Monster Hunter: World trailers show off a gorgeous environment and new creatures

Everything we've seen about Monster Hunter: World looks very promising, and the new videos Capcom released today are no exception. The first is a trailer showcasing the new Wildspire Waste, a desert environment that echoes Sandy Plains from Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. This is the second area revealed (the first being the Ancient Forest). Wildspire Waste isn't just a one-note location, but features swamps, caves, and sandy dunes. It looks cool, but of much greater interest is the monsters that inhabit it.

The trailer reveals some faces both new and old. For starters, longtime fans will be excited to see Diabolos and Barroth making an appearance. Introduced back in Monster Hunter Tri, Barroth gets the most screen time in this trailer. He's is a giant lizard with a mighty chin that he can use to turn you into paste. He enjoys mud baths and not being skinned by hunters.

But the new faces are the real treat here. We don't yet have the names for any of these creatures, but I personally love the raptor-like bird that likes to carry around boulders and use them as a shield. There's also a new Piscine Wyvern that swims around in the muddy waters and a generous peek at what I'm guessing is one of the massive Elder Dragons.

The second video walks us through the process of hunting. For any Monster Hunter veteran, this is all basic stuff but it's comforting to see how little Monster Hunter: World deviates from the core formula (something that a lot of people were worried about when it was first announced). For newcomers, the video walks through the basics. You'll take a quest, embark on your hunt, kill the beast, carve it up for precious crafting materials, return back to base and turn those materials into equipment, and set out to tackle tougher monsters. But the best new feature revealed in this video is a much more intuitive crafting interface.

In previous Monster Hunter games, most players had to rely on guides to understand the complicated branching upgrade tree for weapons. The new crafting interface seems to lay that all out in detail in-game, which is awesome.

Monster Hunter: World is coming to consoles in early 2018 with us PC folks getting it sometime after. If you're new the series and curious, here's why Monster Hunter: World has me, a big fan of the series, incredibly excited.

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With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.