The new open world aspect brought mainstream appeal, but also the promise of something more than just the crafting workflow for which the Monster Hunter series was notorious outside its fandom. It opened the franchise for an audience that did not necessarily care for the crafting spiral, but for the main plot or their own narrative agency within the thriving game world. Monster Hunter: World showed that streamlining the more tedious part of a game series which revolves around repeated missions and crafting orders opens up a space in the fandom for those feeling enamored by the beautiful atmospheres of the game world and the biosphere's surprising interactions.

I was part of this new audience. Apart from dabbling in one of the handheld Monster Hunter games for a dozen hours or so, the series had held no appeal to me before. The effort needed to find pleasure in the complex battle system, often sabotaged by the lack of enough hardware power or a second analogue stick on handhelds, was too much for me. But when MH:W came around, my perspective on the series changed.

Suddenly, the biosphere of this hardcore crafting simulator started becoming its own protagonist. Hunting dragons in an arena is cool, but doing it in an ecosystem that reacts to the dragon's way of life, to its defensive maneuvers and to my aggressions is incredible. Monsters dig holes to hunt smaller prey or chase away predators, they lie down to sleep, they protect their kin and their eggs. Most incredibly, they fight turf wars for habitats. The environment of MH:W is abundantly alive, even without hunters stirring up trouble. The biggest monsters are in a constant struggle for the best feeding places or highest vantage points. Encountering a water leviathan and a rock dragon in deadly embrace for a fertile strip of coastline should be a hunter's dream to take advantage of.