A special behind-closed-doors presentation of Monster Hunter Wilds blew me away over Summer Game Fest. Its scope, bold design choices, and evolution of the franchise were utterly enthralling as the 2025 release cements itself atop my list of most-anticipated games. Admittedly far from the biggest Monster Hunter fan in the world, my few dozen hours with the series over the years is nowhere near enough to qualify me as an expert by any stretch.
But confident enough in knowing the game’s core identity and surrounding gameplay pillars, I was all too eager to check out Wilds over the course of Summer Game Fest. What awaited was a roughly 20-minute demo behind closed doors and to put it bluntly, those 20 minutes were nowhere near enough. While still a ways off from its 2025 release, is already looking absolutely phenomenal in just about every way you could imagine.
From the downtime at camp to the heat of the moment in a fight for your life, it’s already as exhilarating as you’d expect, just with far more detail and smoother layers than ever before. It’s a demo that impressed me a great deal and, even as a relatively inexperienced Monster Hunter fan, it’s pushed Wilds to the very top of my list of must-plays. A seamless hunt Kicking our presentation off at base camp, we were immediately shown one of the big upgrades coming with Wilds.
Rather than having to set your task, ready for a hunt, and then load into an instance out in the open world, this time around, things are c.
