Monster Hunter always makes it clear that you are not not the bad guy. Hunters aren't just rogue poachers killing for sport; they're part of a guild that takes very seriously how people live in harmony with nature, only greenlighting hunts when monsters act aggressively—which is usually the result of something in the world gone awry. It's an admittedly thin justification for slaughtering hundreds of majestic beasts to turn into hats, pants, and weapons that you then use to slay more of their friends with, but Capcom has consistently tried to give Monster Hunter a noble sheen over the years. Wilds is no different. If anything, it's the company's most overt attempt yet to deliver an eco-positive message around the edges of its combat.
"When we launched Monster Hunter: World, because it was very successful, we thought about what we wanted to express in the next Monster Hunter installment," said Wilds director Yuya Tokuda, who also directed 2018's World. One of the team's first priorities, he said, was to present "seamless gameplay sequences" without load screens between them, which manifest in Wilds' pop-up camps that let you stay out in the field for long periods of time with no loading between hunts. Then came their thematic focus "on not just the nature of the world of Monster Hunter, but also how the people living in that work interact with nature."
