Casey DeFreitas

Among all of these distinctive sets of monster equipment in Monster Hunter Wilds, the developers say they want players to pay special attention to the various pieces of starting equipment, called the Hope series, that your hunter begins the game wearing.

Though we’ve seen a handful of weapons from Wilds, we haven’t seen quite enough to make a determinative verdict on our own about their general design philosophy–but now, Monster Hunter Wilds Director Yuya Tokuda has cleared up this question: Will weapons be unique, or follow suit from World?

We spoke with the Monster Hunter Wilds art director and executive director, Kaname Fujioka, and Wilds director, Yuya Tokuda, to learn about the concept and development process for various weapons, garnering new details on weapons that players have been particularly interested in, as well as the kinds of adjustments made for the release version of the game after the feedback they received from the November 2024 Open Beta Test.

Gravios is a hard-shelled monster that’s been deflecting our attacks since the original Monster Hunter, and it’s back in Monster Hunter Wilds’ Oilwell Basin. A few things about this foreboding, unexpected Flying Wyvern have changed, which you can see for yourself in the exclusive Gravios gameplay videos in this article. 

The gameplay loop that hunters imagine when they hear about Monster Hunter has remained the same throughout the series even after 20 years. Hunt gigantic monsters, strip them of materials, create equipment, then head back into the next hunt. At the same time, though, it seems rare for the game design of a series to so directly reflect the benefits brought about by advances in hardware. Monster Hunter: World, released in 2018, did away with the segmented maps that players were used to seeing in the series, instead allowing them to roam about a single stage without loading times. It also made many other changes, both big and small, but veteran players remained as passionate as ever, helping it to gain global popularity.

This year’s first IGN First “cover story” belongs to Monster Hunter Wilds, and we’re kicking off our exclusive coverage with two brand new videos featuring gameplay of Ajarakan and Rompopolo on the Oilwell Basin map.

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