What the Hell is Crimson Desert?

Crimson Desert is quickly becoming my most anticipated game release of the year, and it seems like many online hold that same sentiment. Looking at Google Trends from the past year, we actually get a pretty good idea of just how rapidly this game's interest is increasing. Now, while I'm very interested in this game, no doubt, there's still a part of me that says, "What's the catch?

Where's the rug pull, if you will? " So, today I want to take a deeper look at Crimson Desert. Who's making it?

What even is it? And more importantly, can it actually live up to the hype? But I wanted to interrupt for a second just to say a quick thank you.

The last video I posted was about deadlock and it has absolutely blown up and I don't really have any words to describe how crazy it's been. But seriously, thank you. It was really awesome to see all the nice comments just really resonating with the video and with my video style in general, which was really cool.

Should go without saying, but if you want to see more videos like that or like today's video, definitely make sure you're subscribed. I think we're sitting at almost 2,000 subscribers, which is pretty crazy considering I've only posted two videos. But yeah, I have plans to make plenty more videos like this one and the last one on tons of games.

So, if that sounds interesting, definitely make sure to subscribe. Now, before we get into the video, I do want to say that this is by no means meant to make anyone nervous or bash the game. Like I said, I want nothing more than to boot up this game on release and be wowed by it, but I think it's important to think critically about big releases like this, as well as to temper expectations.

We've seen it time and time again. Big games with even bigger expectations that release, and performance is well, less than optimal. Uh, with that being said, let's dive into Crimson Desert and try to figure out if they can really pull this off.

Crimson Desert is being developed by Pearl Abyss, a South Korean-based development studio that was founded back in September of 2010. Pearl Abyss is most wellknown for Black Desert Online, an MMO RPG that was released in 2014 and by all accounts is still going strong today. Finding player numbers for this is a bit difficult since alongside Steam, it also has its own launcher.

But from estimates I could find, they put it around 340,000 concurrent players. Again, these are estimates, so they could vary greatly. But all this to say, the game is by no means dead even after 12 years.

As for Crimson Desert, this was first revealed to the public in November of 2019 at Gstar, which is the largest gaming convention in Korea and has been held annually since 2005. The initial reveal was a standard 3minute trailer that didn't include any gameplay. Now, at this time, Crimson Desert was being developed as a prequel to Black Desert Online and was believed to be an MMO.

It was even stated that Pearlus was aiming to host a beta test for the game sometime in 2020. With this reveal, many voiced frustration that this was seemingly going to be another MMO with comments saying they wish for more of a singleplayer experience. Now, publicly, we wouldn't hear much about Crimson Desert after this for basically a full year.

That was until December 2020, where we got an official game reveal at the Game Awards. This trailer was far more substantial than the previous and seemingly showed us some actual gameplay. But as expected, players BS radars began blaring.

And honestly, I can't really blame them. The trailer showed off this massive open world with a surprising amount of detail. And yeah, I mean, we've all seen how this plays out before, right?

We literally saw the same thing happen a couple years later with another Korean studio. This was the trailer for Chrono Odyssey, and this is what the game looked like in the alpha test. We'll come back to this comparison a little later, so bookmark Chrono Odyssey for now.

But back to Crimson Desert. While some were certainly skeptical, others were excited as the gameplay they showed off was pretty impressive. Around this time, it also seemed like Pearl Abyss was moving away from the MMO tag people applied to the game.

On their own website, they even refer to it simply as an openw world action adventure. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this trailer was the ending because we actually got a release window for winter 2021. So, basically a year from then.

Now, seeing as I'm making this video in February of 2026, you obviously don't need me to tell you that this did not happen. It's now July of 2021 and the official Crimson Desert Twitter account would announce the game's first delay. Prabus said that the game was rapidly evolving and that more time would be needed in order to create the best possible experience, all the while ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved.

Something noteworthy is that a planned release date was not given at this time, meaning Crimson Desert was delayed indefinitely. To be completely honest with you, the timeline here starts to get a bit messy. Many different Reddit posts and even some news outlets cited a possible 2024 release date.

Not to call anyone specific, but just as an example, Games Radar says in an article, "This isn't the first time the upcoming adventure has been pushed back with Crimson Desert initially planned to arrive in 2024. For the life of me, I could not find anything pertaining to this other than some Reddit posts that were purely speculation. Not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things, but just wanted to point out I'm not 100% sure if the game was planned to be released in 2024 or not.

" But moving on, the next official announcement we would get on a possible release date wouldn't happen until the game awards in December of 2024. Here we would get a short almost 2-minute trailer with a release window set for late 2025. Players were once again excited, and the game itself looked really impressive.

It's important to mention that Pearl Abyss wasn't just radio silent for that 3-ish year period of time. In August of 2023, we got another gameplay trailer showing off actual gameplay. But then throughout 2024, we got even more gameplay showcasing some of the boss fights that were going to be present in the game and even a 50inute video showing off early gameplay.

To my surprise, Pearls was clearly not afraid to show off Crimson Desert. If anything, this was the most early footage we've seen from a AAA game in recent memory, which certainly helped lighten the blow a bit with the next announcement. In August of 2025, Gamasu reported that Crimson Desert was being delayed to quarter 1 of 2026.

This was learned in a quarter 2 2025 earnings call where Pearl Abyss stated, "The launch of Crimson Desert, our first large-scale AAA console game, has been unavoidably delayed by one quarter from the previously announced schedule. " They would go on to site a multitude of reasons such as voiceovers as well as console certification. Luckily, it wouldn't be long until a new release date was confirmed in September of 2025.

We would get the current March 19th, 2026 release date with the game going old in January of this year, locking in that release date. With the history, the ups, and the downs out of the way, we should probably talk about what Crimson Desert actually is. I think the most important thing to address right off the bat is that Crimson Desert is not considered an RPG, or at least not really.

Now, before you get mad at me, this all kind of kicked off with a Twitter post from Synth Potato, who posted this. Now, as things usually go on the internet, pretty much no one could agree on what an actual RPG was, with many pointing to the fact that the term RPG is kind of overused nowadays. More importantly, how does Pearl Abyss describe Crimson Desert?

The full description of the game from the Seam Page reads as follows. Crimson Desert is an openw world action adventure game set in the beautiful yet brutal continent of Pywell. Embark on a journey as the Grey Main Cliff, and restore what has been lost.

Explore uncharted lands, fight against threats that stand in your way, and discover the wonders the world has in store. Will Powers, who is a director of marketing for Pearl Abyss, also chimed in on some of the RPG talk in response to a user who was upset that the game was still being referred to as an RPG by some creators. Power said, "Honestly, it's not my plan to dictate someone else's experience.

If it's because of the good amount of RPG elements in the game, they want to call it an RPG. Sure, I'm just explaining why we don't call it one. " So, to RPG or to not RPG, does it really [ __ ] matter to me?

Who the hell cares? Honestly, I just wanted to get that out of the way first before someone calls me mean names in the comments. Now again, as the Steam page says, Crimson Desert is an openw world action adventure game.

Now, what does that mean exactly? Well, as we get closer to launch, Will Powers has been on many podcasts and interviews with different creators answering questions about the game. The main focus they keep trying to drive home really seems to be exploration, even saying that one of the design goals of the team was to create a world full of distractions.

Their objective is to keep having the player be sidetracked and just constantly finding things to do. Also adding that the map does have a fog of war system where you uncover more of it through exploration and even hinted at many distant landmarks that players will see and be able to go to. There is a skill system in the game and this is leveled up through finding artifacts throughout the world.

Again, leaning even more into the exploration. He also clarified that leveling up is mainly tied to gear upgrading and that gear can come from things like killing bosses or crafting. It's also important to clarify that this game is not a Soulslike either.

In fact, we have heard a good amount about how the combat works since there was a playable demo at both Gamescom and PAX West in 2025. I won't go too much into it because I myself haven't played it, but from what many said, the combat seems to be fairly complex with some likening it to almost like Monster Hunter, but also having some fighting game DNA mixed in as well, which sounds pretty awesome as it hopefully won't be a button mash simulator. From what I can gather, the progression and exploration is really reminding me of something like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, where your so-called level isn't tied to a number.

It's tied to finding different things in the world to make you stronger, like the hearts in either one of those games or something like that. Same thing with leveling up based on gear. Finding stronger weapons and stronger armor is your way of getting stronger, not just increasing a level.

And since I brought up Tears of the Kingdom in Breath of the Wild, something to mention that I didn't before is that there is no weapon durability in the game, which was confirmed by Will in an interview. We also know that the story itself is fixed, meaning there is a set outcome and there aren't any branching paths through dialogue or anything like that. Something else that caught my attention was that enemies don't have any levels or difficulty scaling.

In fact, there's no difficulty setting at all. And Will even said that areas and bosses are skillgated. So, if you're stuck on one, rather than bashing your head against a wall, you can go out, explore, and come back after you get some upgrades.

To finish off this section, the main thing making the rounds recently has been the fact that it was confirmed that Crimson Desert will have no microtransaction store at launch. Now, Will did specifically say at launch, but still an awesome thing to hear. He probably specified launch because apparently there are some rumors floating around that they may look into a multiplayer mode in the future, but if I had to guess, that would be quite a while from now.

There is a ton more to this game and that honestly is an understatement. Alongside these interviews, Pearl Abyss has released three videos showcasing what to expect with Crimson Desert and I highly advise you go and watch them or any other creator who covered them if you want to really get into all there is in the game. But I do want to move on because while all this sounds great, there's still a glaring question mark.

From the very first moment this game was revealed, the biggest question has been the performance. How's the game going to run? What are the target frame rates?

Will console have 60 fps support? Now, while nobody has any clue how this will turn out, I do want to look at both sides of the argument. It's certainly easy to site specific examples of overhyped games that were released and ran like, well, dog [ __ ] In the intro, I alluded to Cyberpunk, as I feel like that's the easiest and most well-known example of a hyped up game absolutely [ __ ] the bed.

But even more recently, we have games like Borderlands 4 that despite whatever the hell Randy has to say about it, was extremely unoptimized, even for premium gamers. Now, while I myself am still skeptical, I actually feel a lot better than most do in regards to how the game will be optimized. I think the biggest factor for this reasoning is the fact that Pearl Abyss built Crimson Desert within their own proprietary engine.

This isn't another Unreal Engine 5 disaster waiting to happen. Just look no further than Chrono Odyssey. This is a Korean MMO being developed in UEIE5.

And as I alluded to earlier, the trailers made this game look outstanding. But as someone fortunate or unfortunate enough to play in the alpha test, it left quite a bit to be desired. Now, of course, not every UE5 game runs like ass.

And this isn't to say Crimson Desert won't at launch. But we've heard time and time again that the Black Space Engine has been specifically designed for Crimson Desert. It's something Will even talked about in an interview that the plus side of this is that every feature in the engine is being used somewhere in the game, which significantly cuts down on bloat, which can often lead to performance issues.

From the little I've seen about Black Desert Online at launch, this too had some serious tech powering it. So, it isn't too outlandish to think that Prolabus could pull it off again. As I mentioned earlier, this game has been playable at conventions in the past, so people have gotten their hands on it.

One common thing I've noticed is that nobody reported any performance issues or at the very least not notable ones. Remember, like everything else in those early previews, things are subject to change, so there's no telling if the seemingly solid performance will remain true when the game actually releases. We also don't know what kind of hardware these early builds are running on.

It's probably safe to assume they were on high-end PC setups, but nothing was ever confirmed. In terms of PC specs, the Steam page has the minimum and recommended listed, and honestly, if these are true, I'm even more blown away. Willpowers did confirm that there won't be a demo available to play before launch, but he did say they would be releasing performance numbers before the 19th, and at the time it was still too early to talk about the numbers they were targeting.

Something else I want to touch on that could be a downside is the sheer amount of stuff in this game. I alluded to it before, but after watching the videos Pearl Abyss released, as well as breakdowns from creators, I still can't wrap my head around how many different systems are present here. There's two other playable characters that you unlock as you progress.

Five separate regions, mining, dungeon crawling, base building, farming, wood chopping, and I'm not even close to done. You even have different mounts in the game, one of which being a literal dragon, and even like a steampunk mech suit. There's also these floating sky islands known as the abyss, which look like something straight out of Tears of the Kingdom in the best way possible.

I cannot stress enough just how much stuff Pearl Abyss has crammed into this game, but that does have some potential drawbacks. With so many systems and activities being present, there's a chance that it will be too overwhelming for some, or some may completely skip over things altogether. Personally, I think all this stuff is awesome to see, but I can certainly see the argument being made that with so many things to do, there's a chance that some or even many of the systems feel underbaked.

This is the same studio, however, with MMO experience, which makes sense why so many of these systems are bleeding over into this single player adventure. So, I'm hoping with that experience, the multitude of systems won't feel halfbaked, but only time will tell. Crimson Desert is promising a lot, and I completely understand why it may seem too good to be true.

Also, remember, being skeptical doesn't mean pessimistic or hoping a game will fail. In fact, I implore you to be skeptical with games like this. Think critically, and more importantly, temper your expectations.

But even in me saying that, that doesn't mean I'm not excited for this game. Quite the opposite, actually. A lot of that has to do with how willing Pearl Abyss has been to show off the game.

They are clearly not afraid of having as many eyes on it as possible, and that's really encouraging. Rather than hiding from the players what could be potential issues, they are proudly showing it off for everyone to see. If Crimson Desert releases and lives up to the hype, it could truly change the way open world games are developed for a really long time.

But that's pretty much it for me. I hope you enjoyed the video and let me know your feelings on Crimson Desert, whatever they may be. I'm genuinely curious.

Again, huge thank you for all the support recently on the channel. It's been really motivating to just see how many people have been enjoying the videos I'm putting out. And like I said earlier, I definitely plan on making tons of more videos on [ __ ] I think is cool.

It's the whole point of this channel. Any game, any topic about a game that I find interesting, I'll probably cover here. So again, if that sounds interesting, like, subscribe, all that stuff.

And I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching. Heat.

Hey, Heat.