Here we go: Capcom has finally released an official trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds 4 Title Update 4, which is due to launch for the game on 16th December. But, as exciting as the new content is – featuring returning Elder Dragon, Gogmazios – most players are more interested in another tease of information Capcom has given over the past 24 hours: an optimisation roadmap for the game’s performance on PC. This was all revealed during a special showcase Capcom announced last week, which was paired with comments from the game’s director asking us all to please “pick up the game again”.
The roadmap is segmented into three portions: improvements that will arrive next week as part of Title Update 4, then more planned improvements in January 2026, followed by further optimisation in February 2026. These updates were promised as far back as August this year.
The first update promises to fix CPU/GPU optimisation, targeting processing improvements applicable to all platforms. This means Capcom has updated elements such as frame processing, collision detection, and how many effects are shown on-screen at once. The developer hopes to lower CPU/GPU load by “reducing unnecessary processes”, and will implement over 100 improvements to make the game run a bit better. This will target consoles and PC versions of the game.
Then, in January, we’re getting a bit more – and I think this is where the most notable difference from all the updates is going to land. Here, Capcom will introduce “new graphics and CPU settings, as well as new presets, providing additional options to reduce processing load”. This will include improving the shader compilation process (which seems to be at the heart of the game’s performance woes for many PC players) and improving VRAM usage, too. The devs are also working on a way to improve streaming for the high-resolution texture pack here: another apparent bottleneck for PC players, specifically.
Finally, in February, more general optimisation will be complimented with the addition of level-of-detail quality levels to the polygon mesh on 3D models. To put it simply, this will also help reduce GPU load. This is also PC-only.
That all sounds good, right? Yes. But of course, players aren’t happy. “They’re even drip feeding optimization lmao,” writes one redditor. “Damn now imagine the game was optimised at launch, I might’ve played more than 30 hours before never touching it again,” says another. “It looks like they pushed out the things that might actually make a difference until the January patch. I don’t get why they’re not focusing on the impactful items first. We don’t even have monster LOD until February? That should have been in at launch!” claims a third.
They all have a point, to be fair. These issues have plagued the game since Monster Hunter Wilds launched in February 2025, and whilst Capcom has acknowledged them, the publisher has been slow on pushing out updates that addressed player concerns. This has led to review bombing, less than stellar sales for the game outside its launch window, and falls in Capcom’s share price.
The Monster Hunter audience is also concerned that an upcoming expansion (similar to Monster Hunter World’s Iceborne, or Rise’s Sunbreak) is going to undo all this hard work and revert the optimisation to launch window levels. There’s precedent with this: something similar happened with Iceborne, after all.
There’s a decent game inside all of these performance issues, so I’m hoping these updates will sort the bulk of the problem for a PC audience that feels it’s been largely left behind thanks to ongoing issues with Capcom’s RE Engine. But, a whole year after the game’s launch, will this be too late to tempt some people back? We’ll find out in a few months.
