Monster Hunter Wilds Preview – A Seikret ride on the wild side

thesixthaxis.com:

We’re big fans of the Monster Hunter franchise. Dyed-in-the-wool veteran hunters, I’ve personally played everything from the main series Monster Hunter 2 Freedom Unite (Japan has the best names) to the latest mobile release, Monster Hunter Now. Hundreds of thousands of hours have been poured into separating Rathalos from their tails. So, the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds obviously leaves us with huge excitement, and after going hands on for two hours we must say, we are absolutely stoked.

The preview session was split into two, with the first section taken from the game’s opening and featuring the first fully-voiced main character in the franchise. You’re a hunter, tasked with exploring the dubiously named Forbidden Lands — an area thought uninhabited for 1000 years, but from which a young boy named Nata has just escaped.

What’s more, The White Wraith, a monster long thought extinct, has been spotted in the Forbidden Lands. Nata and his clan clearly need help, and help in this franchise usually means a comically large sword.

Playing through this tutorial was great fun, with the cinematics being as beautiful and intense as you’d hope. Your expedition ship is sailing through the sands, conjuring immediate flashbacks of the Jhen Mohran battle from Monster Hunter 3. Along the way, you see a young girl, riding an animal through the sands, fleeing a pack of monsters that probably have Frank Herbert’s ears burning. It turns out that the girl is Nona, the beast is a Seikret and the monsters are Balaharas — all new to the franchise. The Balahara is a sand leviathan with a drill-like tail and a tripartite mouth with three tongues and several rows of nasty-looking teeth.

Naturally, you leap off the boat, land on a spare Seikret, do some badass stuff and beat the Balaharas.

After this pretty intense opening, we came across another new monster called a Chatacabra — an ape-like amphibian that licks as hard as it punches – which we have to defeat to rescue Nona. So far, that’s two