Revealed during today’s State of Play presentation, Pearl Abyss has confirmed that Crimson Desert’s first major expansion will be launching in October. It not only adds a new region and plenty of new narrative surprises, but also gameplay features that pull from the most unlikely of places. If the reveal trailer is any indication, Crimson Desert could soon be a life sim that gives The Sims a run for its money.
In Chartering the Unknown, players can expect underwater combat in which you pilot submarines, ride sharks, and use a jetpack to propel yourself through the beautiful ocean blue. In classic Crimson Desert fashion, it looks absolutely ridiculous, with no rhyme or reason to its mechanical intentions or oddball art design. But that willingness to try so many things, regardless of how they turn out, is part of what makes Crimson Desert so charming.
Other unexpected additions coming to the paid expansion include Assassin’s Creed-esque naval combat, giant underwater dragons, and a new narrative threat that seemingly revolves around an unexplored location far beyond the Crimson Desert. Players can likely expect a new region dominated by a huge body of water, and a city in which abused workers are beginning to rebel against their leaders. Nothing about it makes sense, but players have come to expect that from Crimson Desert by now.
But one of the most exciting things coming to the game as part of Charting the Unknown is the ability to construct your own buildings and fill them with whatever you like. The trailer is focused primarily on erecting what appears to be a massive castle outside the city, showcasing its evolution from a foundation in the ground to a formidable stone fortress. There is even plenty of scaffolding, which gives off the impression you will be able to climb buildings while they’re being constructed or perhaps help out with the assembly yourself.
The trailer then transitions to the interior of a completely different building, where the player is using an interface to place walls just like you would in The Sims or Paralives. This isn’t just an open-world action-adventure game anymore; it’s a borderline life sim where you can construct a series of rooms, place furniture, and, thanks to the forthcoming update, start up a romance with one of the game’s numerous NPCs.
Towards the end of the trailer, we see protagonist Kliff Macduff getting on his knees and offering a lovely bouquet of flowers to an NPC, suggesting that more robust romance options could soon be coming to Crimson Desert. If you’re adding all the other ingredients of life sims, obviously it makes sense to let our hero fall in love and settle down.
It’s likely the expansion is hiding plenty of secrets we’ll have to wait until launch to discover. It also gives you the option to hire employees, each with different statistics and roles, so you might want someone with particular skills to run the castle kitchen or a smart-talking fella to act as your castle’s traveling merchant. The presence of attack and defense stats gives off the impression that there will also come a time to defend your castle from outside forces. It wouldn’t be surprising if the presence of a pirate ship also asks that players assemble their own crew, which could come from your castle, or vice versa.
The Chartering the Unknown expansion follows in the footsteps of countless free updates that have utterly transformed the ambitious open-world game since it arrived earlier this year, with the most recent patch adding several narrative-focused cutscenes to its once lightweight main story.
Crimson Desert has proven itself to be quite polarizing since its release, with critics arguing it does too much mechanically and far too little narratively. However, this throw everything at the wall attitude also makes it impossible to look away when an expansion like this comes around. Nobody expected it to suddenly transform into a life sim where you can make a castle and fall in love, yet here we are.
