Monster Hunter Wilds art director and 20-year series vet says the new game intentionally leans into a question fans have debated forever: "What is a hunter?"

There are so many nagging questions in the world with no clear answer: what's the meaning of life? Am I truly happy? What is a hunter in the popular Japanese action-RPG franchise Monster Hunter? The latest series installment, Monster Hunter Wilds, boldly seeks to answer that question with its pensive story.

Executive and art director Kaname Fujioka explains, telling PC Gamer in its magazine issue 406 that "we want to show what the hunters exactly are in a world like that."

The Forbidden Lands where Monster Hunter Wilds is set are raw and gleefully untamed, both dangerous and full of wonderful life and culture. In our Monster Hunter Wilds review, we acknowledge the diversity of the game's monsters and the people accustomed to living alongside them, noting how Wilds pushes us to consider our hunter's intrusive plans for "protecting the ecosystem, and whether our vision of that ecosystem is just."

Those are more big, nagging questions, and they've been taunting Monster Hunter fans for forever. For years, fans have been locked in hot debate over whether hunters are the true monsters of the Monster Hunter series, or if everyone just needs to calm down. Ultimately, some players are trapped in a cycle where they either agonize over beasts' tender "flesh and bone," or admonish each other for dredging up "this shit again."

But now, Wilds finally gives monster sympathizers a chance at vindication. Fujioka tells PC Gamer that Wilds interrogates hunters just as thoroughly as they do.

"We feel that the story and the setting is designed to really question," Fujioka says, "and make you think about 'what is a hunter?'"

Monster Hunter Wilds' first time-limited event quests are here, giving fans just 2 weeks to snag special armor and rare materials in the action RPG.