Monster Hunter Wilds is dropping banger after banger at Gamescom: gender-neutral armor, skippable cutscenes, built-in weapon skills, single-player pause, 3D map, and more

Monster Hunter Wilds has a significant presence at Gamescom 2024, and with details emerging from the first hands-on demo and some hefty developer livestreams, the next installment in this storied action RPG franchise is looking better by the hour. From weapons and armor to quality-of-life upgrades, Wilds is packing some significant upgrades.

Series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, art director Kaname Fujioka, and Wilds game director Yuya Tokuda shared some interesting details in a Gamescom stream. Monster Hunter sleuth Oceaniz helpfully collected many standouts in a few posts, and this has come alongside hands-on impressions from well-known Monster Hunter speedrunners like Canta Per Me. This comes with the usual asterisk of any unfinished build, and we'll soon be on the show floor testing the demo ourselves, but it's a promising sign as we inch toward the game's 2025 - potentially early 2025 - launch. 

Fashion remains a cornerstone of Monster Hunter, and there's big news on that front. "In previous Monster Hunter games, you had male and female armor separate," Fujioka explained in the dev stream (via interpreter). "I'm happy to confirm that in Monster Hunter Wilds, there's no more male and female armor. All the characters can wear any gear." This could theoretically double the cosmetic armor choices available to each hunter, or at the very least greatly expand them. 

Armor comes up again later in the session with one of many direct iterations on Monster Hunter World. Armor sets are back, but this time around we can use armor from different monsters of the same type – like flying wyverns, for example – to activate shared armor skills, rather than being locked to one specific monster's set. This provides more ways to build mixed armor sets while still obtaining set bonuses. 

Weapons have new skills as well. Tokuda was light on details, but he certainly made it sound like the weapons in Wilds go beyond the honing effects and stat bonuses attached to weapons in previous