Spider dislikers, your concerns have been noted. At least by Capcom, anyway. The developers of Monster Hunter Wilds are including an option in the upcoming beast-skinning action RPG that will turn all arachnid style monsters into something much less creepy and/or crawly.
The spider-free option was spotted by players of the PlayStation Plus beta test (as noticed by Automaton ). It's called "Arachnophobia assistance" in the accessibility options, and reads: "Adjusts the appearance of multi-legged creatures such as arachnids, insect-like small monsters, and endemic life." The description also notes that it won't alter the difficulty or "creature movements".
So how does it deal with eight-legged monsters? They become slimes , of course. As Automaton note, so far only small monsters appear to be accounted for. It's not clear how larger monsters with spider-like legs will be altered, if at all.
What even counts as "spider-like" anyway? When your game is full of hybrid creatures that take inspiration from all sorts of wildlife, that line where a phobia kicks in may be hard to define. Monster Hunter Wilds is not the first game to do this sort of thing. Even this week, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 came out with an arachnophobia mode in its zombies campaign .
Meanwhile, shrunken survival game Grounded has an extensive arachnophobia mode that lets you disable or enable every individual element of what makes a spider scary. You can get rid of the legs but keep the fangs, for example. Or jus.