And so it begins. With Monster Hunter Wilds sporting a playable demo at Gamescom 2024, impressions of Capcom's heavy hitter are really starting to rack up online. The vast majority of players seem to be walking away from the demo very impressed — which isn't surprising, given just how promising the game looks — but of course, there's now concern over Wilds' frame rate.
Said demo is running on PS5, and by most accounts, it ain't anywhere near a locked 60 frames-per-second. In fact, there are numerous reports claiming that the demo is capped at 30 — but even then, it's struggling for stability.
Naturally, some onlookers are already freaking out. But before we all lose our minds, it should be emphasised that this is far from a finished build of Monster Hunter Wilds — a game that doesn't yet have a confirmed release date. Platform-specific optimisation is usually one of the last boxes to be checked during the development cycle.
However, faith in Capcom's ability to maintain higher frame rates has been shaken thanks to Dragon's Dogma 2. The open world RPG launched with an uncapped frame rate earlier in the year, and it wasn't pretty. It's since been improved through a number of updates, but the title remains rather rough in a technical sense. The worry is that Wilds will share a similar fate in 2025.
Most of Dragon's Dogma 2's problems stem from it being a CPU-heavy title. Basically, performance drops off when the game's having to process the behaviour and actions of its many AI-driven NPCs. It's not hard to imagine that Monster Hunter Wilds will be similarly demanding; its large environments are packed with monsters that can all interact with one another.
But again, everyone could be jumping the gun here. As always, we'll need to wait on more conclusive evidence before damning Wilds to the 30fps gutter. Let's hope that we get some confirmation soon.