Sony’s latest E3 press conference was shockingly thin on all-new game announcements this year, but one major title that did get unveiled for the first time was Monster Hunter: World. A new multi-platform adventure, Monster Hunter: World will undertake a series first with the franchise’s return of drop-in/drop-out co-op monster-slaying, namely by removing the former games’ region locks, and allowing both Western and Japanese gamers to play together! It will also be the first game in the Monster Hunter series to have a simultaneous worldwide release, rather than debuting in Japan before spreading to other territories later.
Monster Hunter: World appears to maintain the series’ hallmark gameplay components, namely the aforementioned co-op-friendly questing and monster-slaying, along with upgradeable equipment and skills. The game also promises a living, breathing ecosystem that players must use cunning and resourcefulness to master, though a press release from Capcom claims that the game will also be ‘accessible’, if you’re not a hardened series veteran.
Despite originally being announced explicitly for PlayStation 4 at Sony’s E3 conference, Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter: World will also release for Xbox One and PC, with all three versions planned for an early 2018 debut. The PlayStation 4 version of Monster Hunter: World will be the flagship edition however, and promises some kind of unspecified exclusive content that won’t be present in the Xbox One or PC versions. This will mark the series’ first proper expansion to an Xbox console and PC in the West as well, not to mention the first PlayStation entry for the West in quite some time, namely since 2009’s Monster Hunter Freedom Unite for PlayStation Portable. Most recent Monster Hunter games have remained exclusive to Nintendo platforms in domestic territories over the past several years, despite various spin-offs occasionally releasing on Xbox, PlayStation, mobile and PC platforms more recently in Japan.
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