Take note, other developers: this is how you do it. Capcom has removed gender-restricted armor sets from Monster Hunter in the upcoming PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC title, Monster Hunter Wilds.
As show in the developer diary streams that were broadcast live from Gamescom 2024 today (and confirmed in a hands-on demo by yours truly), Capcom has decided to bin off the binary armor choices for female and male hunters. Now, no matter what character you decide to make when you create your avatar for the game, you will be able to equip all variations of armor without any restriction.
Typically, Monster Hunter games have locked you into one of two variants depending on the make-up of your custom character, but in the upcoming title, every single player will be able to equip an A or B variant of each gear set. I even experimented with mixing and matching; it was possible to use the ‘male’ version of a Chatucabra head and the ‘female’ version of the Chatucabra body in the same loadout. Ergo; you can mix and match.
The implications of this are purely cosmetic; the abilities and bonuses conferred per set will be the same no matter which variant you choose, but the aesthetic impact is pretty substantial. Monster Hunter players have long held up ‘Fashion Hunter’ as a major part of the appeal of the game, and basically doubling the amount of armour each character can wear will have a massive impact.
Want some skimpy, skin-showing upper armour and massively over-sized and frankly comical greaves to go with it? Knock yourself out! Want a full face-covering helm but an exotic dancer’s waistlet? Go ahead. A cursory look at the community’s gathering hubs (read: Reddit or Twitter) shows that most people are pretty happy about this. After all, why should body type prevent you from wearing whatever clothes you want? In real life or virtual, for that matter.
“A major Capcom W; now I can make my manly man look more effeminate,” says one observer. “I can’t wait to make the sluttiest femboy imaginable on this game,” says another. “This has been the best news for fashion hunters ever since transmog,” says one Redditor. But perhaps my personal favourite appraisal of the situation reads: “ah yes, the two genders: Monster and Hunter.”
What I really like about this is that Capcom still went to the effort of making both sets of armor, and granted the ability to wear it to all avatars. It would have been much easier to simply make one set and have that as ‘the’ armour set per monster or resource. It shows the effort and detail that the developers are going to, and really plays up to the tenet of what Monster Hunter has always been about: giving players the choice to really play the game the way they want to.
The content on offer in the demo was pretty light, so it’s not certain whether we’re going to see the return of alpha and beta armor sets, too. A hunter can dream, though, a hunter can dream.
Monster Hunter Wilds is set to launch on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC in 2025. Check out the latest trailer here.
