When I demoed the first five hours of Monster Hunter Wilds, I was thoroughly impressed by how detailed Capcom’s latest AAA game is. 2018’s Monster Hunter World was already a pretty game, but Monster Hunter Wilds takes it a step further with delicately designed animations and immaculate sound design. To top it all off, this game features one of the best main themes of a Capcom game ever. Capcom has been at the top of its game for the past several years, but I didn’t fully understand why until recently.
Last month, Capcom flew me to Osaka, Japan, where I toured its headquarters. I already appreciated the visual power of the RE Engine, the proprietary game engine that Capcom has used for most of its recent Resident Evil games, Exoprimal, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and more. During this tour, I learned how it has vastly improved the motion capture experience for Monster Hunter Wilds. On top of that, I gained more insight from the sound designers and musicians behind the game as to how Monster Hunter Wilds‘ memorable sound effects and main theme were created.
The tech that powers Monster Hunter Wilds is impressive, but AAA games like it can’t be made without several interconnected teams of developers working together to create something great. This tour of Capcom’s Osaka studio showed me how committed the Japanese developer and publisher is to that ideal.
Motion capture
Capcom’s headquarters is spread across three buildings in downtown Osaka. To reach the motion capture studio, I had to walk down several flights of stairs to reach the bottom level of the skyscraper where I demoed Monster Hunter Wilds. After entering this room with many other journalists, I saw 36 infrared cameras mounted high on the walls around this large basement. In the center of the room, I saw two motion capture performers ready to go and got a live demonstration of how motion capture actions could be captured and displayed within RE Engine in real time.
One actor, Daichi Miura, was playing a hunter with a Greatsword, while the other, Masatoshi Fukidome, crafted the movements of the Doshaguma monster.
With infrared cameras mounted around the room, Capcom can digitize their actors’ motions and use that data to create Monster Hunter Wilds animations. Animator Naohiro Taniguchi explained that improvements to RE Engine mean they can see that process work in real time and continue to polish and refine the animations. Capcom can even add sound effects and background music into the scene, giving developers an idea of what players will see much earlier in the process.
Monster Animation Lead Kenji Yamaguchi seemed particularly enthused about these improvements, explaining how all monster animation was done through keyframe animations before Monster Hunter World. Capcom pivoted to motion capture in 2018, but the improvements made to motion capture for Monster Hunter Wilds development now allow the team to iterate way faster than before.
It was an impressive demonstration, although Capcom teased that this is just one of three motion capture studios they have. One in the Kyobashi area of Osaka has 150 cameras. The animations in what I’ve played of Monster Hunter Wilds have been top-notch, and this demonstration clarified why that’s the case.
Foley
After watching the motion capture demonstration, I went across the street to another building Capcom owns. Once again, I found myself heading into a basement room, although this one was much smaller and full of different objects. It looked somewhere between a child’s playroom and a game development space. This was the Foley studio, where Capcom created sounds for Monster Hunter Wilds. Foley artists are game developers or filmmakers who utilize everyday sounds to create unique effects for whatever they are making.
For a game like Monster Hunter Wilds, Capcom’s Foley developers had their work cut out for them to create sounds for fantastical beasts. Developers Hideki Hosoi, Wakana Kuroiwa, Takeshi Kitamura, and Daichi Sugimure broke it all down during the tour. They explained that for Monster Hunter Wilds, they wanted to create sounds for monsters that felt more unnatural than they had in past games. At the same time, they need these sounds to feel replicable, like a cat’s meow.
To create the cry of Rey Dau, a new creature in Monster Hunter Wilds, Capcom invented a new instrument called Murmurs of the King. Best described as a mixture between a flute and sliding whistle, this instrument created a long, dignified, murmur-like noise that served as the baseline for Rey Dau’s cry. From there, Capcom adds animal voices and refines the sound further through editing, and we end up with the Rey Dau screech that you heard while playing the Monster Hunter Wilds’ beta.
Sound design tends to be one of those elements of game development that I take for granted while playing, but it’s critically important to the experience. It is inspiring to see Capcom go through the effort to create wacky instruments to get monster noises just right. I know I’ll think about how Capcom creates each monster’s cry whenever I encounter a new one in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Music
To conclude the tour, I took an elevator up to a higher floor in the same building as the Foley studio. After walking through a cubicle-filled office with a table full of awards Capcom has received, I arrived after the final stop: Capcom’s Music Studio. According to music director Akiyuki Morimoto, “pretty much any of the music you have heard when you play a Capcom game has come through this room,” which was filled with 7.1.4 fully immersive speakers all around the room.
Morimoto then played The Beauty of Nature, the main theme of Monster Hunter Wilds, for us in this room. He said the goal of the theme is “to let you experience the beauty and the severity of nature, how massive it is, and how it encompasses not just people but monsters as well.” Tying back to what I heard in the Foley studio, Capcom wanted to blend more natural orchestral and ethnic instruments with more synthesized, unnatural sounds.
Morimoto compared this musical motif to how seasons constantly change in the Forbidden Lands, with the synthesized sounds representing that change. In a way, that’s not unlike game development. The end product can feel so seamless and natural, but it’s actually a heavily synthesized process that sees so many teams working together. In their own ways, all of those teams also need to find ways to innovate and improve from game to game, so players stay enticed.
I already respected Capcom’s craft before this studio tour, but now, after seeing its operation in action, I’ll have a deeper appreciation for what I’m seeing and hearing as I play through the full game next year.
Monster Hunter Wilds launches for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on February 28, 2025.
