Highlights

  • Monster Hunter Wilds breaks the trend of previous games in the series by announcing itself far in advance and releasing in 2025.
  • The marketing approach for Monster Hunter Wilds is different from past games, with a shorter trailer that focuses more on showcasing the game's features rather than providing a full reveal.
  • Monster Hunter Wilds may have a larger scope and open-world areas, which could explain the longer development time needed to meet the franchise's quality standards.

At the end of the 2023 Game Awards, Capcom fans were treated to the reveal of the next Monster Hunter title. Dubbed Monster Hunter Wilds, this new game looks to follow in Monster Hunter World's footsteps as the main Monster Hunter entry on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. Monster Hunter Wilds’ only obvious downside was that it’s much farther away than expected, with a tentative release window set for 2025. With the mobile title Monster Hunter Now having just come out, it seems that Wilds intends to take its time while letting the smaller game breathe.

The Monster Hunter community was caught off guard by this, as it was assumed that Monster Hunter Wilds would be revealed and released within a year of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak’s final Title Update, just like Rise was after Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. Wilds’ announcement breaks a lot of trends established for the series since Monster Hunter World, and while it has promised more information to come in summer 2024, it's still interesting how Monster Hunter Wilds is being presented compared to its predecessors.

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Monster Hunter Wilds’ Isn't Marketing Itself Like Past Games

lighting strikes a monster in Monster Hunter Wilds

Back in 2017, the announcement of Monster Hunter World at Sony's E3 conference caught many people by surprise. After mainline Monster Hunter spent nearly a decade on Nintendo consoles and handhelds, jumping to stronger hardware was a major shift. Adding to that, the game’s release date was announced to be early 2018, later clarified as January 26, 2018, which was only about seven months after this June 12 reveal. Capcom made sure that this entry hit the ground running, and sales have proven MH World’s efforts to be worthwhile.

Monster Hunter Rise’s reprisal of World’s strategy was expected, and that makes Monster Hunter Wilds’ approach an even greater mystery. Rise first appeared at the Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase on September 17, 2020. Like its predecessor, Monster Hunter Rise would launch on March 26, 2021, within seven months of its reveal. Both Monster Hunter titles got expansion DLC about a year after they launched, and then rolled out free updates for another year before the announcement of the next installment. Monster Hunter Wilds broke this pattern of reveals quickly followed by releases, and that's not the only trend Wilds has bucked.

Each Monster Hunter Announcement Trailer Took Its Own Approach

Why Monster Hunter Wilds felt the need to announce itself so far in advance isn't clear, but its incomplete state is evident just from its trailer. Monster Hunter Wilds’ debut runs one minute shorter than World and Rise’s own, and feels more like a trailer than a full game reveal. Comparatively, Monster Hunter World leads with an entire Anjanath hunt complete with most of the game's new tools and environmental interactions, before introducing Monster Hunter's new Turf War mechanic. Since Monster Hunter Rise didn’t need to introduce Monster Hunter’s fundamentals like World did, it revealed Wirebugs, player voice lines, many new monsters, and its story before immediately leading into the reveal trailer for Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin.

Monster Hunter Wilds May Not Be Able To Show Its True Scope In One Trailer

It seems like Monster Hunter Wilds has a lot to prepare before it's done, given that it was announced at least one full year, possibly two, before it's out. Wilds’ implied larger hunting areas may be to blame, as they need proportionally more polish to meet Monster Hunter's quality standards. Viewing the reveal trailers for World, Rise, and Wilds back-to-back displays an increasing trend toward wide open areas, culminating in the ambiguously open-world vista ending Monster Hunter Wilds’ trailer. On top of its multipurpose mount, hordes of monsters, and implied weather effects, Monster Hunter Wilds needs all the time it can get if it's going to be Monster Hunter’s biggest game yet.