Fans have lovingly adopted Monster Hunter Wilds low-poly creatures and nicknamed them "origami Monsters".

The PC beta of Monster Hunter Wilds just ended and, um, it was alright. The system requirements were a real pain for some players, as their rigs made Wilds look like it was released in the year 2025.

It didn't stop nearly half a millon concurrent players from playing the beta on Steam. People have been surprisingly fond of memeing Wilds' low poly enemies. I saw several Reddit threads lovingly refer to these low-poly monsters as "origami". This sparked a lot of cool fan art. One user created a paper-folded version of Valstrax, the elder dragon from Monster Hunter World’s Iceborne expansion. Another user took Velkana, a character from Monster Hunter World’s Iceborne, and drew it "Monster Hunter Wilds style".

Not just the big bads get the love. I love this cute rendition of a smaller beast that wanders around the map. It has two floating eyeballs on either side of its low-poly blocky face.

Velkana Monster Wilds PC style. From r/MonsterHunter

Some players have asked Capcom to immortalise these origami monsters in some way, when the full version of the game is released. One Reddit post stated, "I hope Capcom creates weapon charms with the low poly monsters that look like origami." The poster added, "People seem enjoy them and I think it'd be really cute and fun nod to beta." As one commenter points out, however, "that would imply that most people will not see the monsters as low poly origami in the final release."

I think that the fact that there was a relatively warm (and some may say surprisingly) positive reception to these glaring graphic issues shows how much fun people had with the beta. I don't believe that means people are cool with the way things look, but they seemed to be able to look beyond it during the beta for what was undeniably a lot of fun hunting.

The beta version of Wilds didn't play nice with my PC. Even on the lowest settings, it was a slog. I was unable to play. But I'm still excited for the launch in February. Capcom has promised that the game is already "in a more improved condition," and I hope they are right. It looks like I will be dusting off my old backup console.