Monster Hunter: World Introduces Big Changes But Retains Plenty Of Monster Hunter Charm

Siliconera got to check out Monster Hunter: World at E3 2017 through a live demo that changes every time. For starters, here are some of the basic commands for Monster Hunter: World:

• Triangle – Draw Weapon
• X – Evade
• Hold L1 – Select item
• Hold L2 – Aim Slinger
• R1 – Dash
• R3 – Focus camera
• Touchpad – Opens map

You press the D-pad’s left and right to cycle through your items and the Square button to use them. As you can see, most of the controls are familiar to  what we’ve seen in previous MonHun entries.

“Scoutflies” help direct you to the monster. They do this by providing a trace to find monsters, and also level up when finding tracks that lead to them. You can also level them up using mucus.

Using the new sub-tool called  “Slinger,” you’re able to use it as a way to hook onto parts of the environment to reach higher grounds, or pick up rocks or other items to shoot down monsters from a distance. In addition to rocks, there are various other items that can be used with the Slinger. For example, the “Scatternuts” is an explosive-type ammo, while the Red Pit can be found out in the field and used to hit enemies from long-range or to simply distract monsters, which can be important when you’re stuck in an area with a monster too powerful to handle.

For example, the when you first run into the T-Rex-looking monster from the trailer (pictured above), you might not be able to take it on, but you’ll get to hide in bushes to avoid being seen. Keep in mind that the monster AI is much better than what we’ve seen in previous Monster Hunter games, so it’ll have more of a stealth-like feeling to it.

The environment can often help the player, but sometimes it works the other way around. During our viewing of the demonstration, we saw the player get caught in tree roots, which caused him to move slower. He had to push his way through the roots, but monsters can easily dash their way through them and break the environment. So basically, you’ll definitely find yourself in moments where taking the wrong step at the wrong time could mean taking a big hit or being KO’d by a monster.

The player went with the Great Sword as his weapon of choice, and also had a Palico partner in the demo.

Here are the basic controls for the battle parts of Monster Hunter: World:

• Circle – Attack
• Triangle – Heavy Attack
  • You can also jump on monsters to mount and attack by mashing the triangle button.
• Triangle + Circle – Rising Slash
• X – Evade

Again, the battle controls are still pretty much what you’d expect from Monster Hunter.  The game offers a kind of tactical support character (think Persona 4’s Rise) who helps out with hints on when you should retreat to use a potion, and such.

On the tactical note, the monster the player was fighting made his own plan to make an escape after taking so much damage. You can chase them down like you could in previous Monster Hunter games, but this time it’s in a seamless world, so there won’t be zones

Without zones, that means monsters won’t take those little shortcuts that lead from one part of the map to the other, but the retreating monster we saw actually managed to break down a whole wall and created its own escape tunnel. Keep in mind that there are environmental traps that you can use, such as “Flash Flies” to stun monsters. There are other items that can be equipped such as “Paralysis Knives” for a similar effect.

Monster Hunter: World looks more realistic on a visual level, but its monster habits have also become more realistic. Monsters can interact with each other and they also have their own ecosystem. For example, the Anjanath would be higher up on the food chain, and may even try to eat or fight a Great Jagras.

There was a neat item called the “Challenge Mantle” that players can wear to lure monsters into attacking you. In the demo, the player used it as a way to draw the monster into a trap.

There are part destruction features you’re familiar with, as we saw the Anjanath lose a tail. From there it can be harvested but the Anjanath will still attack without a tail. It seems to be more noticeable in Monster Hunter: World. Another returning feature is the jump-and-mount that lets you take jump up on a Rathalos and take it down by mashing the triangle button.

Back to the subject of luring monsters, it looks like it’ll play a big strategic role on how you take on monsters in Monster Hunter: World. There was big fight that had all three monsters attacking each other: the Anjanath was biting the Great Jagras while a Rathalos was swooping down on the Anjanath. Again, since there aren’t any zones, for instances like these you’ll want to lure them out as far as possible to be safe.

Some of you might be worried about a seamless open-world slowing down the pace of Monster Hunter, but they’ve added some useful features such as a fast travel that lets you go back to camp at any time. The player was able to simply fast travel back to the base and switch to a Heavy Bowgun. The game has a day and night cycle that changes various things depending on the time, so that’ll be pretty nice to be able to go back to the base to make any necessary changes.

All fourteen weapon classes from Monster Hunter will be available as well, and there are weaknesses, or damage multipliers, that we got to see when the player unleashed a barrage of bullets with the Heavy Bowgun by hitting different parts of the monster.

Unlike previous Monster Hunter games, both single player and multiplayer modes have the same quest lines. If you’re playing single player you can send a flare to call for help. For example, say you’re having trouble taking down that Rathalos and need help from other players—they’ll get to drop-in at the sign of a flare.

In multiplayer, you’ll get to use pre-set phrases with auto-translate, so that means you’ll get to play with players from Japan without having to worry about too many communication issues. Yes, the game will handle cross-region multiplayer. As far as other communication methods go, there’s in-game voice chat and you can also use a keyboard to chat.

And don’t worry, if you’re worried about any troll Hunters joining in on your game to intentionally lure monsters to attack you, there will be some sort of kick system.

Monster Hunter: World releases on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in early 2018, and later for PC.