Monster Hunter Wilds: Weapon Changes Revealed by Developers - IGN First

Anticipation builds with each new Monster Hunter release as players eagerly await to see how their beloved weapons will feel in the latest game. Each of the 14 weapon types brings its own unique flair while adapting to the innovative features of each new installment. Monster Hunter: World broke the mold by removing segmented areas during quests, and Monster Hunter Rise introduced the dynamic Wirebug action. As these weapons evolve within the hunters' hands, they reveal fresh dimensions that align with each game's unique design. So, what design philosophies shaped the tuning of each weapon in Monster Hunter Wilds, a game that strives for a seamless hunting experience?

To delve into these pivotal gameplay elements, we had the privilege of speaking with Monster Hunter Wilds' art director and executive director, Kaname Fujioka, and Wilds director, Yuya Tokuda. Fujioka, who directed the original Monster Hunter, and Tokuda, a veteran of the series since Monster Hunter Freedom, provided insights into the weapon development process.

IGN First Monster Hunter Wilds Oilwell Basin Artwork

6 ImagesIn our discussion, we explored the conceptualization and development of various weapons, gaining new insights into the weapons that have captured players' interest. We also learned about the adjustments made for the final version of the game following feedback from the November 2024 Open Beta Test.

Adjustments for a Seamless World

Tokuda highlighted the significant alterations required for several weapons due to the shift in gameplay dynamics brought about by Wilds' seamless map and fluctuating weather conditions.

"There are substantial changes to the Light and Heavy Bowgun, as well as the Bow," he explained.

In contrast to previous Monster Hunter titles, where players had to return to base to restock resources after each quest, Wilds offers a continuous play experience, eliminating the need for such breaks. Historically, ranged weapons rely on consumable ammo and coatings, which posed a challenge in Wilds without designated restocking periods.

"That's why we designed it so that basic damage sources can be used without expending resources," Tokuda said. "We balanced it around the idea that things like normal, pierce, and spread ammo for Bowguns and coatings for Bows can fire unlimited times while managing your gauge. But we still wanted it to be possible to use what you've prepared ahead of time or what you find in the field on top of that, and so our balancing took into account the presence of design that allows you to create powerful ammo with attributes from gathered materials."

Each weapon underwent meticulous adjustments to align with the new features of Wilds and the game's overarching concept, with the most notable changes affecting ranged weapons. Fujioka emphasized that these adjustments extended beyond mechanics into the realm of design.

"We had the idea of wanting to properly show the movement of charging a Bowgun for a special shot," he remarked. "Shots that cancel out a monster's attack look properly convincing as they perform that canceling. Ever since the previous game in the series, we've put a lot of work into making it visually clear to the player what they're doing in the moment."

Advancements in technology have played a crucial role in enhancing these animations. Players can now seamlessly swing weapons, stow them, and switch between them. Tokuda noted that refining the transition animations between actions has even altered what hunters can achieve.

"One common concept shared by all weapons is that we made sure it's possible for hunters to use them in a natural way given the situation at the moment," he stated. "Our goal was to do this particularly when you can't make any inputs."

For instance, in earlier games, healing required hunters to sheath their weapons and halt movement. Improved animations have facilitated changes to this system.

Fujioka elaborated: "The Focus Mode that we added to [Wilds] is something we put a lot of work into when it comes to action. You can move while facing a specified direction, making continuous attacks possible while on the move but slightly off-center from your target. Players can properly go in the direction they want. We wanted to make a game that made possible the image players have in their minds about how they want to play.

"There have been incredible technical leaps for the development environment in recent years, such as in managing animations, and there have been even greater changes in how games themselves are played. For action games, in particular, the question of how you meet the players' desires to play in a certain way in the moment they actively want to make a movement is an important one. During development, we're always conscious about not being left behind by changes in the times."

Focus Strikes

A significant addition in Wilds is the system allowing hunters to wound monsters by continuously attacking a specific body part. The formation of a wound is generally determined by the damage inflicted on that area. Environmental elements, such as falling rocks or battles between monsters, can expedite this process. However, when it comes to weapon attacks, wounds form due to accumulated damage, resulting in no inherent differences between weapon types.

Hunters can unleash devastating damage on wounded monsters by executing Focus Strikes while in Focus Mode. Each weapon boasts unique animations for these strikes, such as the dual blades' acrobatic maneuvers around a monster, which may suggest variations in abilities. We asked Tokuda if different weapons have distinct Focus Strike effects beyond the visual aspect.

"For Focus Strikes, we wanted to have animations that show each weapon's uniqueness," he responded. "But I admit that this also created a variation between weapons during the open beta test where some were far too strong, while feeling the strengths of others was difficult. Though we do allow differences between weapons in order to give them personality, we don't want the disparity between weapons to be too extreme, and so we're tuning them to be more standardized for the official release of the game."

The wound system introduces new strategic options for hunters. For example, targeting a monster's head with a hammer can cause flinching and potentially create a wound. Once a wound becomes a scar, hunters can either continue targeting the head or shift focus to another woundable area. Later in the game, players will discover environmental tactics that can lead to unexpected scars. Tokuda explained that, like flinching and part breaking, the wound system offers hunters new tactical choices, where they might anticipate creating a wound with just one more hit in a specific location.

"Monsters are unwounded when a quest begins, but you can hunt monsters as you explore the locale in Wilds, so as the situation in the locale changes, monsters can have turf wars even without a hunter's involvement," he added. "This means that a monster may already have multiple wounds by the time it interacts with the player. You can think yourself lucky and hunt a monster when it's in that state. There may also be special additional rewards for felling monsters wandering the locale. In some cases, there are even monsters that give gems as additional rewards."

The introduction of Focus Mode and wounds has made it easier to execute high-damage attacks, like the Great Sword's Charged Slash. We inquired if adjustments were made to monster health and toughness in response to these new features.

"It's not as if that was our intention from the start, but health did end up being a little bit higher than World once we thought about maintaining appropriate playtimes and player satisfaction, compared to past titles," Tokuda explained. "Elements like flinch resistance are also higher, but this doesn't mean that hunts will be tedious. Part of the purpose of Focus Mode is to allow players to feel more accomplished through shorter loops. We tried to design it so that the time they spend hunting is even more concentrated than before."

The Tempo of the Great Sword

Tuning each of the 14 weapon types involves extensive development work. We asked Tokuda if each weapon type had a dedicated director or designer.

"There are some staff members who oversee multiple weapon types, which ultimately makes for about six individual planners, who are responsible for player experience," he replied. "We don't just have game designers, of course. We include artists and animation designers to discuss details like what kinds of movements would be good and how that may mean a weapon could be better off used in a different way as we polish the weapons. We didn't have staff members assigned to weapons from the start; their number grows as development progresses. We generally begin by developing the Great Sword as a prototype, then verify weapons like the Sword and Shield and Heavy Bowgun, applying the knowledge we get from there to the other weapons as we create them."

Designers and artists collaborate to craft a weapon's action, considering both the fun of using it and its visual appeal. Fujioka highlighted that the concept of Focus Strikes inspired the art team.

"Attacks like the Focus Strike didn't exist in the series before, so now that we had this new form of expression available to us, we began by coming up with ideas while focusing on making it feel good over anything performance related," Fujioka said. "The Great Sword is an all-rounder weapon, so we generally begin with it when creating animations. It's one of the first weapons we created for the original Monster Hunter, and there's a strong sense of wanting to challenge ourselves with the Great Sword first. We felt excited when we first made the Focus Strike for the Great Sword, thinking that if we were able to create something that feels this good, we'd be able to do even more with the other weapons."

It appears that the Great Sword plays a more significant role in Monster Hunter's animation development than anticipated.

Tokuda continued: "I feel like weapons with a sense of heavy tempo like the Great Sword are rare in other action games. That's why it's a Monster Hunter standard to begin by making sure that the Great Sword is fun to use. The concepts for the other weapons come together in part by placing the Great Sword at the center and seeing how we can differentiate each of the other weapons from it.

"I guess you could say that once you're used to the game, you'll have noticed that the Great Sword is the most rounded of them all. While the speed of weapons like the Dual Blades or the Sword and Shield will always result in there being technical elements needed in order to earn damage in small ways, you're able to go straight to defeating a monster once you're good at using the Great Sword's style as it exists. It can even block, it has area of effect attacks, and it can create moments where you can deal solid damage. It's actually made so that you can go back and forth with a monster in the most straightforward way if you can just get used to its weight."

"Creating a game that's fun to play using the Great Sword's weight makes it easier to create weapons that fight with a quicker tempo," Fujioka added. "If high-tempo weapons become the focus, or if we match the speed of the monsters to them, movements will just get quicker and quicker. I think that we're able to create a game that feels like Monster Hunter when you play it by making sure that both sides are properly tuned with a weapon that has the Great Sword's tempo."

Weapons with Personality

Every hunter has a preferred weapon, and the community is vocal about weapon balance. Yet, it's inevitable that some weapons will be more popular than others. Players will voice their concerns if they feel a weapon is unfairly treated, and many will gravitate towards weapons whose strengths are easily understood. There's no definitive answer to weapon tuning, which is why the creators focus on highlighting each weapon's individuality.

Fujioka explained, "We always think that it's better to focus on how to design what makes a weapon unique rather than trying to make all weapons equally easy to use. That said, we do think it's a problem if players can't have the gaming experience we want them to have. Of course, it's not a good thing to have a weapon that's both easy to use and overpowered, so there are weapons we've made a lot of changes to for the release version of the game given what we saw in the open beta."

When asked what he meant by "what makes a weapon unique," Tokuda provided an example using the Hunting Horn.

"At the outset, I told the team that I wanted the concept of this weapon to be that it can produce proper amounts of damage when used where it performs best, the area around you," he said. "Instead of being able to unleash one attack after the next, you can use something like an Echo Bubble to deal damage by controlling the area. Since we have this element of sound that other weapons can't produce, how do we make use of that while outputting damage? That's the kind of thing we challenged ourselves to do with the weapon. Instead of thinking that it's all about damage, we care more about making the most out of each weapon's personality."

"Now that you're able to carry two weapons in this game, there was some discussion during the open beta about the most powerful choice being to buff yourself with the Hunting Horn before switching to another weapon and fighting. We're tuning the release version, balancing with the end content in mind, to make sure that the Hunting Horn isn't the only choice for a secondary weapon by having self-buffs be worthwhile but not too strong."

There will always be weapons that perform better or worse against specific monsters. The developers acknowledge these variations but aim to avoid any single build that would make hunting every monster overly efficient. As players progress into the endgame, their focus on certain monsters may narrow, and weapon choices may become more streamlined for efficiency. However, flattening the distinctiveness of the game's weapons and monsters would undermine the essence of Monster Hunter.

Fujioka remarked, "While I think that weapons that stand at the top in terms of time efficiency—ease of use and ease of hunting—are going to see more popularity, we have made it so that if you really care about a weapon type, you'll be able to beat a monster through enough trial and error."

Tokuda mentioned the ability to carry a primary and secondary weapon in Wilds.

"Even if you have somewhat specialized weapons, it'd make me happy if players brought two in order for them to complement one another as they play," he said.

Build Your Own Skills

When considering weapon performance, the endgame content of decorations comes into focus. These affect skill builds, so what does the system look like in Wilds? Tokuda explained.

"Decorations are currently similar to the system in World, with decorations having specific skill abilities," he said. "These skills are still activated by placing them into weapon or armor slots (In Wilds, weapon and armor skills can each be activated separately). However, you can make single-skill decorations through something like alchemy. So in [Wilds], players won't have the issue of never being able to get a specific skill."

Fujioka, reflecting on his experience with World, added, "I never ended up getting it once. My Shield Jewel 2... I ended up finishing the game without having completed my build." (Read more about how equipment skills work in Monster Hunter Wilds.)

On the topic of builds, we asked the duo about their favorite weapons. Tokuda mentioned his preference for long-range weapons like the Heavy Bowgun and Light Bowgun, and the adaptable Sword and Shield, which helps him demonstrate gameplay mechanics as the director. He plans to explore all weapons post-launch, now that hunters can carry two. Fujioka, known for his affinity for the Lance, shared his thoughts.

"I'm a Lance main, or rather, I only use the Lance," he admitted. "I think that the Lance is a weapon where positioning is very important, as you stick to a monster's feet or some other part. Until now, you had to perform this kind of positioning by walking or sidestepping, but in Wilds it's now a lot easier to make minor adjustments, like shifting over slightly as you attack. It's a simple change, but it's important for players to have more choices, so in that sense I think that's one of the positives for Lance users in this game."

The Lance received significant feedback during the open beta, prompting major tweaks for the official release. Tokuda elaborated on the community's response.

"We received a lot of feedback during the open beta test, and to be honest, one of the largest reactions we got was that the Lance isn't embodying its concept as a weapon," he said. "Our intention was for players to guard in a variety of ways, sticking to a monster as required and counterattacking. But there were a lot of actions that weren't working properly, such as it being hard to use and perform the right action at the right time, actions going off by mistake, actions coming out late, and so on. Surrounded by so many other actions that worked properly, it ended up feeling like a pretty dull weapon. We're now making major improvements to this for the release version, and we hope you look forward to that."

Even during our interview, the Wilds team was hard at work to provide hunters with the best experience possible. They have taken player feedback from the open beta to heart. As developers who have dedicated years to Monster Hunter and as hunters themselves, they are committed to refining the 14 weapon types to create the ultimate gaming experience. Monster Hunter remains an unparalleled action game series, driven by the passion of its players and the relentless pursuit of excellence by its developers.

You can witness the dedication of the Monster Hunter Wilds team to player feedback in their official detailed community update video, where Tokuda discusses performance enhancements, detailed weapon changes, and more.