Crimson Desert

Forever in my heart, as an introduction to amazing open-world building and narrative-driven role-playing games, is Skyrim. It was a game with a great story, amazing immersive gameplay for its time, and overall passion that radiated into every corner of its map. That's what RPGs are meant to be about: they offer the player a chance to explore and interact with story/lore-rich, meticulously crafted worlds that create the illusion as if they lived on their own, and we are given a chance to be a part of them. Imagine my disappointment then, in the last couple of years, when it comes to the general genre of RPGs. Most projects these days create huge worlds that boast and promise great systems, but ultimately feel lifeless and lack innovation within the genre. I'm looking at you, Assassin's Creed. If you want me, as a player, to invest 80+ hours into your game, it better be captivating, not just the same rinse and repeat formula of forgettable quests and tedious leveling systems that feel more like a chore than a reward. Take, for example, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It's an 80+ hour game, but the world is so good you just keep coming back. Even the sidequests there have a lot of thought put into them that usually make for compelling and memorable stories. After all, it's the little things that count and build up the game to be what it is. When I saw Crimson Desert for the first time and their promise, it seemed like anything but little, though. 

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As the game was slowly being revealed, it seemed that the scope of what this world was meant to be kept getting more and more ambitious. From the amount of different gameplay mechanics, lore, world design, great visuals, optimization, many started to question if this game was even real. Usually, games like Crimson Desert, which create (sometimes inadvertently) a huge amount of hype within a certain genre, tend to underdeliver. Something always seems to give in. Whether it be the performance, gameplay, story, or other elements. Yet so far from what we have been shown, with only a week left till release, all seems to be showing green flags. Can this be? If a studio like Pearl Abyss, which has only ever done MMORPGs, can in one try create an amazing single-player RPG, it may just show once again what can be achieved when a studio is actually passionate about the game they are making, despite the copy-paste market. I, for one, wish them all the best and can't wait to try it out.

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