I didn’t care about – and so they frankly regarded like they ran like s**t.
Monster Hunter World was my first, and it’s what made me fall in love with the sequence; I’ve been a fan ever since. I’ve over two dozen hours into Wilds as I write this, and I made a decision to mainline the marketing campaign earlier than fussing about with sidequests. And boy, was that such a let down.
Monster Hunter campaigns aren’t recognized for his or her narrative chops or intelligent setups. They principally exist to shepherd you thru tutorials of the various, many, many techniques and mechanics you’re going to depend on in your subsequent 100+ hours. Structurally, they function a tour of every sport’s menagerie.
They all the time play out like this: your squad is on the hunt for a mysterious monster whose presence is affecting the areas of the world you get dragged into. On their path, you retain getting interrupted by another monsters, earlier than you lastly be taught what’s brought on your unique goal to blah blah blah. You attain the large fella, have a showdown with it, and the marketing campaign is over. You’re then launched to Excessive Rank and the precise sport of Monster Hunter begins.
In a really broad sense, that description suits the marketing campaign of Wilds’ about in addition to it does World’s. The specifics, nonetheless, fluctuate tremendously – and it’s in these lacking particulars that one marketing campaign could make for a compelling journey and the opposite barely registers.
The thrust of World’s marketing campaign is what made it nice. Zorah Magdaros was a brand new kind of monster, so colossal in measurement that it wanted a whole village of individuals merely to gradual it down. This factor is massive sufficient that you can combat a number of monsters on its again and there’d nonetheless be room for extra.
Clearly, this was am formidable endeavor for the staff; an try to introduce a brand new kind of encounter to Monster Hunter. Most individuals didn’t prefer it. Combating Zorah Magdaros concerned plenty of establishing elaborate ramparts to gradual it down; working to load up cannons to chip away at its well being, and usually do issues which can be very not like what you come to Monster Hunter for.
I, nonetheless, appreciated them exactly due to that. See, Zorah’s decidedly completely different gameplay segments not solely managed to interrupt any monotony of preventing one monster after the opposite within the marketing campaign earlier than it may set in, the sport additionally used its journey by means of the world as a option to advance the narrative.
Each time it might transfer to a brand new space of the map, that half could be unlocked so that you can discover. And every time you probably did that, you’d see firsthand the impact it is had on the native ecology. The sport saved you at the hours of darkness for nearly the whole lot of the marketing campaign in regards to the true function of Zorah’s migration, however the chase gave the story some urgency and an attractive thriller to be taught.
Now, evaluate that to the Wilds marketing campaign. There’s no Zorah, no bigger looming risk. Arkveld, the flagship monster of this specific sport, reveals up right here and there to do one thing the characters can’t clarify, earlier than it vanishes – and also you don’t see it once more for an additional hour or two. It’s not the ultimate boss, that honor goes to a sleeping big that you just solely be taught of its existence one mission prior.
There isn’t a sense of enormous, completely different teams of individuals coming collectively to cease a standard risk to be discovered right here. In reality, a few of the monster introductions within the marketing campaign really feel like Capcom merely couldn’t discover a manner for them to correctly go away the inexperienced room, so they simply type of insert themselves into some missions and pressure you to combat them then and there.
There’s a definite sense that one thing tying the completely different camps of characters collectively used to exist earlier than it was lower. Among the NPC conversations, and even a few traces of dialogue in cinematics allude to, effectively, one thing extra happening – however you by no means get to see it.
Even the thriller of the forerunner civilization and their folks’s weather-manipulating tech in the end bringing about their doom falls flat when it simply finally ends up being a story sporadically informed in cutscenes that feels extra prefer it belongs in a lore e-book.
There’s rather a lot in regards to the Wilds marketing campaign that might be seen as a microcosm of the primary sport’s core issues. It does away with plenty of the attraction; sands down the tough edges in an effort to make it extra accessible. However I’m not certain these have been the correct areas to focus on.
We’re possible going to principally neglect in regards to the existence of the primary Wilds marketing campaign very quickly as extra of the sport’s triumphs and misfires come to the fore, however I don’t assume I can cease questioning what a real sequel to the World marketing campaign would’ve regarded like.
