Capcom is celebrating the launch of the Prologue Demo for the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Monster Hunter Wilds with a brand-new trailer. Coming in at 30 seconds in length, the trailer showcases all of the various features of the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Wilds, including local multiplayer with other Switch 2 players. Along with this, Capcom has also confirmed that players will be able to carry over their save data to the full game when it comes out on December 4th.
The Prologue Demo will include the early parts of Monster Hunter Wilds, giving players the explanation for why they are in the Forbidden Lands to begin with, and will allow them to experience some of the early-game hunts. Since it also allows for multiplayer gameplay, it is likely to include some optional hunts as well, giving players more chances to try out the 14 weapons and see what play style suits them best.
Capcom has gone through quite a bit of trouble to bring Monster Hunter Wilds over to the Nintendo Switch 2. When the title was first released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S last year, it was plagued with several technical issues. The company has since then released updates to sort these issues out, improving performance across all platforms in the process. Producer Genki Sunano has spoken about how the optimization process for the Nintendo Switch 2 version was “painstaking”.
“The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Monster Hunter Wilds was developed around the concept of delivering a natural Monster Hunter Wilds experience on Nintendo Switch 2. In other words, we didn’t want it to feel like a simple port, where the graphics or performance had merely been scaled down to make the game run on Nintendo Switch 2. Instead, our goal was to bring the Wilds experience to Nintendo Switch 2 without compromising the experience of Monster Hunter Wilds.”
The development team had to take a look at finer details of Monster Hunter Wilds to see what could be culled in order to improve the performance of the game on Nintendo’s platform.
“Wilds is packed with a tremendous number of elements, so we had to carefully evaluate the assets and underlying processing behind each one, determining what needed to be preserved and what could be adjusted without changing the overall experience. It was this painstaking, and at times seemingly endless, process of making decisions and optimizations one by one that proved to be one of our biggest challenges in delivering a comfortable handheld experience while preserving what makes Wilds feel like Wilds.”
In the meantime, Capcom is also working on an expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds, dubbed Ascendance, which will bring with it Master Rank difficulty quests, along with several additions to the game’s roster of monsters, and even the Boost Bracer, which brings in massive changes to the movesets of just about every weapon in the game. The expansion is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027, and director Takuro Hiraoka has promised that it will offer a balance of story and endgame challenges.
