Monster Hunter Wilds on PS5 Feels Like Another Generational Leap Forward for the Iconic Franchise | Push Square

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It is hard to describe how excited people were for Monster Hunter Wilds at Gamescom in Köln last week. If you have attended the show as a member of the public, you will know that lines to play anything can get pretty damn long. Up until this year, the longest we had ever heard of was the infamous four-hour queue to play Super Mario Odyessy for 15 minutes.

The line to play Monster Hunter Wilds in the public hall this year was capped at 10 hours on the opening day...

And, you know what? Having now played an hour and a half of the game, we can see why. Monster Hunter World will always be pointed to as the game where the series finally (truly) broke out in the West thanks to its countless quality-of-life improvements and refinements on the tried and true gameplay formula. However, it's hard not to look at the raft of changes and improvements — even in our short time with the title — and feel like Capcom has only gone and taken just as big of an evolutionary leap with its latest entry in the series.

The first of two sequences we got to play was shockingly story-focused, and while previous Monster Hunter games have often suffered from boring military characters droning on about the thrill of the hunt, Wilds feels distinctly more human. This may be down to Capcom’s improved storytelling chops in recent years, but opening the game on a rescue mission to help a long-thought-dead tribe rather than yet another uncomfortably imperialistic conquest to tame the unclaimed lands, instantly gave everything a genuine weight. It helps too that the RE Engine is firing on all cylinders here and the facial capture and character designs are extremely expressive and memorable respectively.

The voice acting was also top-notch too. Maybe it was just the mental and physical exhaustion of the third day on the show floor catching up to us, but we found ourselves strangely distressed hearing the lone escapee of a monster attack, Nata, beg us and our fellow hunters to bring his sister home safe.