Omega Force’s upcoming hunting game Wild Hearts will have a special treat for people on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
As the developers revealed on a recent Reddit AMA, the game will be part of Game Pass Ultimate. This is because EA’s own subscription service, EA Play, is a part of Game Pass Ultimate, thanks to a deal between the two publishers. As a result, EA Play and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will have a free 10 hour trial for Wild Hearts.
The Wild Hearts Game Pass Ultimate free trial goes live as early as February 13, 2023, a few days ahead of the game’s actual release. That ten hours will be plenty of time for those earliest adopters to find out for themselves if the game is worth playing, and for that matter, worth buying at full retail price.
This seems to be an overdue incentive for EA Play subscribers as well. The Dead Space Remake is also available on PC and Xbox Series X|S, however, that game was not made available on EA Play’s free trial.
Wild Hearts has an unusual monetization arrangement for an EA game, but perhaps one that suits their odd experiment, in working with Japanese developer Omega Force and Koei Tecmo. As they also revealed in the AMA, all the DLC that is coming after the initial game launch will be free. EA is particularly known to have actually invented many aspects of modern video game microtransactions, and most of their modern releases have this incorporated into the game design.
Wild Hearts is Omega Force’s attempt to make their own version of Monster Hunter. They’ve taken great pains to make it visually distinctive with a Japanese countryside aesthetic. Omega Force is also trying something else with the Karakuri, looking to players to build their own enhancements instead of just buying them fully formed.
We don’t know all the gameplay elements that make Wild Hearts yet, but what we do know of Omega Force games is they have a particular sense of game design that appeals to casual gamers, if they are not particularly popular with more hardcore gamers.
The studio’s most recent success has been 2020’s Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the third game they have made in collaboration with Nintendo. Wild Hearts is an even bigger departure for the studio than their Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors games, but Omega Force seems eager to tread new ground.
Wild Hearts launches this February 16, 2023, to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Steam
