Capcom debuted the first gameplay trailer for next year’s Monster Hunter Wilds during this week’s Sony State of Play, and like most MonHun sickos, I’ve been combing through each frame of it over and over, trying to pull any information I can from it.
There’s a few notable things revealed here that long time fans have probably noticed. At 1:52, when the hunter gets knocked down, his mount, a new creature called a Seikret, scoops him up off the ground and rescues him from a brutal follow up attack. Moments later (1:59) we see the hunter call his Seikret and mount it with his weaponstill drawn. These are mount interactions we’ve never seen before that will have a big impact on the dynamics and pace of a hunt.
These are changes that only the most Monster-pilled among us would appreciate, but there’s also a major new mechanic revealed in the trailer that you likely overlooked. The trailer features battles against two new monsters - a lion-like fanged wyvern called Doshaguma and a long-tongued amphibian called Chatacabra - using two different weapons, the great sword and the light bow gun. Until I watched the trailer a few times, I didn’t realize that these seemingly separate hunts intercut together were actually different scenes from the same hunt, and that the hunter was swapping between the two weapons at different stages of the fight.
you’re able to see this clearly at 2:01 when, just after mounting his Seikret, the hunter sheathes his great sword and draws a light bow gun. He then starts firing the gun at a Doshaguma while mounted - a move so mind-blowing it initially distracted me from the weapon swap entirely.
I had so many questions about the weapons swap, but the trailer’s press release cleared a lot of them up with this line: “Hunters can also swap to a secondary weapon with their Seikret, empowering hunting parties to adapt to the changing conditions out in the field without returning to base.” It seems that drawing a ranged weapon isn’t something you’re able to only do while mounted, but rather your second weapon is stored on the Seikret and you can swap between them while mounted.
This is a huge change for Monster Hunter because it will allow you to cover so many more bases with your loadout. Imagine fighting a monster like Rajang. When Rajang is in its normal form you can use a big, slow, high-damage weapon and get up close and personal. When he enters his enraged mode and becomes difficult to pin down, you can swap to a bow or gun and focus on applying status effects on it from a safe distance. Giving players access to two different weapons will open up the design spaces for monsters in many ways and create the opportunity for multi-stage fights where different weapons are better suited at different times in the fight.
I love the idea of swapping weapons in concept, but the more I think about it, I’m not sure how much I’ll actually make use of it. Monster Hunter’s weapons are just so hard to use. It takes so much practice and developed muscle memory to master all the nuances and complexities of your chosen weapon, and I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to try to manage two weapons at once. All the muscle memory and intuition would go away in between swapping weapons. Instead of being proficient with one, you might end up just being terrible with two.
While it may be the case that the weapons are getting simplified in order to facilitate using two at the same time, the press release describes the weapons as “evolved” and says they’re all getting new actions and systems, so I doubt it.
There’s also the issue of armor. A good armor build is built entirely around the weapon you’re wielding, with stats that compensate for weaknesses in that weapon’s playstyle, and skills that complement that weapon’s primary damage categories. When you swap weapons mid-fight, you’d have to give up all the synergy you built with your ‘main’ weapon. Maybe Wilds will have a completely different armor system that’s more flexible than anything we’ve seen in the series so far, but based on previous entries, Monster Hunter isn’t really built for weapon swapping.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about weapon swapping and how it will work in Monster Hunter Wilds. I’m reading deeply into a mechanic I didn’t know existed yesterday based on a three-minute trailer, and I still have a lot of faith that Wilds is going to evolve the series in a positive direction. But until we learn more, I’m hesitant to embrace weapon swapping as the next big thing for Monster Hunter. It’s taken me half a decade to master the insect glaive, so I know my brain isn’t big enough to handle playing with two weapons at the same time
