So I spoke to a few friends and discovered that Unreal Engine has a scalability feature which makes optimizing pretty easy with a few basic settings.
Here's a log sheet I created for the project that allows users to track what may be effecting performance over time. For this second half of the exercise, I tweaked a few built-in engine optimization settings.
When I had checked to see what settings the engine was currently using, I discovered it read my GPU and assigned pre-determined settings automatically. Releasing this and changing to what is only needed for optimization purposes, the end result was not difficult to find.
I'm happy I was able to give this project a second chance because the fix was quite easy and allowed me to get to the satisfying 120fps again without sacrificing quality. Thanks for reading my optimization blogs.
Ciaran Ballesty Environment: http://artstation.com/artwork/2ByxZA