Crimson Desert, Pearl Abyss’s beautiful-looking, ridiculously hyped open-world RPG, is landing on Steam/PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X on March 19. The expectations for this game are wild, but I’m not here to get into all that; that’s something critics can tackle when the embargo breaks in a few hours.
Instead, I’m here to tell you everything you need to know about the game ahead of its release, so that those of you who are already tempted to purchase Crimson Desert on day one can make a properly informed decision. To start, let’s go over the most obvious question.
What is Crimson Desert?
Pearl Abyss, the developer and publisher behind Crimson Desert, has (if you don’t count the cancelled MOBA Shadow Arena) produced one game since it was founded in 2010: the 2015 MMORPG Black Desert Online. Crimson Desert actually started as an online prequel to Black Desert Online, but shifted into a standalone single-player game set in a separate universe early on in its development.
That may lead you to believe, as others have theorised before, that Crimson Desert is sort of like an MMORPG, sans the “Massively Multiplayer Online” part, and that it’s just a retooled version of Black Desert Online. As Pearl Abyss has stated several times before, that’s not technically true. For starters, Crimson Desert is the first game to utilise Pearl Abyss’s brand new BlackSpace engine, so this is a game that’s been built as its own thing from the ground up.
More importantly, though, Crimson Desert is specifically an open-world action RPG. You’ve got all the standard stuff that comes along with the single-player RPG tag, like chatting with NPCs, taking on quests, and finding better gear, but with more of a focus on the combat side of things. If you want a more specific comparison, I’d say it’s looking very Dragon’s Dogma-esque.
What’s the story?
Crimson Desert is set in the land of Pywel and primarily focuses on Kliff, a gruff older dude who belongs to a mercenary clan named the Greymanes. Kliff is one of the only survivors of an ambush instigated by the Greymane’s “sworn enemies,” the Black Bears, and the story has you rebuilding his clan and tracking down any of its survivors.
Kliff isn’t the only character you’ll play as during Crimson Desert, though, as there are two other playable protagonists in the game: Oongka and Damiane. Admittedly, we don’t know too much about these two right now, other than the fact that Oongka is an Orc-like bruiser, and Damiane is a more agile fighter.
From what previews of the game have revealed, Crimson Desert will feature a sort of Grand Theft Auto 5-inspired character-swapping feature, and all three of the playable characters will have unique quests to complete and fighting styles that are specific to them.
Can you customise your characters?
Yes and no. Think of it as somewhere between a mainline Final Fantasy game and an MMORPG in this respect. You can’t change the faces, or more specific stuff like height, for any of the three playable characters in Crimson Desert.
There are a bunch of outfits, colour dye options, tattoos, and hairstyles you can alter, however, so you can still tailor their looks in more general ways. Not to use another Rockstar Games comparison as an example, but think of it like Red Dead Redemption 2’s Arthur; you can give him a fancy hat and a silly beard, but at the end of the day, he’s still Arthur.
How long will it take to complete?
Good question. Unfortunately, based on what Pearl Abyss has revealed to us so far, we can only kind of make an educated guess here. Pearl Abyss’s director of marketing, Will Powers, teased that there’s around 100 hours’ worth of content in the game, but no official number has been thrown out.
However, if you’re looking to just speedrun the main story, both previewers and Pearl Abyss have stated that it’ll take you about 50-ish hours to complete. If you’re gunning for the “definitive ending,” you’re looking at something closer to 80 hours. No way to tell what said “definitive ending” entails quite yet, but I think it’s fair to assume that it requires you to complete most of Crimson Desert’s side quests to unlock.
Where/how/when can I get my hands on Crimson Desert?
Crimson Desert will release on Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, MacOS, Windows, the Epic Games Store, and Steam on March 19, for $69.99/£54.99. Now you might be thinking that you could just snag a physical copy early and start playing but, as we learned last week, the game is actually time-locked, which means that the disc versions of Crimson Desert are effectively just fancy paperweights until it’s officially out.
That means you can’t play Crimson Desert until a very specific time: 6 pm EST, and 10 pm GMT. Also, keep in mind that Crimson Desert is currently the fourth-most-wishlisted game on Steam. When Slay the Spire 2 launched into Early Access earlier this month, the rush of people attempting to purchase it all at once actually caused Steam to temporarily crash, so you may want to get in there at the exact time Crimson Desert drops if you’re really keen to buy it as soon as humanly possible.
