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[Zuzu]

Overview of Monster Hunter Wild

- Monster Hunter Wild is positioned as one of the significant video game releases of 2025, developed by Capcom.
- The game is set to launch on multiple platforms, including PC, PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X, and S, showcasing an evolution in gaming technology.
- Despite the anticipation, the game inherits technical and performance issues observed in earlier Capcom titles, particularly Dragon's Dogma 2.

The RE Engine's Evolution

- Capcom's RE Engine, which debuted with Resident Evil 7 in 2017, has been the backbone for many of the company's successful games.
- As the RE Engine approaches its sixth year, signs of aging are becoming apparent, particularly in its photogrammetry capabilities.
- Photogrammetry has been essential for achieving the realistic visuals seen in recent Resident Evil titles, but Wild opts for a more stylized art direction, focusing on pastel colors and dynamic designs.

Changes in Upscaling Techniques

- A notable change in Wild is the removal of Capcom's proprietary upscaling technique called interlace, which had been criticized for performance issues in previous titles.
- The game now utilizes various upscaling technologies, such as Sony's PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) for PS5 Pro and AMD's Fidelity FX Super Resolution (FSR) for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles.
- PC players benefit from NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 3.7, along with options for AMD's FSR 3 and Intel's XE Super Sampling.

Artistic and Technical Decisions

- Transitioning from the MT Framework to the RE Engine posed significant challenges, with many visual elements from Monster Hunter World being retained.
- The game employs distance-based update cycles for NPCs and monsters to optimize CPU and GPU usage, which can lead to noticeable pop-in effects and visual inconsistencies.
- While real-time cinematics showcase impressive color and lighting, gameplay suffers from visible seams and reliance on texture quality, impacting overall presentation.

Performance Across Console Platforms

- Performance varies significantly across platforms, with the PS5 Pro offering the most stable experience, achieving close to 60 FPS with minimal stuttering.
- PS5 Pro Frame Rate Mode: renders at a fixed 1920 x 1080 and uses PSSR to supersample similar to DLAA. This mode has the least image break up and shimmer compared to the other consoles but can be softer than FSR 1. Runs at close to locked 60fps and goes even higher into the 70s & 80s sometimes when the frame rate is uncapped.
- PS5 Pro Balanced & Resolution Modes: Slightly reduced level of ray-tracing compared to resolution mode. Resolutions for both balanced & resolution modes vary between 2240 x 1260p - 1800p to reconstruct a 4k image using PSSR upscaling (I may be interpreting him incorrectly here). Balanced can dip below 40fps.
- The balance mode on PS5 Pro delivers a smoother experience than the resolution mode, which can lead to inconsistent frame rates.
- PS5 & Series X Resolution mode: both consoles reconstruct their image using FSR 1 using a dynamic resolution that varies between 2496 x 1404p - 1800p to reconstruct to 4k.
- PS5 & Series X Frame Rate mode: both consoles reconstruct their image using FSR 1 using a dynamic resolution that varies between 1280 x 720 - 1080p to reconstruct to 4k.
- Series X has slightly better frame rates (2 - 4%) than PS5 in Resolution Mode. Balanced mode has basically identical frame rates between the two consoles. PS5 is a little bit better than Series X in Frame Rate mode (4 - 6%). All these differences are only noticeable when the frame rate is uncapped.
- Series S (30fps - single mode): The Xbox Series S struggles with performance and image quality, often failing to maintain 30 FPS and suffering from low texture fidelity. It outputs at 1080p with a dynamic internal resolution that goes down to 900p and possibly even lower. It uses TAA and the TAA appears very soft & noisy almost all of the time. Has prolonged fps dips into the mid 20s.

Texture Management and Quality Issues

- Texture streaming and memory management are critical issues that lead to low-quality visuals and performance drops, particularly on lower-end hardware.
- Capcom has released a high-quality texture pack for PC, significantly enhancing visual fidelity but also imposing a heavy performance cost.
- Even high-end GPUs struggle with the texture pack, indicating underlying memory management problems within the engine.

Conclusion and Future Outlook

- Monster Hunter Wild has met with mixed reviews, achieving record sales but facing criticism for performance issues across various platforms.
- Despite ongoing patches from Capcom, the game struggles to maintain a consistent 60 FPS, particularly on PC.
- The disparity in performance and visual quality across platforms highlights the challenges of adapting the RE Engine for a vast open-world experience.

Comparison screenshots of PC textures using the High Resolution Pack compared to console textures (all consoles including the Pro are using the basic textures not the high resolution textures)

 

[rodrigolfp]

Dat texture pack differences. \o/

 

[SweetTooth]

Dat texture pack differences. \o/

Dat stable Pro performance \o/

 

[Mr Moose]

Looks like a late PS3/early PS4 game.
Bought it yesterday for £50 at Argos, currently playing in the 40fps mode and it feels OK to play. Colours are horrible.
Couldn't bring myself to buy the PC version even though it was cheaper, benchmark ran like dog shit.

 

[Kacho]

Looks like a late PS3/early PS4 game.
Bought it yesterday for £50 at Argos, currently playing in the 40fps mode and it feels OK to play. Colours are horrible.
Couldn't bring myself to buy the PC version even though it was cheaper, benchmark ran like dog shit.

Base PS5 or PS5 Pro?

 

[rodrigolfp]

Dat stable Pro performance \o/

"achieving close to 60 FPS with minimal stuttering."

So stable, much can go above 60fps and not look like poop. Wow...

As we don't have a mod to fix the frame times too...

DirectStorage 1.2.2 Upgrade to 1.2.3 - IO Stutter Fix

This mod replaces the DirectStorage DLL files with DLLs from DirectStorage 1.2.3, which resolves eggregious I/O stutters due to asset and texture decompression and loading.

www.nexusmods.com

REFramework

Modding tool/framework with a powerful scripting API using Lua. Comes with fixes for DLLs/ReShade crashing, performance fixes, FreeCam, Timescale, FOV, Ultrawide, and tools for script/mod develo

www.nexusmods.com

 

[Mr Moose]

Base PS5 or PS5 Pro?

OG PS5. Haven't bought a Pro yet, was going to wait until they bundled the drive.

 

[Luipadre]

Dat texture pack differences. \o/

Still looks awful

 

[SweetTooth]

"achieving close to 60 FPS with minimal stuttering."

So stable, much can go above 60fps and not look like poop. Wow...

Sttttaaaabllle aa as mmminni mmal ssstt uutter... With sstttaablle 60 ffffpppppsss

My comment may show better on your PC since you didn't seem to get the the text you quoted.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Still looks awful

Not really but far from good enough.

 

[Gaiff]

rodrigolfp and SweetTooth right now.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

Sttttaaaabllle aa as mmminni mmal ssstt uutter... With sstttaablle 60 ffffpppppsss

My comment may show better on your PC since you didn't seem to get the the text you quoted.

I wouldn’t bother arguing with him.

He’s one of the most one note, I’m never going to actually listen to any argument other then mine, and blindly daft members on this site.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Sttttaaaabllle aa as mmminni mmal ssstt uutter... With sstttaablle 60 ffffpppppsss

My comment may show better on your PC since you didn't seem to get the the text you quoted.

Close to 60fps =/= stable 60fps and PC can go much above 60 while not looking like shit.

 

[Clear]

Now that's what I consider a damn good technical review.

 

[saintjules]

OG PS5. Haven't bought a Pro yet, was going to wait until they bundled the drive.

I don't think they ever announced that they would do a bundle. Gamestop sells them with disc drive installed.

 

[Zuzu]

I've expanded the Performance Across Console Platforms section to provide a fair bit more detail about resolutions and things

 

[anyasok]

It only looks good in cutscenes. Otherwise its ugly af and runs like shit.

 

[yogaflame]

The game is very good. It is just that the engine Capcom is using is very bad. Just imagine if they are using Decima engine, that will surely be a night and day difference.

 

[willothedog]

Those textures, consoles are shit.

 

[Lysandros]

In the context of 'trading blows'; XSX GPU may be "wider" but PS5's higher clocked GPU is still significantly faster in rasterisarion among other things, so it would be a bit unfair to allude to a single sided advantage in this area. NX gamer likes to emphasize the GPU whenever XSX performs slightly better or the I/O-SSD when PS5 is ahead. Not to dismiss the benefits of a stronger I/O hardware, but I don't quite think this should be the 'fits all/default' explantation for every single case, there is a wider range of contributing hardware aspects to consider.

 

[Bojji]

Now that's what I consider a damn good technical review.

Far better than DF videos on this game.

He explained why this game looks like shit vs. other RE engine games.

 

[BlackTron]

This game is a crown jewel for PS5 Pro, even if the reason is garbage.

 

[Thebonehead]

rodrigolfp and SweetTooth right now.

 

[adamsapple]

Those textures are woof ..

But the game is still an unmitigated success.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Looks like crap.

 

[GymWolf]

Tldr:

Looks like shit and run even worse unless you have a pro or an high end pc.

 

[Skifi28]

While visuals in performance mode on pro are just ok (still better than a regular 1080p game on my screen) performance has been rock solid after 40 hours and it took 4 monsters fighting + 4 hunters multiplayer +weather conditions in the exact same spot to make a dent which is extremely rare. While it's hard to be 100% satisfied, their prioritization was spot-on for a combat centric game.

 

[Physiognomonics]

In the 'context of trading blows'; XSX GPU may be "wider" but PS5's higher clocked GPU is still significantly faster in rasterisarion among other things, so it would be a bit unfair to allude to a single sided advantage in this area. NX gamer likes to emphasis the GPU whenever XSX performs slightly better or the I/O-SSD when PS5 is ahead. Not to dismiss the benefits of a stronger I/O hardware, but I don't quite think this should be the 'fits all/default' explantation for every single case, there is a wider range of contributing hardware aspects to consider.

Winning in resolution metric is logical with a 25% higher bandwidth (which is a lot more actually) if GPUs were identical. But even here XSX wins by about ~5% only. PC benchmarks show us that you are usually bottlenecked by bandwidth at higher resolutions.

The fact that PS5 wins at 60fps shows the GPU is much better balanced than XSX's GPU. Much more balanced because PS5 has 15% less Tflops, 20% less bandwidth but still performs ~5% better than XSX. So how can it perform better?

And yes here I/O cannot be accounted for that difference (and here NXgamer is lost like DF at explaining the gap). The correct answer is that the design of XSX's GPU is really terrible and really underperforms, again. And it's not only in japanese games. Just released Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (Crytech) was showing even bigger gaps (20%) in some scenes.

While visuals in performance mode on pro are just ok (still better than a regular 1080p game on my screen) performance has been rock solid after 40 hours and it took 4 monsters fighting + 4 hunters multiplayer +weather conditions in the exact same spot to make a dent which is extremely rare. While it's hard to be 100% satisfied, their prioritization was spot-on for a combat centric game.

The same could be said about World running on PS5. It's only CBR but the performance is rock solid in almost all scenes.

 

[Lootlord]

Wow, the "high res textures" look like what i would expect medium to look like in any modern game.

Also, where is this impressive lighting he's talking about?

 

[Buggy Loop]

But the Sony world-renowned premium-level color science ? How could IGN skip on that?

 

[Gaiff]

The correct answer is that the design of XSX's GPU is really terrible and really underperforms, again. And it's not only in japanese games. Just released Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (Crytech) was showing even bigger gaps (20%) in some scenes.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's badly designed. It just has different strengths that perhaps are not a priority for developers. With its tiny market share, it's doubtful developers care much about it. It does have key advantages over the PS5's GPU and the other way is true as well. Just because one is better utilized than the other doesn't necessarily mean either is bad.

I will say, however, that Sony's approach was perhaps smarter because they apparently managed to keep the cost relatively low and instead of relying on the higher parallelism of a wider GPU, they relied on higher clocks which requires less fine-tuning. Higher clocks really aren't a complex science. Everything dependent on them gets uplifted if the clocks increase.

One bad decision regarding the XSX is without a doubt the split pool of RAM. That was just dumb.

 

[viveks86]

Good catch on the texture comparison. The first time I'm seeing a demonstrable difference. So it does make it better, I guess... Sucks that consoles don't get them at all (though it seems it isn't worth the cost).

Not really but far from good enough.

So... awful-adjacent?

 

[Lysandros]

Winning in resolution metric is logical with a 25% higher bandwidth (which is a lot more actually) if GPUs were identical. But even here XSX wins by about ~5% only. PC benchmarks show us that you are usually bottlenecked by bandwidth at higher resolution.

I agree in broad sense. But i don't necessarily think that the XSX GPU is 'bad', it's simply (comparatively) less efficient due to a number of architectural design choices. It generally performs as well (maybe slightly worse in in total number of cases) while having only half the number of physical ROPs and all around slower fixed function units. It also (naturally) consumes a little less power. My point of view always was that it performs inline with its specs. As to bandwidth, XSX doesn't really have 25% higher memory bandwidth does it? It has a 560/336 GB/s mixed pool. We know PS5's 448 GB/s unified bandwidth setup can compare favorably to it in some cases (remember the Touryst?). PS5 also has a custom solution to minimize bandwidth waste in the name of Cache Scrubbers, higher bandwidth/lower latency caches and higher I/O bandwidth. In the end at whole system level PS5 has comparatively more strengths than weaknesses in this area i think.

 

[bender]

Close to 60fps =/= stable 60fps and PC can go much above 60 while not looking like shit.

 

[Insanemaelstrom]

Winning in resolution metric is logical with a 25% higher bandwidth (which is a lot more actually) if GPUs were identical. But even here XSX wins by about ~5% only. PC benchmarks show us that you are usually bottlenecked by bandwidth at higher resolutions.

The fact that PS5 wins at 60fps shows the GPU is much better balanced than XSX's GPU. Much more balanced because PS5 has 15% less Tflops, 20% less bandwidth but still performs ~5% better than XSX. So how can it perform better?

And yes here I/O cannot be accounted for that difference (and here NXgamer is lost like DF at explaining the gap). The correct answer is that the design of XSX's GPU is really terrible and really underperforms, again. And it's not only in japanese games. Just released Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (Crytech) was showing even bigger gaps (20%) in some scenes.

I think an understated reason is what Cerny mentioned in "road to ps5". Having higher compute units are good but devs struggle with effeticely utilising them. So for most of the time, series X isn't running at peak. It's higher CU advantage gets negated.

On the other hand, ps5 has lower CUs but each one running at higher speed, which devs don't have to put much thought into and has low complexity

To properly utilizes series X, devs have to effectively distribute their task across 52 CUs and ensure everything is running well ( which requires good understanding of complex parallel programming). For some tasks that easily done, but unfortunately not every task requires 52CUs, so most of them of time it might be running at 45CUs or even lower.

Whereas for ps5, it's main advantage is that it completes the single tasks faster( due to higher chip count), something devs don't have to pay much attention to.

Basically, imagine two trucks. One truck can carry 52 logs, another can carry 30. The later one has faster acceleration.

Sure, when you want to carry 52 logs the former truck is faster. But most of your clients just want 30 or less. So the second, smaller trucks ends up being better.

I am pretty sure I have butchered some logic and that some more experienced software devs on this forum can explain this better, but this should be the gist of it. In my limited experience with parallel programming, not every task could be done in parallel programming, and even those that could be done( say, loops for example), only require so much parallel processes. Adding more after a certain point would simply provide no benefit at all. And I think series X is losing out on that. If both consoles were running at peak, series X would win. But unfortunately for series X, not only is it the less popular option which requires more optimisation, ps5 runs closed to its peak performance as compared to series X

 

[rodrigolfp]

In terms of IQ...

 

[bender]

In terms of IQ...

 

[Physiognomonics]

Good catch on the texture comparison. The first time I'm seeing a demonstrable difference. So it does make it better, I guess... Sucks that consoles don't get them at all (though it seems it isn't worth the cost).


So... awful-adjacent?

PS5 Pro should be able to get them with 1.3 GB more available memory. It's probably too much work though not worth the hassle. But even those higher res textures look so bad.

 

[viveks86]

PS5 Pro should be able to get them with 1.3 GB more available memory. It's probably too much work though not worth the hassle. But even those higher res textures look so bad.

PSSR uses 250 MB at least right? With a max of 1 GB more (throwing in RT could use up quite a bit) and their awful streaming tech, I don't know what headroom, if any, there really is. Probably good to steer clear of it and keep the fairly consistent performance instead.

 

[Bojji]

PS5 Pro should be able to get them with 1.3 GB more available memory. It's probably too much work though not worth the hassle. But even those higher res textures look so bad.

Those textures take few GB of video memory.

 

[Zacfoldor]

This game is a crown jewel for PS5 Pro, even if the reason is garbage.

It still looks super shitty compared to Demon's Souls and most other Pro games. The PC is a garbage dump for publishers. The shitty PC port problem has persisted despite publishers having every opportunity, tool, expertise to correct it. It's only recently gotten better, I remember a decade ago every game that came out that wasn't PC first was worse than this(on PC). Especially fun Japanese games.

GTAVI will be the real crown jewel if it releases this year.

 

[FrankWza]

GTAVI will be the real crown jewel if it releases this year.

Probably but DS2 will have a say and we can't sleep on MGSD

 

[Gaiff]

PS5 Pro should be able to get them with 1.3 GB more available memory. It's probably too much work though not worth the hassle. But even those higher res textures look so bad.

Apparently, this strains even 16GB cards, so probably not. Capcom just shat out a huge pack of uncompressed textures and called it a day.

 

[RoboFu]

They ran pc performance numbers off a laptop?

 

[Fbh]

Well people have rewarded them with massive sales so games that look a gen behind and run like absolute shit will probably be the norm for MH moving forward.
I hope whatever they make for the Switch 2 eventually gets ported to PS5/SX/PC just like Rise, that should hopefully run better.

 

[Danjin44]

Well people have rewarded them with massive sales so games that look a gen behind and run like absolute shit will probably be the norm for MH moving forward.

The game is super fun to play, there no way in hell I’m gonna skip it just because of graphics.

I played too many games that were “technical marvel” but I absolutely hated the experience.

 

[Fbh]

The game is super fun to play, there no way in hell I’m gonna skip it just because of graphics.

I played too many games that were “technical marvel” but I absolutely hated the experience.

To each their own.
To me there's too much other good stuff to play to reward Capcom for completely ignoring optimization.
My personal rule for a full priced release from a AAA studio is that you can either give me amazing graphics or solid IQ and Performance. If you give me shitty graphics with shitty IQ and performance it's just noth worth anywhere near full price.

I'll probably grab this in 4-5 years on the Ps6 or whatever I'm playing on at the moment for $15 and get a decent experience.
I played through MHW for the first time last year on Ps5 and it was great. It honestly looks way better than this one IMO (because the visual upgrades in Wilds are worthless when the IQ looks like it's running on a Switch)

 

[rofif]

The game is super fun to play, there no way in hell I’m gonna skip it just because of graphics.

I played too many games that were “technical marvel” but I absolutely hated the experience.

people are loosing forest for the trees over this game.
It's super fun, very physical feeling and graphics are good overall. Some low res textures are not a problem. You don't actually stare at them in game

 

[Danjin44]

To each their own.
To me there's too much other good stuff to play to reward Capcom for completely ignoring optimization.
My personal rule for a full priced release from a AAA studio is that you can either give me amazing graphics or solid IQ and Performance. If you give me shitty graphics with shitty IQ and performance it's just noth worth anywhere near full price.

I'll probably grab this in 4-5 years on the Ps6 or whatever I'm playing on at the moment for $15 and get a decent experience.
I played through MHW for the first time last year on Ps5 and it was great. It honestly looks way better than this one IMO (because the visual upgrades in Wilds are worthless when the IQ looks like it's running on a Switch)

Then don’t be surprised why other people care less about graphics than people on gaming forums. As much as GAF thinks that graphics its most important part in reality majority of people outside gaming forums.

 

[sendit]

Feels bad for Series S owners being lied to (slide show city):