Capcom’s Monster Hunter World features incredibly realistic fantastical beasts, as the developers were able to take advantage of new, more powerful technologies compared to past games. One of those technologies was motion capture — but in place of actual monsters to capture, humans had to play pretend.

You can see a brief snippet of this process in action in a new making-of video from Monster Hunter’s YouTube channel (as spotted by Naughty Dog animator Jonathan Cooper). From the looks of it, the team really got into the spirit. In the video, one very angry-looking man in a mo-cap suit acts out the part of a Great Jargas, moving around on all fours while taking a bite out of another man. His face definitely has the look of a predator. (The motion capture section starts at around the one-minute mark.)

World launched in late January, and it shifts the long-running series in a more forward-facing direction, with a more open and dynamic world to explore. Much of that was due to its launch on modern consoles for the first time (previously, the series was primarily available on portable devices), which Kaname Fujioka, executive director and art director on the game, says greatly influenced what the team was able to create. “The hardware allowed us to explore [new] types of visual design options,” he told The Verge.

The result is arguably the best game in the series to date, one that’s shaping up to be a big hit. Just remember: whenever you swing your huge axe at a dinosaur, a human had to pretend to be hurt.