Monster Hunter Wilds new trailer shows off horrible lions and mounted monster-bashing
The premier pants-making series is back, baby
Capcom's upcoming entry in the lizard pants-making sim, Monster Hunter Wilds, got a new trailer at last night's State Of Play. It showed off more of how its lovely desert environments morph to fit the weather and how its inhabitants largely don't get on. We also got a look at some cursed lions, an armoured frog with an unsettling tongue and a rideable Chocobo-esque mount that lets you ping arrows on the fly. Let me break it down for you readers, as someone who is increasingly excited at the prospect of more colourful pants.
First off, I've plonked the trailer above. Watch it if you'd like, it's nice. And we certainly get a lot more of the gameplay goodness than we did from last year's Geoff Fest unveiling.
The real details lie in PlayStation's blog post, which expands on everything shown. First thing to note: we're shown one area in the trailer called the Windward Plains, that's made up of "sandy deserts, swaying grasslands, and twisting rock formations". And it's "just one such region that awaits you", which suggests there's another place with equally disgruntled dinosaurs.
The cursed lion shown off? Yeah that's a "Doshaguma", who sometimes hunt in packs and have a "wide habitat range". What this means is that you'll likely bump into these bastards a lot, then. Oh and the armoured frog? Yeah that's a "Chatacabra" whose *checks notes* saliva attaches ore and other "substances" to its forelegs to strengthen itself. Wish I could, like, spit some metal pellets onto my shins to make my legs a bit stronger as opposed to go to the gym.
Your new mount is Seikret, who lets you do lots of things while on the move. Like use your slinger or sharpen your weapon or gather materials: all very helpful to reduce tedium. They can even take you to spots automatically and switch to a secondary weapon without returning to base. Birds are great.
Fourteen weapons are returning! I won't list them all, but know that they are the same bunch found in a bazillion other Mon Hunts. The trailer shows off a couple of new actions for the Greatsword and the Heavy Bowgun, a parry follow-up and a bazooka respectively.
Focus Mode is a new thing, too. There's not too many specifics on how it works, but Capcom say it'll let you "have more precise control" over how you guard, aim, and attack monster weaknesses. And it makes it "easier to adjust your distance to the monster", which suggests it works a bit like a toggle to make the game a touch easier for new players.
Elsewhere, there's a new version of the slinger that lets you collect items off the back of your bird and more, although they're coy about what "more" is.
I'm not the world's biggest Monster Hunter fan but I'm excited to give it a shot when it launches sometime in 2025, mainly because it looks really nice and is perhaps a touch more approachable to folks who aren't as familiar with the series as the longtime pants makers. One thing, though, they better have updated the bloody menus. God, Monster Hunter menus suck.