The opening hours of Monster Hunter Wilds are a shotgun blast of new information for returning hunters. Before I had even a handful of hunts under my belt, Capcom had dazzled me with cool quality-of-life upgrades like Seikrets, base camps, weapon holsters, makeshift camps, and seamless quest creation. "This is so much faster," I thought. "Capcom really gets what longtime players want!"
But around the eight-hour mark, I started to ask a question I was afraid to know the answer to: These on-map base camps are neat, but does that mean Wilds has no centralized village? That kinda stinks. The benefits of Wilds' streamlining are easy to spot, but its victims are smaller details that gave the series, and especially World, its personality. Wilds has no one place my hunter calls home—no dedicated headquarters for all things questing, crafting, melding, farming, gathering, and cooking. It's that last one that stings worst of all.
Stationed dead in the center of the Windward Plains base camp is a cat surrounded by fresh ingredients. I'd assumed since the first open beta that in the full game he'd be this Monster Hunter's version of the Meowscular Chef, always on deck to aggressively cook a nutritious meal before a hunt. Not so much: Turns out he's just there to hand out free rations every once in a while. That's how I learned Wilds' "expanded" BBQ grill that lets me throw together a quick meal in a pan wherever I am isn't just another way to feed myself pre-hunt, but the new way.
Cooking in Wilds is undeniably convenient. Not only can you do it anywhere, but Capcom pared World's complex ingredients system down to a simple formula: Ration + Ingredient + Topping = Meal with buffs. Similar to the dango in Monster Hunter Rise, you're almost guaranteed to get the bonus associated with the special ingredient and topping thrown into the cook, like enhanced healing or fire resistance. I also appreciate that the special ingredients themselves are harder to get. Wilds is pretty stingy about handing them out, and I spent a lot of Low Rank making naked steaks that gave me nothing but a standard HP and stamina fill. I like the intentionality this adds—the best meal for my next hunt isn't a given, I have to go out and actually seek the ingredients.
A couple of times during hunts, the ability to cook anywhere has been a godsend—instead of turning tail and riding all the way back to base camp to inhale a steak, I can just throw on the stealth mantle, hide behind a rock, and feast.
Struggle meal
But am I feasting? As expected, Capcom goes above and beyond to make my little makeshift steak topped with mushrooms and honey look delicious in the cooking cutscene, and I love that every ingredient I cook with is now a visible part of the meal, but I can't kid myself here—my hunter eats like a single dude in his 20s who owns one pan and three forks. A head of lettuce with some cheese melted on top? I don't believe for a second that the same struggle meal I'd make when I had $78 in my bank account in college contains the nutritional value needed to slay Rey Dau, apex predator of the Windward Plains.
Sorry to use the d-word, but aesthetically, it's a downgrade. The Meowscular Chef and his assistants were masters of their craft, taking all of twenty seconds to prepare and serve up a gourmet roast chicken and veggie platter that'd safely feed a family of four, and my hunter would eat the whole damn thing. Wouldn't you? Food made with that much care and love can give you real-life buffs.
Wilds technically does have Meowscular Chef-level cooking, but it's way too rare. After a certain point in the story, villages will occasionally offer to cook a big meal accompanied by a lavish, mouth-watering cutscene (if you used the Monster Hunter Wilds Benchmark tool, you saw one of these). These are great, but in 44 hours I've only gotten the offer a couple of times.
The magic of the Meowscular Chef was the ritual: He was the last stop before starting a quest, dutifully feeding his hunters like a parent waiting by the front door with a lunchbox. The solo cooking of Wilds is practical, convenient, and serves Wilds' new sandbox approach to hunting. But it's not warm, fun, or social.
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