Monster Hunter Wilds PS5 Preview
Image: Push Square

It is hard to describe how excited people were for Monster Hunter Wilds at Gamescom in Köln last week. If you have attended the show as a member of the public, you will know that lines to play anything can get pretty damn long. Up until this year, the longest we had ever heard of was the infamous four-hour queue to play Super Mario Odyessy for 15 minutes.

The line to play Monster Hunter Wilds in the public hall this year was capped at 10 hours on the opening day...

And, you know what? Having now played an hour and a half of the game, we can see why. Monster Hunter World will always be pointed to as the game where the series finally (truly) broke out in the West thanks to its countless quality-of-life improvements and refinements on the tried and true gameplay formula. However, it's hard not to look at the raft of changes and improvements — even in our short time with the title — and feel like Capcom has only gone and taken just as big of an evolutionary leap with its latest entry in the series.

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The first of two sequences we got to play was shockingly story-focused, and while previous Monster Hunter games have often suffered from boring military characters droning on about the thrill of the hunt, Wilds feels distinctly more human. This may be down to Capcom’s improved storytelling chops in recent years, but opening the game on a rescue mission to help a long-thought-dead tribe rather than yet another uncomfortably imperialistic conquest to tame the unclaimed lands, instantly gave everything a genuine weight. It helps too that the RE Engine is firing on all cylinders here and the facial capture and character designs are extremely expressive and memorable respectively.

The voice acting was also top-notch too. Maybe it was just the mental and physical exhaustion of the third day on the show floor catching up to us, but we found ourselves strangely distressed hearing the lone escapee of a monster attack, Nata, beg us and our fellow hunters to bring his sister home safe.

Once we arrived in the new Forbidden Lands region on our sand skimming boat, we were thrust into a cinematic sequence where we had to save an unconscious little girl riding away from sandworm-like monsters on a Seikret (the new ridable mount). The Monster Hunter series has struggled with these cinematic sequences in recent entries with often repetitive fort defence missions and Zorah Magdaros fights. Thankfully, this scene kept things interesting with a chase sequence and some great-looking cinematics that culminated with us saving the girl.

From there, we went on to look for Nata’s brother, who saw us hunting a Chatacabra who was obviously never told about holding back on the tongue during a first date. This was obviously not an especially difficult fight (it being the first hunt in the game), but the whole sequence felt a lot better structured narratively than anything seen in World. What’s more, the inclusion of humans native to the Forbidden Lands allows us to see the monsters of this world in a different light. This was highlighted when Nata’s brother refused to leave his injured Seikret behind. It’s a small shift, but at least shows Capcom’s growing awareness of how messed up the premise of “let’s hunt to extinction Indigenous life in foreign lands” of past games has been.

The second part of the demo threw us much further along into the story as we explored the interconnected Forbidden Lands. Despite having played well over 200 hours of World back when it was released, this was a sharp reminder of just how complex these games are, as we instantly felt out of our depth, failing to juggle multiple quick menus and getting somewhat lost in the UI. Capcom seems to be aware of how difficult it is for returning players to remember the four-step process to light an S.O.S. beacon, because we even had a little sheet of paper in the demo room with a QR code we could scan laying out a bunch of these controls and simple combo strings for some of the weapons.

However, as the demo wore on (and we regained some of our muscle memory from 2018), we quickly found ourselves enthralled with the methodical and deliberate phases of the hunt. It all started with us separating the pack of Doshaguma from the Alpha by throwing literal faeces at them, then chasing the Alpha on our Seikret while firing off our Heavy Bowgun. That is until we then got caught in a fight between the Doshaguma and the apex predator of the area, the Windward Plains Moster, then injuring the Doshaguma by attacking wounds we had created, and calling in our AI teammates for support, leading to us cornering the beast in its den about 25 minutes later.

It’s all immensely satisfying and the deliberate and complex controls go from feeling obtuse to becoming pinpoint instruments of precision, allowing you to tackle any situation during these protracted battles precisely how you’d like. This hunt culminated with us and our companions littering exploding barrels at the feet of this poor creature before quickly slaying him in a final explosive onslaught.

It was only then, once the beast was felled, and we weren’t thrown to a loading screen that would take us back to base, did we take some time to look around. The sand of the barren desert glistened in the sun as a storm cloud began to build in the distance. We were just left there, only accompanied by our palico and our thoughts. And all we could think about was how we wish it was 2025 already.

Are you too yearning for 2025 just so you can play Monster Hunter Wilds sooner? Let us know in the comments below.