Monster Hunter Wilds Is Making Changes to Your Favourite Weapon

Monster Hunter Wilds continues to stealthily pad through the underbrush, creeping up on a 28th February release date on PS5. IGN's ongoing coverage of the upcoming game has yielded a surprisingly granular interview and the news that Capcom is making fairly sweeping changes to the established Monster Hunter order.

Wilds' director Yuya Tokuda and art director Kaname Fujioka spoke to IGN about how the game's 14 weapon types must change to match each title's tenor. This next game in the series aims to create a seamless hunting experience and hopefully do away with some excess downtime.

For starters, that means both Bowguns, along with the Bow, are losing consumables for basic damage dealing; you can still craft the unique stuff, as Tokuda explains: "We balanced it around the idea that things like normal, pierce and spread ammo for Bowguns and coatings for Bows can fire unlimited times while managing your gauge. But we still wanted it to be possible to use what you’ve prepared ahead of time or what you find in the field on top of that, and so our balancing took into account the presence of design that allows you to create powerful ammo with attributes from gathered materials."

Mildly interesting was the revelation (to us) that Capcom uses the cumbersome Great Sword as a baseline: "We begin by developing the Great Sword as a prototype, then verify weapons like the Sword and Shield and Heavy Bowgun, applying the knowledge we get from there to the other weapons as we create them... The Great Sword is an all-rounder weapon, so we generally begin with it when creating animations."

Some other major additions to combat in Wilds include the new Focus Strike mechanic, a sort of ultimate attack unique to each weapon, and a robust-sounding wounds system, which leaves persistent damage on those pesky beasties. Monsters can be encountered already wounded by other creatures, with the idea being to shorten an individual gameplay loop and add some unpredictability to the hunt.

Are you looking forward to Monster Hunter Wilds? What is your favourite Monster Hunter weapon, and do you ever mix things up? Choose the appropriate tool for the job in the comments section below.