Much has been said - or rather, lamented - about [[Monster Hunter Wilds]]' story. I found it a little annoying at first, but looking back on it, it wasn't that bad. I didn't *love* it, but here are some quick thoughts on why I think it's effective, if nothing else. I think the first thing to make note of is that this game does the best job of making the monsters feel like threats out of any other **Monster Hunter** game. All the monsters are given a mini-arc of sorts, making them feel memorable and having a tangible, lived-in place within the game's world and story. That's not particularly *normal* for **Monster Hunter**, but there's tangible benefits to this approach, at least for me. It sets the stage for the hours of grinding I'm going to be doing long after MSQ is over. The other thing is that it kind of just...replaced one thing for another. It's not like the earlier **Monster Hunter** games didn't have you do all sorts of bullshit before you got to do a hunt, like a bunch of filler quests, or tracking down a monster before scout flies were a thing and having to paintball it, so on and so forth. When you think of it that way, wouldn't you rather take a minute or two of yapping between the cutscenes you can skip anyways? Also I like how it mythologized the concept of a Hunter. They're basically treated as God-killers, which makes sense given they use giant weapons to hunt down things that should definitely be able to kill every human being on sight. They make your main character feel cool, and sorry if that makes me sound like a dweeb, but I appreciate that! Just some small thoughts. I think the story in this game will be looked back on more fondly in the future, tbh!