I’m, by any life like 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 – they usually frankly appeared 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 largely exist to shepherd you thru tutorials of the various, many, many programs and mechanics you’re going to depend on in your subsequent 100+ hours. Structurally, they function a tour of every recreation’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 induced your authentic 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 recreation of Monster Hunter begins.
In a really broad sense, that description matches the marketing campaign of Wilds’ about in addition to it does World’s. The specifics, nonetheless, range drastically – 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 dimension that it wanted a whole village of individuals merely to sluggish it down. This factor is giant sufficient that you possibly can struggle a number of monsters on its again and there’d nonetheless be room for extra.
Clearly, this was am formidable enterprise for the group; an try to introduce a brand new kind of encounter to Monster Hunter. Most individuals didn’t prefer it. Preventing Zorah Magdaros concerned loads of developing elaborate ramparts to sluggish it down; operating to load up cannons to chip away at its well being, and usually do issues which can be very in contrast to what you come to Monster Hunter for.
I, nonetheless, favored them exactly due to that. See, Zorah’s decidedly completely different gameplay segments not solely managed to interrupt any monotony of combating one monster after the opposite within the marketing campaign earlier than it may set in, the sport additionally used its journey by way of the world as a approach to advance the narrative.
Each time it could 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 in the dead of night for nearly everything 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 menace. Arkveld, the flagship monster of this explicit recreation, exhibits 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 large that you simply solely be taught of its existence one mission prior.
There isn’t any sense of huge, completely different teams of individuals coming collectively to cease a typical menace to be discovered right here. In truth, a few of the monster introductions within the marketing campaign really feel like Capcom merely couldn’t discover a manner for them to correctly depart the inexperienced room, so they only form of insert themselves into some missions and pressure you to struggle 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 minimize. A number of the NPC conversations, and even a few strains 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 finally bringing about their doom falls flat when it simply finally ends up being a story sporadically advised 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 recreation’s core issues. It does away with loads 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 suitable areas to focus on.
We’re probably going to largely 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 appeared like.