I used to be the panel moderator for Image Comics, a fair number of years ago now. It was a nice gig because I had minimal oversight and talking about art is a great pleasure, so I got to sculpt the conversations and panels in a direction I enjoyed, which ended up being a direction that the crowd responded to, which in turn gave me more freedom. I used to think of it as “live comics criticism.”
Anyway, I met and chatted with a lot of comics creators in that gig. I got to see how they moved with their fans and what pain points there were in the relationship for them along with the benefits. Some responded to the fan-creator relationship by running from it and avoiding their own discomfort with the imbalance or connection. A few cultivated a fandom around them, and others simply tolerated it as a necessary but maybe awkward part of the game. There’s a variety of ways to deal with having fans (or followers, or friends online, or whatever whatever you would like to plug in here), and I always appreciated seeing and working with the people who had clearly put some thought into the relationship between fan and creator, who thought about that maybe-gentle/maybe-not power imbalance and made it a point to move very carefully when interacting with people in general, not just fans.
It’s very easy to show up somewhere new and break it with your mere presence. Think of a group of kids playing card games for quarters, and an adult rolling up with a ten dollar bill for their buy-in. The game is broken. The adult can lose a quarter, and none of those kids can match their bets. Sometimes, showing up somewhere as a creator has a similar effect, whether it’s a chilling one or an energizing one.
The folks I learned the most from had clearly taken a moment to think about the terrain of comics and fandom and their place in it before pushing in and building a place for themselves, by themselves.
A moment’s care goes a long way, right?
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In Monster Hunter Wilds, directed by Yuya Tokuda and written by Shino Okamura, you play as a hunter who is part of Avis Unit, the vanguard of an expedition force to the Forbidden Lands. These lands are harsh, have been isolated for over a thousand years, and were presumed uninhabited until a young boy named Nata was found there, telling a story about a “white wraith” that attacked his people. The Guild, an organization which oversees hunters, sends a research expedition to the Forbidden Lands to both return Nata to his home and learn exactly what’s going on.
In terms of gameplay, once you’re inside the Forbidden Lands, you’ll hunt monsters to make armor and weapons to hunt tougher monsters until you eventually save the day through the power of hunting monsters.
The Monster Hunter franchise has a couple of my favorite styles of gameplay, both the traditional hunting gameplay loop of “stock up, go fight, use your rewards for more” and a more ad-hoc system for answering requests for assistance from other hunters. I fell in love with the franchise with Monster Hunter World, and was greatly looking forward to Wilds. I figured the worst case scenario was that I’d have just another Monster Hunter game to play alongside Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak and Monster Hunter Now. “Oh no, don’t throw me in that briar patch!”
What I found really pleasant and remarkable about Wilds was how it presents exploring an inhabited area in an interesting, thoughtful way. Contrary to how it’s gone just about every time in real life, Avis Unit makes it a point to not just get in there and murder monsters, but to speak to the villagers who are affected by the rampaging creatures or may be adversely affected by your actions. Many quests come from villagers themselves, and in a nice bit of ludonarrative consistency, the Guild oversees your actions. Hunting things you’re not supposed to hunt—a rare opportunity once you’re past the story mode, but gamers will find a way—means that you don’t get any rewards for that effort.
Hunters are assisted by handlers, who serve as the eyes and voice of the Guild in the field. Alma is the handler in Wilds, and after you hunt a monster, you can find her quickly taking notes and making sketches of the monster in her journal. At the top of each hunt, she grants you authorization by saying “By order of the Guild!”
You hear it so often it almost becomes cliché. When you speak to her at base camp, Alma almost always lets you know that a new quest has come in for you, or someone has requested your services, or that there’s something only you can handle. You can’t play the game without receiving marching orders, similar to how Call of Duty games occasionally place you in a unit rather than commanding one.
Alma is our oversight. Many games rev you up and set you loose to save the day, even ones with a military command structure of some type. Monster Hunter Wilds reminds you again and again that you are part of a unit and you are fulfilling a role. There are elements of a Lone Man story in there—look at what kinds of things you beat single handedly, for instance—but the narrative always circles back to your hunter being part of a larger whole, to your hunter being needed, rather than moving as they desire.
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Seeing comics creators that cared about their fans enough to be intentional about their interactions meant a lot to me. That job exposed me to a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life, and many, many of them were vulnerable in one way or another. It isn’t that people are fragile, I think, but more that you never know what kind of effect you’ll have on someone, so it’s better to aim for a good one than to not care at all, maybe. It’s still a work in progress.
Similarly, Monster Hunter Wilds is on sale in a world where taking is the rule on a large and small scale. Does Silicon Valley become what it is now without Ellis Act evictions altering the face of San Francisco? Does America become what it is without the blood of basically everyone? This could very easily be a story where you swoop in and save the day, and in a way, it still is. You’re still the key component of the story, Player 1. But I really appreciate the narrative leaning so hard on the idea of you existing as a part of a whole that is itself part of a whole, like nesting eggs of responsibility.
You aren’t Chris Redfield or Dante or even 2B. You’re closer to one of the Dolls from Street Fighter in that you’re not the only show in town. You’re a member of Avis Unit. You are a hero, not the hero, and even that is situational. Sometimes you’re the guy that needs to spend half an hour fishing or picking plants to craft into consumable items later.
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This narrative focus tied together what I understood about Monster Hunter’s gameplay and settings for me. It isn’t that the other games don’t make sense in some way—it’s just that this one made the mindset of the Guild crystal clear in a way that really clicked with me. It’s a small part of the story, backgrounded enough to almost be considered setting unto itself in some ways, but it resonates.
“What does a hunter do?” is a question that rings through much of Wilds. And, you know, the answer is basically “be strong enough to protect everyone and beat the last boss,” but delivered in a typically hype video game-y way. (I cried.) But it’s a more interesting question when you apply it to the rest of the game, too. If you are the quintessential hunter, the prototype who does everything right more often than not, what are you doing?
Hunters are there to learn about the area first and to hunt second. You meet a ton of people in Wilds, and as the story progresses, your relationship grows to the point where they’ll invite you to a group meal, which will in turn supercharge your stats for a bit. You can barbecue food alone in the field, too, but it’s different with people.
Hunters put people first. You frequently meet monsters which have grown enraged or sick and pose an imminent threat to the locals or environment itself. While you, as a gamer, can go out and hunt basically whatever you want, whenever you need it, you, as a hunter, are given a good reason for the hunt first.
Hunters understand the terrain, literally and figuratively. Monster Hunter Wilds encourages you to take advantage of the environment. You can use mushrooms to heal yourself, and you can create traps and offensive advantages by knocking down vines, breaking rocks, or starting floods. Narratively, learning about the people who live in the land you’re exploring is not optional, and in fact the point of the entire thing.
Your character in Monster Hunter Wilds is there specifically to learn, not conquer or kill, and everything else follows from that. Monsters are hunted when they’re a threat to the villagers or their surroundings. Knowledge is shared for the good of all, with your perspective providing new solutions that the inhabitants may not have been able to reach, and their perspective providing ways to move and operate safely and efficiently.
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Similar to my experience with Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, though not really as intense, I found my self driven to play the game as if I were subject to the rules of the world, rather than the rules of the game. What does my hunter do? How does my hunter behave? Examining those questions and embracing the answers made Armored Core VI extremely fun and thought-provoking.
The effect on me is a bit different in Monster Hunter Wilds. It’s more like satisfaction instead of revelation, maybe, or appreciation rather than being enthralled. I think that they made a lot of small narrative decisions in Wilds that were absolutely the right choice to make for the story that they’re telling. They’re choices that weave the gameplay into the setting and vice versa, constantly reasserting themselves when you do things that range from picking up a new quest to beating the low rank storyline. It’s like watching Steph Curry and Klay Thompson drain three after three after three. You’re seeing something special, even if you don’t quite grasp the shape of it yet.
At the end of the low rank campaign, there’s a moment where Nata, the boy you’ve been traveling with and protecting, is faced with destroying a vital part of his culture in order to save the whole. He makes the decision of his own free will, but under great duress. He’s the only representative from his people present at this pivotal moment, and thus the only person qualified to make the choice he’s making. The weight and fate of an entire culture rests on his shoulders, and you can see it in how he shuffles forward toward destiny. This is beyond anything anyone has been asked to do thus far, your hunter included.
Then your hunter places a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. (Think about that image—when do you put your hand on someone’s shoulder? To get their attention, sure, but what about a friend?) “We don’t have to do this,” you say. “There’s…one other option.” The other party members gasp in surprise, but agree that whatever the hunter has planned is worth a try. “Leave this to me, you say,” and wake up the final boss.
“By my own order…” you say, an intentional and incredibly successful contrast to “By order of the Guild,” “I will slay Zoh Shia” and proceed into battle, accepting all of the risk and danger onto yourself in place of Nata.
It isn’t going rogue, not exactly. You aren’t disobeying the orders of the Guild. It’s just that this time, playing it safe means annihilating a way of life. This moment works because of that. It sings. This is heroism. You can tell by how the fandom has latched onto it. A number of people have fairly seen it as a hardcore action movie moment, the one-liner before the crowd-pleasing rampage. But there’s another angle too, one that really works for me in the context of how I understand the game. Your hunter implicitly expresses a very simple and beautiful position in that particular moment.
“I will protect you. Or I will die.”