Monster Hunter Wilds will have various biomes, similar to its predecessors, where we encounter monsters that have adapted to the environment. However, a specific area that existed in earlier parts of the series and is associated with a specific feature will be missing in the latest game. A former Monster Hunter developer explains why this is the case.
What will be missing? In an interview with MeinMMO, Yuya Tokuda, the director of Monster Hunter Wilds, confirmed that there will be no underwater battles. When asked by editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski, the development team burst into laughter, as underwater battles are a very specific topic in the community.
In Monster Hunter Tri and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, there were battles that took place in water. However, this type of battle was not popular among all players. Fans summarize well in the Reddit forum what they disliked about underwater battles:
- Movements became much slower in the water, making it difficult to time attacks
- Some weapon types became useless, as their range was too short or their moveset was drastically altered
- Visibility was obscured by the water
You can see what these battles looked like in the following YouTube video by WhiteKhakis:
However, there are also advocates like user Lepruk, who could appreciate the underwater battles. For him, it mainly depends on whether players played Monster Hunter 3 on the Nintendo 3DS or the Wii U. The battles were reportedly fantastic on the Wii U.
But in any case, there will be no battles in Monster Hunter Wilds. A developer who was involved in creating the underwater battles now provides a plausible reason.
This is what the battles look like in Monster Hunter Wilds instead:
No underwater battles in Monster Hunter Wilds
What is the reason? On X, Kojima spoke out. He was a developer at Capcom until 2019 and worked on many parts of the Monster Hunter series, including Monster Hunter Tri and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.
He reveals that developing underwater levels would be like developing a separate game, given that there are already ground battles. The underwater battles would be “challenging, really very challenging” to develop.
It would be a big challenge to create the animations, hit detection, and behavior underwater.
The difficulty of development will be one reason why Capcom is no longer considering incorporating underwater battles into Monster Hunter Wilds. However, it may be possible that such battles could make a comeback in future installments of the series someday.
At this point in time, we find it unlikely that underwater battles will be included in Monster Hunter. Instead, there will be other new features. One of them can be conveniently watched on MeinMMO: Capcom shows new feature from Monster Hunter Wilds – The combat is supposed to become more precise
