Almost 10 years later, Monster Hunter Wilds will finally expand one of the coolest and rarest monster types in the whole series

Capcom fired out a fresh batch of Monster Hunter Wilds info via a PlayStation stream earlier today, and while the headliner is the long-awaited Monster Hunter Wilds beta, I'm personally more excited by one of the newly revealed monsters. A beta was inevitable, but a new octopus boss is a welcome surprise. 

Monster Hunter Wilds: 5th Trailer - The Black Flame | PS5 Games - YouTube

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The Monster Hunter Wilds lineup now includes the oily brute wyvern Rompopolo, the ape-like fanged beast Ajarakan, and – most interestingly – a fiery octopus known to the locals as the Black Flame. While technically unnamed and unclassified, the Black Flame is clearly a fire-spewing, oil-coated cephalopod. This automatically puts it in one of the smallest groups of monsters in the entire series, and it's the most octopus-like one of the bunch by some distance. 

We've seen plenty of tendrils and tentacles in Monster Hunter, but true cephalopods are in short supply. The standouts are Yama Tsukami, an octopus-ish Elder Dragon from Monster Hunter 2, and Nakarkos, an armored squid which was introduced in 2015's Monster Hunter Generations and which is also, somehow, an Elder Dragon. As a reminder, one of the Elder Dragons is a horse. Look, Capcom's been playing fast and loose with the label for years – if it's weird and powerful, it's probably an Elder Dragon. 

The point is, we finally have a new cephalopod after nearly 10 years, and this Black Flame looks mighty cool. It's currently positioned as the alpha monster of the Oilwell Basin, which suggests it's not an Elder Dragon since those are typically defined by their status outside normal ecosystems. In other words, this could be an all-new classification of monster, assuming Capcom finally codifies cephalopods. That, or it could get lumped in with leviathans. Either way, the fact that Monster Hunter Wilds can support monsters that are built and animated like this is encouraging, as it opens the door for yet more imaginative designs to come. 

The Yakuza devs aren't trying to hide their plan to get out of the way of Monster Hunter Wilds: "We wanted you to be able to play the game that comes after it with peace of mind."