Monster Hunter Wilds is dropping banger after banger at Gamescom: gender-neutral armor, skippable cutscenes, built-in weapon skills, single-player pause, 3D map, and more

Monster Hunter Wilds has a significant presence at Gamescom 2024, and with details emerging from the first hands-on demo and some hefty developer livestreams, the next installment in this storied action RPG franchise is looking better by the hour. From weapons and armor to quality-of-life upgrades, Wilds is packing some significant upgrades.

Series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, art director Kaname Fujioka, and Wilds game director Yuya Tokuda shared some interesting details in a Gamescom stream . Monster Hunter sleuth Oceaniz helpfully collected many standouts in a few posts, and this has come alongside hands-on impressions from well-known Monster Hunter speedrunners like Canta Per Me . This comes with the usual asterisk of any unfinished build, and we'll soon be on the show floor testing the demo ourselves, but it's a promising sign as we inch toward the game's 2025 - potentially early 2025 - launch .

Fashion remains a cornerstone of Monster Hunter, and there's big news on that front. "In previous Monster Hunter games, you had male and female armor separate," Fujioka explained in the dev stream (via interpreter). "I'm happy to confirm that in Monster Hunter Wilds, there's no more male and female armor. All the characters can wear any gear." This could theoretically double the cosmetic armor choices available to each hunter, or at the very least greatly expand them.

Armor comes up again later in the session with one of many direct iterations on Monster Hunter World. Armor sets are back, but this time around we can use armor from different monsters of the same type – like flying wyverns, for example – to activate shared armor skills, rather than being locked to one specific monster's set. This provides more ways to build mixed armor sets while still obtaining set bonuses.

Weapons have new skills as well. Tokuda was light on details, but he certainly made it sound like the weapons in Wilds go beyond the honing effects and stat bonuses attached to weapons in previous Monster Hunter games.

"There's also going to be specific attack skills attached to weapons as well," the game director said. "I think you'll be able to create a build that gives you a bit of flexibility so that changing your weapon changes one of the skills on it and that lets you have two different strategies at the same time rather than being locked to just what you put on your armor."

Additionally, "all of the weapons, pretty much, now all have some kind of perfect-timing effect on them, depending on how you're using it," Tokuda explained. The lance offers a useful example: perfectly timed guards can lead into follow-up attacks, or even close-up "power clash" sequences where you beat back a monster gnawing on your shield. Other weapons with shields seem to have similar man-vs-monster sequences attached.

The hunting horn, light bowgun, and heavy bowgun got a bit of love as well. "I think some people think the hunting horn and bowguns are more support style weapons," Tokuda said, "but we've actually adjusted them this time around to make sure that you can be giving a high damage output as well. You won't be just on the sidelines supporting the party, you'll be in there dealing damage like everyone else." Frankly, I find this terrifying. These weapons were already monstrous in their own right – who the hell thought the heavy bowgun was a support weapon – so if they've gotten special attention this time, they're sure to be mighty.

Other interesting new details include:

• You can physically climb onto monster carcasses to carve them
• Cutscenes can be skipped – no more Monster Hunter World progress whiplash
• You can once again pause the game in single-player
• The map is 3D, multi-layered, and fully rotatable, so we won't get lost in layered environments like World's Ancient Forest
• If you're finished, you can skip the timer at the end of a quest, but you'll stay in the map by default at the end of a hunt
• Your HP bar will flash when some monsters use powerful attacks
• Blood splatter effects can be toggled
• Your quick-use item bar can be expanded to hold more tools
• You can seemingly pick up traps without destroying them
• Weapon attack values are displayed as raw attack, not scaled attack

A new Monster Hunter Wilds trailer reveals the scariest spider boss this series has cooked up in 20 years – meet Lala Barina and the lightning wyvern Rey Dau.