Monster Hunter World hit the stage at E3 2017 with a trailer giving longtime fans of the franchise and maybe some soon-to-be-fans a glimpse at what the game will look like on current-gen consoles and PC. Since then, the title has been getting a steady stream of new footage revealed, and it was recently announced that on top of all the content that already comes in the large open world game, players will get access to free downloadable content.

Monster Hunter World will be the first game in the series to be made first and foremost for this generation of gaming systems. Monster Hunter: Frontier Z was previously made for PlayStation 4, but was essentially a port of the earlier Monster Hunter: Frontier G. One thing many of the games in the series have had in common was new content offered to players for free.

The producer of Monster Hunter World, Ryozo Tsujimoto, says the development team "will continue to release free quests as we always have." He highlighted modern consoles' nearly constant connection to the Internet as a reason the studio will be able to send new limited-time quests online. Kaname Fujioka, the executive producer for the game, said players can expect Monster Hunter World to be similar in size to past games, adding that the studio doesn't "want to let any users down who are used to Monster Hunter being a great, meaty experience."

For players excited about Monster Hunter World and eager to see the scale of the monster-filled world, this news should be be especially pleasing to their wallets. After all, many games nowadays will charge an arm and a leg for DLC post-release, with some DLC adding up to cost more than the game itself.

Some players might worry that this talk of DLC may just mean a smaller base game, but the production team has already addressed that concern. The DLC being free could mean lower quality if the studio doesn't see the monetary incentive to keep supporting the game with high quality content, but this free DLC announcement was specifically linked to quests, and it's possible in-game items or cosmetics could come through microtransactions.

Monster Hunter World is expected to release in early 2018 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: Polygon