Put on your prettiest battle dresses, boys — Monster Hunter Wilds is finally dropping gender-locked armor. Along with that crowd-pleasing reveal, Capcom showed off stunning new monsters and introduced a system to help solo hunters at this year’s Gamescom.
Capcom is sharing plenty of new details on its upcoming monster-slaying game, but nothing has been received as eagerly as the announcement that every piece of armor in the game can now be worn by characters of any gender. In previous Monster Hunter games, armor was separated into male and female versions, and any given character could only access one. Monster Hunter Wilds will still include two versions of each armor set, but you’ll now be able to use either one. That announcement at Gamescom was met with cheers, and a post simply reading “WE DEFEATED GENDER” immediately shot to the top of the game’s subreddit.
Removing gender restrictions on armor is an effective way of letting players express themselves in any game, and it feels particularly exciting in Monster Hunter. The gameplay loop of the series revolves around repeatedly hunting the same monster to gather parts used to craft armor. That means you can spend days chasing after the same target before getting your reward, which makes it all the more disappointing when you can’t use the version of the armor you want. As an inherently multiplayer game, Monster Hunter Wilds will have players spending a lot of time with other players, so the ability to show off your fashion choices the way you want feels even more important.
That change feels even more exciting after Capcom revealed Lala Barina. The new arachnid enemy has a unique attack pattern that looks like a mix of fencing and dancing — appropriate since its name appears to be a play on the word ballerina. As exciting as fights against Lala Barina look, fans are just as excited about the armor created from its parts, a short dress modeled after the petals of a rose.
While fashion is clearly crucial to the Monster Hunter community, lots of other gameplay details also emerged at Gamescom. Perhaps the biggest is a new way to call in help for your hunts even when playing offline. In previous Monster Hunter games, you can fire off an SOS flare to call in other players online. That’s still possible here, of course, but the SOS flare will remain available offline this time around. When used offline, the SOS flare will call in a squad of NPC reinforcements to help simulate the experience of hunting as a group without the messy work of dealing with other people. These allies will also answer the call if no human players do so while you’re playing online. From the look of Monster Hunter Wilds’ gameplay trailer, support NPCs look more than capable of handling themselves in battle — which is quite a feat given how complicated the series’ mechanics can be.
Monster Hunter Rise introduced the concept of follower quests, which let players bring an NPC on certain hunts, which was generally well received by the community. It makes sense to expand that in Wilds, so players always have the option of making a hunt a bit easier, or just providing a bit of virtual companionship.
Monster Hunter Wilds’ Gamescom streams have also shown off a good chunk of gameplay, showcasing the new open world Capcom has advertised. This time around, you won’t need to return to camp after each hunt, and can instead use your mount as a station to rest up and change weapon loadouts before chasing another target. Gameplay sessions also showed off the flying, lightning-spewing Rey Dau, the “apex monster” of the region. Wilds’ Gamescom presence makes a compelling case for the latest entry in the series being the evolution returning players have been waiting for, while also trimming some of the clunkier elements that may have kept some away from previous games.
