A special behind-closed-doors presentation of Monster Hunter Wilds blew me away over Summer Game Fest. Its scope, bold design choices, and evolution of the franchise were utterly enthralling as the 2025 release cements itself atop my list of most-anticipated games.
Admittedly far from the biggest Monster Hunter fan in the world, my few dozen hours with the series over the years is nowhere near enough to qualify me as an expert by any stretch. But confident enough in knowing the game’s core identity and surrounding gameplay pillars, I was all too eager to check out Wilds over the course of Summer Game Fest.
What awaited was a roughly 20-minute demo behind closed doors and to put it bluntly, those 20 minutes were nowhere near enough. While still a ways off from its 2025 release, Monster Hunter Wilds is already looking absolutely phenomenal in just about every way you could imagine. From the downtime at camp to the heat of the moment in a fight for your life, it’s already as exhilarating as you’d expect, just with far more detail and smoother layers than ever before.
It’s a demo that impressed me a great deal and, even as a relatively inexperienced Monster Hunter fan, it’s pushed Wilds to the very top of my list of must-plays.
A seamless hunt
Kicking our presentation off at base camp, we were immediately shown one of the big upgrades coming with Wilds. Rather than having to set your task, ready for a hunt, and then load into an instance out in the open world, this time around, things are completely seamless.
Hopping onto a Seikret, a rideable companion, we saw the player charging right out of camp and into the vast open world. No loading screens, nothing to interrupt the flow, just straight into the quest. Making it all the more impressive is just how detailed camps are in Wilds compared to previous iterations.
For the first time in series history, most NPCs now live out daily routines. Instead of just sitting behind a stall waiting for players to visit them, they’re actively engaging in work, moving around camp, and living as regular humans would.
Our quest for the day was to hunt down an Alpha Doshaguma, a towering, four-legged beast that just so happened to be traveling as part of a pack. With three other Doshagumas in close proximity, honing in on the Alpha seemed to be no easy task. So the first goal of our dev in the driver’s seat was to split the leader from the rest of the herd.
After slashing its ankles with a devastating sneak attack from the Great Sword to commence the quest, they quickly hopped back onto their Seikret and began luring the Alpha away. From here, Wilds began to show its extraordinary advancements. Evolutions in the formula are only possible on newer hardware.
Before the Alpha could close in for an attack, the environment around it began to change shape. What appeared as a stable sand dune swiftly fell away, quicksand gobbling up a number of weaker targets and destabilizing the alpha for a brief moment. But quicksand was only the appetizer. The main course was barrelling into focus from over the hills as a devastating sandstorm soon dominated the area.
Turning day to night in an instant, the sandstorm overwhelmed most creatures in the vicinity, except for a few in particular. As lightning crashed down in the midst of the sandy chaos, the Alpha continued its approach, but not for long. Amid the strife, the Apex predator of the region made its presence known. An enormous Wyvern swooped into the fight, taking jabs at the Alpha and inadvertently helping us on our quest. Harnessing the power of the lightning storm, it dealt a devastating blow to the Alpha before flying off to pick its next battle.
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Even still, the Alpha continued on, as we know all too well, these larger creatures don’t go down easily. Making our way into a cave system, the dev in control latched their hook onto a rock formation overhead, yoinking it down and having the boulders crash onto the creature in hot pursuit. It was this staggering blow that finally turned the momentum in our favor. Limping off to safety, we knew for certain the Alpha was wounded.
Laying some traps before finally claiming our prize, the fight wrapped up shortly after. Again, a completely seamless transition followed as we claimed our rewards and simply remained out in the open world. No loading screens, no being kicked back to a lobby. But just this one example of a singular quest barely scratches the surface of the diverse experiences on offer.
A living, breathing world
Where previous Monster Hunter titles have tried to establish a more lively ecosystem, Wilds feels like a huge leap forward in that regard.
Two particular examples stood out during the brief look at raw, unedited gameplay. Firstly, the game’s director Yuya Tokuda detailed how ecology was a huge focus for the dev team on Wilds. Rather than merely dropping a number of distinct species onto a map and having them go at it, each inclusion was carefully considered and meticulously detailed.
For one yet-to-be-named species of monster we saw, smaller creatures living out in the harsh sandy dunes, we were shown how males act differently from females. When our fight with the Alpha Doshaguma came close to their tribe, the males circled around the females and locked themselves in position, extending their hardened shells to fortify a defensive ring.
Returning to the tribe after the battle and after the sandstorm had passed, we saw the males near some trees, chipping away for food to give to their females. While it may sound simple on paper, each species has been brought to life like never before, with purpose, goals of their own, lifestyles, behavioral patterns, and so forth, all to make Wilds feel well and truly lived in.
A second instance that stood out also came during the fight, in a similar fashion. Moments before the sandstorm came into focus, we all but unintentionally led the Alpha into an ambush. Hidden under the sand was a giant snake-like creature called Balahara that attacked without hesitation.
The way it seamlessly wrapped itself around the towering behemoth, fighting our threat without us telling it to do so, while nothing new to the series, again showed just how alive the world really is. The natural order of things is no happy accident, but a brilliant display of hard work from the team at Capcom.
All up, it was a tremendous demonstration not only of the game’s innovations in combat but most importantly in my eyes, the game’s evolution of the open world. It looks like an experience that once you’re hooked in, hours could fly by and you’d be none the wiser. For that alone, I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game at some stage in 2025.
