Author: Game Infliction

The Monster Hunter series first launched on PlayStation 2 in 2004 and has since won over many fans, evolving at a dizzying pace alongside new developments in hardware. While it may sound like a cliché to say that the whole world has been waiting for it, it’s not an exaggeration to say that hunters from around the globe have eagerly awaited the next game in the series, Monster Hunter Wilds, releasing at last on February 28, 2025.

The gameplay loop that hunters imagine when they hear about Monster Hunter has remained the same throughout the series even after 20 years. Hunt gigantic monsters, strip them of materials, create equipment, then head back into the next hunt. At the same time, though, it seems rare for the game design of a series to so directly reflect the benefits brought about by advances in hardware. Monster Hunter: World, released in 2018, did away with the segmented maps that players were used to seeing in the series, instead allowing them to roam about a single stage without loading times. It also made many other changes, both big and small, but veteran players remained as passionate as ever, helping it to gain global popularity.

Gaining Confidence in Monster Hunter Via World

The development team also continues to believe that the major turning point for the series in recent years was World, which did away with the fragmented map from previous titles. While Monster Hunter did already have lots of overseas fans, the proportion of them still wasn’t very large compared to the Japanese fanbase. Wilds Director Yuya Tokuda has returned following his work on World, and he has the following to say about this phenomenon:

“The gameplay loop for a game like Monster Hunter, where players repeatedly gather materials, is agricultural in nature,” he tells IGN. “Some people told me that they believed it would be hard for that to resonate with a global audience.”

At the time of World’s creation, the development team did know that the global market was full of shooters and competitive multiplayer games. Kaname Fujioka, who acted as Director starting with the first Monster Hunter and is now Executive Director and Art Director for Wilds, says this was a period when he thought about what makes Monster Hunter fun, focusing on what to do in order to bring the game to a wider audience.

“Cooperative games weren’t part of the mainstream at the time, making World a major challenge for us,” he says. “If multiplayer cooperative play wasn’t going to be big to begin with, we would have to reconsider the very form that Monster Hunter takes. But we had absolute confidence about the kind of fun that Monster Hunter provides, and it possessed a history as a series that grew in Japan to become what it was. We never believed that a Japanese sensibility wouldn’t be able to land overseas.”

The rest of the world would surely understand the fun of Monster Hunter. Believing this, the development team decided not to fiddle with or change the central elements of the series, instead keeping the core of what makes it fun intact while trying to convey that enjoyment to a broader range of players. The development team then performed a thorough analysis of what makes Monster Hunter fun in order to do that.

The change in the development team’s environment must have also largely contributed to World’s success. Ryozo Tsujimoto, long-time producer for the Monster Hunter series, tells IGN, “I think you can also credit the fact that it became easier to communicate with foreign fans starting with World. During World’s development we developed a strong habit of looking into feedback that we received from overseas, investigating where the issues lay. By digesting what players tell us, regardless of where they’re located, we’re able to really think about what we’re communicating and what’s difficult to get across. I believe that this change of environment helped play a major role in changing our own awareness.”

World gained the support of many players as a result, successfully gaining global popularity. Tokuda says that after seeing the reaction to World, he gained a redoubled confidence in the fundamental kind of fun found within the Monster Hunter games.

“Thanks to World, we were able to reaffirm that we hadn’t made any mistakes with the core elements of Monster Hunter, giving us confidence once more,” says Tokuda. “It’s because of our experience with World that we’ve been able to feel assured as we take the next step with Wilds, further improving its core while creating an even more attractive game.”

The development team never bent, always believing in Monster Hunter’s charm and the elements at the center of what makes it fun. They began developing Wilds with the success of World driving them forward once updates for World reached a pause. They say the team’s mission at first was primarily to test out the available technology with a small team. Producer Tsujimoto tells us about those times.

“We predicted that the platforms for the game would be more powerful by the time it was released (with new-generation consoles having come in), and so our mission was to depict the world of Monster Hunter with the technology that would be available at that point in time,” he explains.

What would be possible on new-generation platforms while still making use of their output from World? How could they use the possibilities opened up by new-generation consoles to further evolve the series? Fujioka makes repeated use of a key term when it comes to this: “immersion”.

“Throughout the Monster Hunter series, we’ve always pictured game design that allows players to immerse themselves in hunts as hunters entering inside of Monster Hunter’s carefully depicted ecosystems,” he says. “Players bought into that sensation to some degree in World, and we tried to take it even further in Wilds.”

Through repeated technical verifications, it became clear that the team would be able to realize the image they’ve long held for Monster Hunter. Seamless map design, and an environment that changes with the passing of time. All of this would allow for an even deeper depiction of the ecosystem inhabited by massive monsters and the hunters who hunt them, generating further immersion. Depicting the world of Monster Hunter that has existed from the start of the series in greater depth and detail could allow for the surfacing of an ecosystem that includes the presence of humans in Wilds.

“It’s nature’s two faces of being bountiful yet harsh,” says Tokuda, explaining the world of Wilds. “By depicting these two sides, we hoped to create a world that includes those who live in and become involved with it, like the hunters.”

Creating Dramatic Moments for All Hunters

While Wilds retains the traditional gameplay loop of accepting a quest and going to hunt the relevant monster, Tokuda says that hunters will now need to be aware of what monsters have spawned in the world, hunting them at their discretion based on the state of these monsters.

As an example, he explains one possible situation. You’re after materials in order to craft a piece of equipment, and so you’re sprinting through the Windward Plains on your Seikret. Just then, beyond a cloud of sand, you see a large monster that you aren’t currently targeting. It’s got several wounds, as it’s likely already fought a number of other monsters. It’s not as if you need its materials at this very moment, but the rewards would be vast. After a moment of hesitation, you turn back and go after the wounded monster. Hunters need the ability to adapt to their circumstances, and Wilds provides a world where players can experience just that.

“The design (in past Monster Hunter games) where you participate in one quest at a time does provide the benefit of a game that you can always play in a stable environment, but you can’t help but feel this to be unnatural in ways for a game that depicts ecosystems in the wild,” says Tokuda. “It seems like a given that you’d face different monsters and winds from one day to the next, considering that nature-focused perspective.”

Scenes before your eyes will change from moment to moment, creating dramatic experiences and giving hunters a sense of immersion as though they’re really alive in the game’s world. As easy as that is to say, it’s by no means simple to realize it in a gaming setting. “There are only a few dramatic scenes and events you get to encounter and experience in everyday life over the course of a year,” Fujioka says. Rather than simply constructing a world, we ask what kinds of scenes he wants playing out in front of hunters and his philosophy on creating a game that anticipates these kinds of experiences.

“You may only be able to see an evening’s beauty for a few dozen minutes over the course of a day, but those moments leave an incredible impression on you,” he replies. “The team has constantly shared an awareness of how important it is to have these kinds of dramatic moments and experiences properly playing out before you in a game while also making sure that they don’t appear unnatural. There’s the risk of ‘nothing happening’ to a player within a large open world or with changes in circumstances like seamless shifts in weather. We discussed this concern many times during development, and I was quite aware as a designer to be compacting and connecting what we can do to make things more fun, creating dramatic twists that constantly play out before you.”

What’s important isn’t the form that the game takes, but the form of each individual experience encountered by the player. Ever since the announcement of Wilds, many players have seen its seamless stages, real-time environmental changes and other new elements, and called it an “open world Monster Hunter”. In fact, I admit that those were the first words to come to my own mind the moment I heard the news about Wilds. But Tsujimoto says that the developers never thought of themselves as making an open world game.

“It’s not as if the words ‘open world’ came out of any of our mouths during development, either,” he says. “We wanted players to be able to experience a seamless Monster Hunter, and this is the form we ended up with as we implemented what we wanted.”

I ask what genre they would call Wilds if they had to give it one, and the three developers look at one another. Fujioka says that while he believes they used phrases like “seamless map” and “seamless stages” during World as well, he could only describe Wilds as a game that gives players “a seamless Monster Hunter experience”.

It seems that the development team consider the wide-open stages in Wilds as not their goal, but rather a result. According to Tokuda, “Creating large spaces wasn’t the goal from the time we made World. It’s more accurate to say that they became that large as well as seamlessly connected during the process of properly depicting Monster Hunter’s world. More than its size, one of the things that makes Monster Hunter unique is its density of detail. We focused on adding enough density to our stages that just by walking through them, you’ll make discoveries, notice interactable elements, and find so much in general, from targets of action to visual aspects. I think that level of detail is a part of depicting the world of Monster Hunter and its ecosystems.”

Making Monster Hunter More Accessible, Not Easier

While the series continues to change with advances in hardware, its core gameplay has always stayed the same. This is because the developers have absolute confidence in what makes it fun. The changes made in World and the improvements found in Wilds have always come from a focus on finding ways to bring what makes Monster Hunter fun to an even larger audience.

“We have data showing that many of the people who quit World partway through did so before reaching the part where you’re really playing Monster Hunter,” Tsujimoto says of the feedback they received from World. “I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but maybe they couldn’t find monsters, or they didn’t know what to do once they reached them, or maybe the weapon they brought didn’t suit them once it came time for action. We’ve been incredibly careful in Wilds to guide players to the fun of Monster Hunter without changing the core of the series.”

Mr. Fujioka explains that it’s for this reason that the difficulty in Wilds generally follows suit from World.

“Monster Hunter is an action game, which means that you’re always going to have some players who never complete the game no matter how much you adjust the numbers,” he says. “That’s why we quite carefully analyzed the reasons players can’t beat it, or why they can’t make it to a hunt, then created a way for them to grow step by step. As you progress through the game, a moment will come when these skills that you’ve learned one at a time will suddenly all be required of you. At the end of the day, our goal with Monster Hunter is to create action that you can sink your teeth into, and the enjoyment of being able to finally defeat a monster by playing together with a team as one. We’ve had the goal in every title we’ve made for people picking up Monster Hunter for the first time to ultimately be able to reach the same skill level as veteran hunters.”

Given Fujioka’s comments, it sounds as though the development team never even considered making monsters weaker in order to make the game more accessible. They believe in the hunters who decide to take on Monster Hunter, and they want to avoid at all costs lessening the fun that those hunters should eventually come to find. Instead of resorting to the simplest possible way to improve accessibility, they decided to think about a player’s experience and design a game that matches it.

Tokuda continues, “For Wilds, we conducted an even closer analysis of a player’s growth curve. It’s good that Great Jagras, the first large monster in World, could easily be hit from many different angles, but it had a broad range of attacks in return, making it feel difficult for those not used to action games. Chatacabra, the first monster in Wilds, has only focused attacks, while the next monster, Quematrice, has wider-ranging attacks. We’ve designed it in this way so that players will gradually learn how to respond as they get used to the game’s action.”

Another Core: The Communication Factor

The developers also spoke about how one other element that helps define Monster Hunter is the communication between hunters. My first time playing Monster Hunter with others was with Monster Hunter Portable 3rd on the PlayStation Portable, but even back then there were already many veteran hunters who had come before me. I remember them taking me by the hand and guiding me through what I needed to bring on hunts and what to do when encountering a monster. But without those people around me, I doubt I ever would have ever become a hunter.

“You didn’t even know where to mine, right?” Tsujimoto laughs. “Networked communication wasn’t as easy back in those days, so it was like whoever found something became a hero. That information and enjoyment would then spread from there. We even had monsters that we never officially announced in order to encourage more communication.”

Fujioka says these tricks existed within Monster Hunter from the very beginning.

“In the mission for Lao-Shan Lung, you’re asked to simply repel the monster, but it’s actually possible to kill it,” he says. “It’s designed so that it can be properly defeated even if that isn’t the goal. That information was never officially announced, though, so a player would get that experience and spread the information from there. We were intentional about putting that into the game.”

Monster Hunter began as an action game that can be enjoyed with other players, communication included. That philosophy has remained consistent ever since its start in 2004.

“What we set out to create from the very start was action enjoyed with others, whether that’s in the game’s setting or in its gameplay,” continues Fujioka. “The focus is on how much fun we can bring players through its action, and just how solid the push and pull against monsters feels. I think that what makes Monster Hunter unique is that you can get a serious action experience whether you’re playing alone or with three others.”

It may be a little early to ask, but now that Wilds nears its release, what do the developers see in Monster Hunter’s future? When I ask Fujioka this, he replies with a forced laugh. “The future, huh…” He then goes silent for a bit, as if to think back on his time developing the game, then continues, picking his words with care.

“… Well, I think I’ve exhausted myself with Wilds, and it feels like it’ll be difficult to take a broader view of the game until a while after its release,” he admits. “What I can say, though, is that there has been a dizzying amount of change in the last decade or two, like online games becoming the standard. Advances in hardware and technology are of course going to continue as well. It was a huge shock when the PSP came out and we saw the level of specs that portable games were now capable of. That would have been unimaginable 20 years before its release. All we can do is make games. But when something incredible that feels truly advanced comes along, we get so many ideas about what to do next with Monster Hunter. I think Monster Hunter is just going to keep changing to match the shifts and advances of the times.”

The interview left me with the powerful feeling that these creators firmly believe in how fun Monster Hunter is. At the same time, their faith is strong that hunters around the world will enjoy Monster Hunter. They leave the core fun of the games untouched while bringing hunters to new horizons made visible by advances in hardware. After the leap that was World, these creators now aim for even greater heights with Wilds. I can barely wait until the day that I get to hunt in the world they’ve created with it.

Monster Hunter Wilds is scheduled for release on February 28. Check out our exclusive Oilwell Basin Ajarakan and Rompopolo gameplay videos, and look out for more exclusive interview articles and videos throughout January as part of IGN First.

Shuka Yamada is a freelance writer for IGN Japan. This article was translated by Ko Ransom.

Ubisoft just delayed Assassin’s Creed: Shadows by another month, amid a time of troubled financials, continued cost cuts, and ongoing rumors the company was preparing for a sale to gaming giant Tencent. In an emergency conference call today, investors grilled CEO Yves Guillemot and CFO Frederick Duguet for answers on all of the above – but their responses didn’t provide much reassurance.

Ubisoft’s call today came alongside not just the delay announcement, but a seeming confirmation of sorts that Ubisoft is preparing to sell, or at least strongly considering it. Per the press release, the company has “appointed leading advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders. This process will be overseen by the independent members of the Board of Directors. Ubisoft will inform the market in accordance with applicable regulations if and once a transaction materializes.”

Back in October, Bloomberg reported that Ubisoft’s founding Guillemot family and shareholder Tencent were in discussions to take the company private following a number of high-profile flops, game cancellations, and the collapse of the company’s share price. At the time, the talks were merely exploratory, and Ubisoft told IGN it would “inform the market if and when appropriate.” Today’s update seems to suggest that such talks, either with Tencent or in some other capacity, have moved forward in some way.

But it’s unclear exactly how, and Ubisoft’s shareholders understandably wanted more details during the conference call today. But Guillemot and Duguet weren’t biting. First, they were asked directly by a Morgan Stanley representative: “On the various transformation strategic and capitalistic options, it’s a bit of a vague phrase if you don’t mind me saying. Could you perhaps elaborate on the kind of things you’re talking about? And perhaps particularly, there were press reports of detailed discussions with Tencent that were reported on in December. Should we read that there is now some sort of proposal which the independent board members are going to review against other options? Or is that not what you mean by that?”

Duguet replied:

The objective of this process is to unlock the best value potential of our assets to the benefit of our stakeholders, and to foster the best conditions to create great games in the fast-evolving market. That’s the overall objective, so that’s why we mentioned that we appointed leading advisors. So we are currently actively exploring different options. And we can’t say more. Of course we won’t comment on specific rumors we have seen in the market, but we are convinced there are several potential paths to generate value from Ubisoft assets and franchises. We will inform the market if and when a transaction materializes.

That…doesn’t really clarify anything! And the Morgan Stanley guy seemed to feel the same, because he followed up by acknowledging Ubisoft didn’t want to say what the different options were, but asked if they could say “whether there are any concrete courses of action or scenarios that are being considered, or is this more of an exploratory kind of process?” elaborating that he wanted to know what was different about this announcement as opposed to past statements by Ubisoft about such exploration.

Duguet’s response was short. “We are limited with what we can say today, but we’ve started a process.” Then, seemingly realizing this could be interpreted as a too-specific confirmation, added, “with advisors.”

The other shareholders didn’t let Ubisoft off the hook here. A Barclays representative pointed out to Guillemot and Duguet that Tencent had recently been designated as a Chinese military company by the U.S., and wanted to know if that would hinder it becoming the majority owner of Ubisoft. Guillemot declined to comment. A representative from HSBC asked “what stage” the advisors were at, and when Guillemot could expect to get some initial findings. Guillemot would only say they “have started working” and that they could expect “good progress” in the coming months.

Admittedly, there’s only so much Guillemot and Duguet can say about a potential acquisition without throwing it into legal and negotiational jeopardy, but that doesn’t mean the skepticism around the board’s alleged plans wasn’t warranted. A number of other questions went unanswered during the call, such as a question about how many AAA games Ubisoft expected to release in the coming fiscal year (“you’ll know more by May”) and what specific sort of feedback Ubisoft got that sparked the month-long delay of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows (Duguet and Guillemot tag-teamed an answer about positive community sentiment that did not address the investor’s actual question at all).

Overall, the tone of the discussion was one of significant concern for the health of Ubisoft and the shareholders’ investments, and it’s no surprise why. For several years now, Ubisoft has seemed to be in a strange, slow downward spiral, with a number of high-profile flops, layoffs, studio closures, game cancellations, and delay after delay after delay.

Meanwhile, rumors continue to spin about what exact proposals the board is considering, with some media outlets floating the idea that Tencent is increasingly reluctant to embrace Ubisoft due to the Guillemot family’s insistance on retaining a significant amount of control. Sans Tencent, there are few other companies big enough and rich enough to spend the cash needed to save the albatross Ubisoft has grown into.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio will release the New Game Plus mode for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii as free downloadable content after facing controversy over charging for it in previous game Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

RGG announced the New Game Plus mode during a Like a Dragon Direct today, January 9, though didn’t say when the “post release patch” would arrive exactly. Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii itself launches February 21.

The studio faced backlash from fans in early 2024 when it revealed the New Game Plus mode for mainline entry Infinite Wealth would be locked behind the more expensive edition.

Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii similarly has different editions but these just include digital extras such as new crew members and skins, while the most expensive version has some physical bonuses such as an eye patch and pirate flag.

The game is a spin-off sequel to Infinite Wealth, the eighth mainline entry in the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series (or ninth including Yakuza 0). It follows Majima as he wakes up with amnesia and becomes a pirate, exploring the likes of Hawaii along the way.

A trailer released at the October Xbox Partner Showcase revealed a proper first look at ship combat akin to Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and the return of the beloved character Taiga Saejima, perhaps teasing more ties to the main series than previously thought.

It will also be a decent bit longer than previous Yakuza spin-off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, with its story taking around 15 to 18 hours to complete. Fans can also dress up Majima as longtime series protagonist Kiryu Kazuma, but only if they sign up for email notifications.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Attack on Titan Revolution Update 2.5 is kicking off 2025 for Roblox fans with a new Armored Titan Raid, a rework for Fritz, new Abnormal variants, and more.

The update, which is live now for players across all platforms, launched earlier today and seeks to set the Attack on Titan simulator up for a colossal year. Arriving alongside the ongoing Christmas festivities, every gameplay tweak and cosmetic addition gives players new anime-themed gear and challenges to enjoy.

The aforementioned Armored Titan Raid tops the list of additions, with the team behind Attack on Titan Revolution describing it as a two-phase event that tasks soldiers with defending rescue boats while fighting off the plated beast. With this comes new Raid Artifacts, such as the Scars and Rifle, and cosmetics, like the Young Reiner’s Outfit and Marleyan Band.

Square Enix has shared the list of features available in the PC version of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which includes up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second alongside Nvidia DLSS support.

A trailer for the PC version, below, arrived ahead of its January 23 release date and, while it stopped short of specifics, did confirm that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will feature improved lighting and enhanced visuals compared to the PlayStation 5 version.

Not completely departing from its original platform, however, it does also include support for the DualSense wireless controller and all the additional features it brought. Mouse and keyboard support is available too.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will offer three graphics presets (low, medium, and high) though Square Enix said it has “numerous graphics options.” This includes the ability to customize the number of background non-player characters appearing on screen.

The role-playing game arrived in February 2024 as the second part of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy. It follows Cloud, Aerith, Tifa and the rest of the party as they leave Midgar and explore an open world and its vibrant towns and cities.

The PC version therefore arrives almost a year later as part of Square Enix’s push to go multiplatform, though director Naoki Hamaguchi has asked fans to please not make inappropriate mods upon its PC release.

In our 9/10 review of the original PS5 version, IGN said: “Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth impressively builds off of what Remake set in motion, both as a best-in-class action-RPG full of exciting challenges and an awe-inspiring recreation of a world that has meant so much to so many for so long.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.