I have recently immersed myself in the pleasantly numb Monster Hunter Wilds loop of smashing Arkvelds to bits. They are, as far as I can tell, the most profitable creature to bully, and I now find myself skinny dipping in the gulf of meaning that lies between the regal, resentful, mildly sassy chains hanging from the creature’s armour set, and the deeply sad and laboured motions with which it swings its bodily inspiration for those chains.
I get the sense that the series’ solution to the uncomfortable implications of its lizard bashing has been, over the last few entries, to evil-fy its creature design to the point where it engenders less easy empathy. There’s a lot of ugly, bugly bastards in Wilds, is what I’m saying. Less deep, sad lizard eyes and more chittering chitin and fuck-you dragon stares. The Arkveld’s design is so threatening that it invites nothing if not: look mate, if four of us manage to take you down with scissors whittled from Original Recipe Chatacabra marrow, it’s your own fault here, ya bish.
But I have to make clear here that I don’t think I’m being smarter than Wilds by pointing out how utterly defeated the Arkvelds look at even the height of their most savage combos. I think it’s most definitely text. I’m just pointing out because I’ve smashed like, twenty of the poor sods to bits now and it’s starting to weigh on me.
I’ve been trying to farm Calloushells, y’see. The best way to get them is to break the flowing, segmented chains that extrude from the Arkveld’s wrists. They’re called ‘chain blades’: a name that feels designed to emancipate the creature from its eternal servitude as a serotonin dispenser, instead elevating it to a triple-hard scale bastard and a dangerous, worthy prey beast. Chain/blades, right? Strength at the cost of confinement. Anger leads to hate. It’s economical and visually evocative but not really something I need to unpack here. We’ve all heard Yoda’s Deep Space Nine speech.
Capcom’s animation team are working on god-levels here, not that they’ve been doing any less since Resident Evil 7’s very different hand-lopping. But what I’m actually writing about here is an unshakable mental image that is now all I can associate with Wilds: the Arkveld slamming its twin chainblades into the sand of the Windward Plains. There’s so much weight to it, so much fanfare, but no triumph. It feels painful, like a suicidal bee sting. It feels like the creature is expending its lifeforce just for the possibility to smush the four bothersome parasites that are shattering its naturally marvelous armour from all angles.
I cannot comprehend the sheer number of calories required for the Arkveld to swing those blades even once. Four thousand sheep? Eight billion double downs? This is Monster Hunter Wilds at its most unique and interesting to me because this is not a boss creature consumed by arrogance and style – this is a wild animal fighting for its life, while also being one of the least immediately relatable animals in the game. The Chatacabra is a frog. The Lala Barina is a spider. The Arkveld is, like, the Begby of iguanas mixed with a bag of knives. Empathy is a hard sell here, but the game pulls it off.
Put another way, it’s the apex of everything Wilds attempts to achieve with its animation work. It’s heavy in multiple meanings of the word. It won’t stop me saving every Tempered Arkveld I see as an investigation with sick glee, obviously. Gotta nuke something. But it does make me very excited for whatever the devious bastards at Capcom are cooking up for the upcoming update. If you can make me feel weird about kicking the dust out of this thing, I’m very interested what oddly sympathetic weirdos you can serve up next.