How I became the real monster in Wild Hearts

polygon.com:

In my defense, there were a lot of reasons to think that you couldn’t pet the animals in Wild Hearts.

It is, in the style of the Monster Hunter series, a monster-hunting game, not a monster-hugging game (though someone should really get on making one of those). As you play Wild Hearts, you hunt down giant monsters called kemono — a Japanese word that translates (roughly) to “beast,” by the way — using swords and hammers and magical mechanisms called karakuri. You hunt these deadly beasts terrorizing the land to carve up their carcasses for parts.

Sure, some of them are kind of cute in their own ways, but Wild Hearts co-director Kotaro Hirata told The Verge, “We didn’t want the players to feel bad when they defeated a monster.”

“We wanted you to want to fight them,” co-director Takuto Edagawa added.

So that’s what I did.

Broadly speaking, that’s what you’re supposed to do in Wild Hearts. You’re not supposed to (be able to) pet the monsters in a monster-hunting game. And besides, the kemono you hunt are nature-animal hybrid monsters who are bigger than buildings and full of homicidal rage — certainly not the sort of creatures who seem deserving of, or particularly receptive to, pets.

The game does differentiate between “giant” and “small” kemono. The giant ones are main-event hunts with all the best parts to cut off. The myriad kinds of small ones are roughly horse-sized and just generally populate the world of Azuma as you explore. Some of the small ones are vaguely indifferent to you as you pass, but others attack on sight. Call me petty, but that does not put me in the mindset to pet them (the attacking part, not the indifferent part; I have two cats, so I’m quite fond of small, indifferent creatures).

And, frankly,