The team behind Monster Hunter: Wilds has put out a few new weapons trailers, plus one special preview of the new Focus Mode.
Focus Mode, available in… probably every weapon, is a new targeting system that’s aimed at getting players to knock over monsters quicker. There’s three major things to know—firstly, of course, that it slows down player actions so you can more carefully aim and pull off special weapon-specific attacks. Then, if you’ve been attacking a certain point over time, Focus Mode highlights those spots so that stronger hits, and hopefully eventually a stun or a part knockoff, can be pulled off.
The big, heavy-swinging (maybe literally) draw of Focus Mode is the weak point targeting—once a monster hits the ground stunned, you’ll be able to seek out the weak points without frequent guessing and execute special attacks to do serious damage. It’ll even show you circumstantial weak points! As a Greatsword enjoyer prone to mis-swinging, I am elated.
The recent Wilds trailers also showed off a few of the usable weapons that return from other Monster Hunter titles. One is the Insect Glaive, which has both “summoning” and light-weapon capabilities. The player can summon an insect that can fly around and attack various parts of the monster, while the glaive itself has two ends, one for blunt hits and another pointier side. Also, there's a cool spinning special attack.
The heavy-swinging Hunting Horn returns, too, letting players swing around a massive, heavy, sword-like weapon that does serious damage to a monster's shell and parts. It's great if you've got something that needs to get cracked—plus, with it being a horn, it'll give you and your allies boosts.
There’s also the return of the Heavy Bowgun, a long-running Monster Hunter weapon that’s basically a heavy machine gun turret that’s better for targeting certain spots. Its “Ignite Mode” lets players rapid-fire special ammo, and the weapon itself is big enough to permit manual blocking of attacks.
Those are a few highlights, as many more are available on the YouTube channel to check out. There's no specific date for Wilds yet, but it's still slated for a 2025 release.
