Game info: Wikipedia
Listening/music info: VGMdb
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I’m not overly familiar with Monster Hunter music, but I’ve heard a bit: the soundtracks of three games and one DLC expansion as I’ve played them, as well as random other tracks from the series here and there. My impression of the series’s music is that it’s largely a mix of serious orchestral music for battlin’ and more folky music for towns, along with some individual flavor for different games and their settings. As some examples of those flavors, Monster Hunter Rise is centered around a ninja village, so there are a lot of traditional Japanese instruments in that score, while its DLC Sunbreak draws from Gothic horror for its setting and monster designs, so its soundtrack has more spooky tropes and church organ in it.
Monster Hunter Wilds takes place in a region which was thought to be uninhabited, but which you quickly discover has a few agrarian settlements in it. Its soundtrack has two flavors that stood out to me, one of which is fairly obvious: there’s a bunch of tuned and untuned world percussion in it. There is of course percussion in previous Monster Hunter soundtracks, because as it turns out, percussion is a pretty surefire way to juice up the energy level of orchestral music! But it definitely felt more extensive to me than it’s been previously.
The second flavor is much more interesting and unexpected: many tracks incorporate synths with the acoustic instrumentation and/or obvious electronic effects. There’s even at least one very ambient track that’s all electronic, though it’s not actually included on the soundtrack release, so maybe they consider it just ambient sound rather than a “real piece of music.” This kinda stuff is in the town themes, the battle themes, and the cutscene themes, it’s in everything. Texturally it feels a little like Tears of the Kingdom at times, though less glitchy and reverse voice-y.
The electronicness is justified in two ways, one of which is fairly obvious: Wilds is pretty sci-fi for a Monster Hunter game. The story ends up centering around artificial lifeforms and people dealing with the legacy of ancient technology beyond their understanding. There’s also a bit of sci-fi horror in the design of new monsters, particularly two separate cephalopods that try to murder you.
The second justification is much more interesting and unexpected. Music director Akiyuki Morimoto explained this one when describing the main theme, written by lead composer Miwako Chinone:
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.
And this idea—representing a natural process with something unnatural—really resonated with me. I mention a lot here about how I like it when folk instruments are mixed with synths, or more abstractly when “real” sounds are mixed with “fake” ones, and it’s largely just because I enjoy the textural contrast. But there’s a bit of an imagery component to it too, in that I find combining the organic with the artificial to just be inherently evocative. And seeing someone not only thinking about the same duality but intentionally equating the two in a way, especially the music director of an entry in one of the biggest game franchises in Japan, does legitimately make me a little emotional. It’s just nice seeing someone who gets it, you know?
So Monster Hunter Wilds is easily my favorite soundtrack in the series now, and it’s one of my favorite soundtracks of the year so far. It doesn’t get into “insane” territory that often, but it’s pretty consistently at least “nice” throughout in a way that I haven’t necessarily felt from a lot of soundtracks this year, which is especially impressive given that it’s quite a large soundtrack too. It’s not the kind of orchestral music that’ll change your heart if you’re not already into it, but it’s fairly solid overall with a bunch of interesting moments here and there. There’s a decent amount of ambient music too (mostly for cutscenes), not the wackiest in terms of sound design or composition but still enjoyable enough throughout.
The large majority of the soundtrack was done by five in-house Capcom composers: Morimoto, Chinone, Mana Ogura, and Marika Suzuki, all of whom have worked on several other Monster Hunter games previously, and a very new composer working on her first one, Yuna Hiranuma. I wasn’t able to tell much of a difference between them, besides that Ogura and Hiranuma tended to do more ambient tracks; they all seemed quite able to hit the same house styles. A few outsourcers were also brought in to contribute some tracks, generally for specific areas: Brian D’Oliveira wrote music for the Scarlet Forest featuring a bunch of rainforest-core ethnic winds and percussion, Yuko Komiyama wrote the standard battle themes for the Iceshard Cliffs and the erhu themes for the mountaintop village of Suja, and Tadayoshi Makino wrote the themes for the Ruins of Wyveria and its associated village, Sild. D’Oliveira’s tracks stand out from the rest of the soundtrack in their instrumentation but Komiyama’s and Makino’s also fit in pretty snugly, which makes sense since they’re both ex-Capcom composers who also have experience composing for the series.
The soundtrack album that was released doesn’t include any music from Title Update 1 and onward, which is everything related to the Grand Hub, seasonal events, and new monsters. I’d expect a digital-only Extra Tracks album or two to come at some point for the music from those updates and ones yet to come.
Recommended tracks:
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“Windward Plains -Crisis-” (Marika Suzuki) is a sparse and slightly quirky theme for when you’re battling the lowest threat level of monsters, love the bit at 1:31 in particular
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“Kunafa, Windsong Village – Fallow (Day)” (Akiyuki Morimoto) naturally uses a bunch of wind instruments for its melodies; from 1:00 to 2:00 it kinda feels to me like it’s considering turning into film noir music
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“Wudwud Hideout” (Brian D’Oliveira) is a cacophonous track for a bunch of little cat weirdos whom I would die protecting
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“Shadows Dancing on Ice -Quake-” (Yuko Komiyama) gets a little funky tonally at 1:02
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“Sild, The Keepers’ Vigil (Day)” (Tadayoshi Makino) I’ve already posted twice about before because I love it so damn much; it’s pretty similar to another icy track Makino wrote for FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH, so this composer attribution checks out
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“Past the Shards” (Miwako Chinone) has a nice piano figure that’s in 5/8 but occasionally it shifts a bit by doing a 6-5-5-5-4 thing
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“She Who Hearkens All” (Yuna Hiranuma) is one of the synthier ambient tracks
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“Justice Breaks Forth” (Mana Ogura) is one of the final boss themes so naturally it’s got some epico choir in it; it’s also has some of the most in-your-face electronic production of the soundtrack for dramatic and also thematic reasons
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