Critiquing Monster Hunter’s Campaign: Why Wild’s Narrative Feels Like a Step Down from World

By most standards, I’m still pretty new to the Monster Hunter franchise. For a long time, I avoided diving into the series because it was confined to handheld consoles I wasn’t interested in, and to be honest, the games didn’t exactly look like they ran well.

My introduction to the series came with Monster Hunter World, and it captivated me completely. Since then, my enthusiasm for these games has only grown. With over twenty hours poured into Wilds, I’ve focused largely on the main campaign, leaving the side quests for later exploration. And I must admit, the campaign left me somewhat underwhelmed.

Traditionally, the campaigns in Monster Hunter aren’t celebrated for their gripping storylines or ingenious twists. Instead, they’re there to guide you through a massive array of systems and mechanics that will become second nature over the next hundred or so hours. Essentially, they’re a guided tour of the game’s expansive ecosystem.

Typically, here’s how it unfolds: your team is on the trail of an enigmatic monster affecting various regions. Along the way, other creatures interrupt your progress until you finally uncover the reason behind your initial target’s actions. Eventually, you face off against this formidable foe, completing the campaign and stepping into the realm of High Rank, where the real Monster Hunter experience begins.

In broad terms, this summarizes Wilds’ campaign as it does World’s. Yet, it’s often in the finer details that one game stands out as an engaging journey, while another falls flat.

World’s storyline had a compelling hook to draw players in. The introduction of Zorah Magdaros was ambitious; a creature so massive that an entire village banded together in an effort to halt its path. Its back was a battlefield for multiple monster confrontations with room to spare.

While this was a daring concept, designed to bring a fresh kind of battle to Monster Hunter, not everyone warmed to it. Taking down Zorah Magdaros required players to build defensive structures, load cannons, and engage in activities that departed from the usual monster-hunting formula.

Personally, I appreciated these moments precisely because they were different. Zorah’s unique gameplay segments and its journey served as a primer, breaking up the routine monster clashes and adding depth to the story. With each new location it moved into, you gained access to new areas to explore, witnessing the impact of its presence on the ecosystem. The game kept you guessing about Zorah’s true intentions, creating a narrative filled with suspense and intrigue.

Contrast this with Wilds’ campaign, where there’s no equivalent to Zorah, no significant threat looming in the background. Arkveld, the signature monster, occasionally makes appearances, performing inexplicable actions before disappearing again for hours. Instead of a climactic battle with it, the final boss is a slumbering giant you only learn about in the penultimate mission.

Absent is the drama of various communities uniting against a common foe. Some monster appearances seem as though Capcom couldn’t figure out a smooth introduction, so they simply appear in the course of missions, forcing you into combat with them on the spot.

There’s an unmistakable impression of a more cohesive narrative thread having once existed, perhaps scrapped during development. Dialogue from NPCs and snippets of cutscenes hint at a deeper story lurking beneath the surface—one that’s never fully revealed.

Even the intriguing lore of an ancient civilization with weather-control technology that ultimately led to its downfall feels fragmented, more like fodder for a lorebook than a compelling narrative arc.

The Wilds campaign is somewhat emblematic of the larger issues at the heart of the game. There’s an attempt to streamline and make it more approachable, yet the charm and complexity seem to have been targeted inappropriately.

In time, as more of the game’s victories and stumbles become apparent, we might largely overlook the Wilds campaign. However, the thought of what a genuine follow-up to the World campaign could have achieved is something I can’t quite shake off.