The "MH Wilds isn't visually impressive, so it shouldn't run this bad" take is missing the bigger picture

Sorry for this rant and the long post, but I feel like a lot of people are looking at this the wrong way.

I've seen a lot of people saying that Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t look "impressive enough" to justify its performance issues, and while I agree that Capcom still needs to optimize the game, I think that opinion is missing a huge part of the equation.

Performance isn't just about how good a game looks — it's also about what's happening under the hood. And with MH Wilds, the biggest factor isn't just the visuals, it's the AI complexity and ecosystem simulation.

Unlike most open world games where NPCs follow preset paths and react mainly to the player, like Cyberpunk 2077, MH Wilds is running a fully dynamic ecosystem. Monsters aren’t just there to react to the player, they’re actively hunting, fighting, and interacting with each other in real time. Some examples of what makes this so demanding:

• Territorial battles and AI decision-making – Monsters don't just attack when you show up; they react to each other, decide whether to flee or fight, and engage in real-time battles that aren’t scripted.
• Hunting behaviors – Prey species have their own movement logic, while predators track and hunt them down, which requires AI-driven pathfinding and behavior trees.
• Weather and environmental adaptation – Monsters aren’t just affected by the environment visually; they change their behavior dynamically based on conditions.
• Persistent world mechanics – The game doesn't reset interactions when you're not looking. These creatures exist and interact even when you're not directly engaging with them.

All of this adds major CPU overhead because it’s not just about pretty graphics. It’s tons of calculations happening in real time. This is also why the game is likely CPU-bound, meaning that even if your GPU can handle the graphics, your processor is getting hammered by the AI and world simulation.

On top of that, Capcom’s RE Engine is not traditionally built for massive open-world games. It’s been amazing for previous Monster Hunter games and Resident Evil, but those were in smaller, segmented maps. Wilds is trying to go seamless, which is a huge leap for the engine and could explain why performance is struggling.

Again, I’m not saying the game doesn’t need optimization. It definitely does. But saying "it doesn’t look that good, so it should run better" is ignoring the bigger picture. AI and world simulation can be just as demanding as graphical fidelity, if not more.

What do you guys think?