The PC beta for Monster Hunter Wilds has just wrapped up and, uh, it was something alright. Players felt the full wrath of the pretty beefy system requirements, with some rigs making Wilds look more like the original PS2 debut rather than a game that's supposed to be releasing in the year of our lord 2025.
Mind you, that didn't stop the beta from racking up nearly half a million concurrent players on Steam. If anything, folk seem to have taken to memeing on Wilds' low-poly foes in a surprisingly endearing way. I saw several Reddit posts lovingly refer to them as "origami monsters", which subsequently kicked up a ton of cool fan art—one user drew elder dragon Valstrax as an "exclusive for PC user" paper-folded variant, while another took Velkana from Monster Hunter World's Iceborne expansion, drawing it "Monster Hunter Wilds PC style".
It's not just the big bads getting the love, either. My personal favourite has to be this adorable rendition of one of the smaller beasts that roams around the map, with two tiny floating eyeballs hovering either side of his blocky, low-poly face.
Velkana Monster Hunter Wilds PC style! from r/MonsterHunter
The love for these origami variants has led to some players asking Capcom to immortalise them in some way when the full game releases. "I hope Capcom makes weapon charms of the origami looking low poly monsters," one Reddit post was titled, with the poster adding, "People seem to be enjoying them and I think it would be really cute and a fun nod to the beta." Though, as one comment points out, "That would imply that the monsters in the final release are not gonna end up looking like low poly origami for most people."
Begging you unironically and with all the sincerity that I have to add the low poly models as an actual feature to the full gameNovember 4, 2024
Ultimately, I feel like the fact there's been a relatively (and some might say surprisingly) warm reception to these glaring graphical issues goes to show how much fun people were having with the beta regardless. I don't think that means people are necessarily cool with things looking the way they do, but folk seemed to largely be able to look past it during the beta, for what is undeniably some real fun hunting.
Unfortunately for me, the beta didn't want to play ball with my PC—even on the lowest settings everything was chugging and leaving me essentially unable to play—but I'm still feeling excited for Wilds' launch next February. Capcom has already promised that the full game "is already in a more improved state," and I sure hope it's right. Otherwise it looks like I'll be dusting off the old backup console.
