Crimson Desert is looking absolutely nuts and it's braced to be one of the biggest game releases of 2026. How's it going everybody? I'm Mr Holton and here is everything that you need to know about Crimson Desert.
In Crimson Desert, you play as Cliff, a member of a faction called the Greymanes. At the start of the game, the Greymanes get attacked by a rival faction known as the Black Bears. And after a long and bloody battle, Cliff and the rest of the Greymane scatter across the world, and it's up to you to reunite the gang once more.
But along the way, you'll eventually get lost in the giant world of Piell. Speaking of which, the continent of Pywell is divided up into five distinct regions. And right off the bat, you're looking at a pretty hefty install size of 135 GB.
But there is a very specific reason for this, and that is, of course, because the game is a seamless open world. Now, Pearlis actually built a brand new engine for this, the black space engine, specifically to handle massive open worlds without relying on loading screens. Apparently, this tech allows the game to render massive draw distances natively, which essentially means that you can jump from a floating island in the sky all the way down to a forest, and the game won't stop to load assets.
Obviously, this seamless design ties directly into how you explore the world. The developers have stated that they wanted to build a world where setting a waypoint naturally leads to distractions. So, you know, instead of opening a map filled with a checklist of icons, you're meant to organically stumble across ancient ruins, puzzles, and dynamic battles along the way.
Pywell holds many mysteries from ancient mechanisms hidden in forgotten [music] ruins to enigmatic puzzles, each rewarding keen observation and problem solving. Now, getting across Pywell is also incredibly varied. You start with standard mounts like horses, of course, but your main character, Cliff, can free climb almost any surface and use a grappling hook called spid web that also acts like a slingshot.
And later on, you unlock magical crow's wings to glide across the skies. Eventually, you even gain access to pilotable mechs and flyable dragons to cover massive distances. And that isn't to mention the numerous mounts that you will find as you play the game, like a black bear and a raptor and a ton of other mounts they haven't revealed yet.
Oh, and mounted combat is a thing. Or even using your mounts in the environment to your advantage. Combat in Pywell is full of possibility.
Now, speaking of exploration, at some point you will unlock two additional characters that you can explore the world with, a Damian or Damian. Anyway, they'll have their entirely own move sets. And it appears they'll also have their own exploration tools like Damian's helicopter umbrella here.
Also, Crimson Desert has fully dynamic weather [music] and a day and night cycle. See, the engine calculates temperature, wind, and precipitation in real time based on your actual elevation. This means the lighting and atmosphere change drastically depending on when and where you are, which apparently makes every single encounter feel unique.
And for all my fellow PC players out there, your frame rate will be completely uncapped. of course, complete with a native support for FSR and DLSS. Now, moving on to the progression system.
This is where things get interesting because Crimson Desert is not an RPG, which is something the marketing director, Will Powers, has been very vocal about. So, essentially, you are not going to go out and grind 100 BS for XP so you can put a random point into your strength stat, but instead, progression is tied to abyss artifacts. Essentially, these are fragments of the mystical realm hovering above the world that have fallen to the surface.
You can find these fragments by exploring hidden corners, completing quests, solving puzzles, or defeating bosses, and then you consume them to upgrade your core stats, like health and stamina, and unlock nodes on your skill tree. And speaking of skills, some of the more advanced moves actually require you to observe them being performed firsthand out in [snorts] the open world before Cliff can even use them. Now, that is pretty cool.
Now, as for the big one, the combat, Pearl Abyss has stated that the combat has a lot of fighting game DNA in it. It's heavily inspired by arcade fighters like Tekken or King of Fighters, meaning it's not a simple rhythm game of attacking, dodging, and parrying, but instead, it's built entirely around fluid multi-button combos. If you've played Black Desert Online, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about here.
Now, in Crimson Desert, you can seamlessly weave between a massive arsenal of weapons. For instance, you can start with a slash, transition into a bare-handed grappling suplex. You can launch yourself into the air with magic and finish by blasting the enemy with a ranged weapon.
You can also infuse your weapons mid combo with elemental effects to burn, freeze, or stun enemies. And the variations here are simply well endless. Also, if you're like me and you just want to punch things, well, unarmed combat is totally viable with its own dedicated damage stat and move set.
And yes, this goes for the two other playable characters as well, Damian and Unka. And they'll be having their own unarmed move sets as well. So, expect a ton of variation here.
Each weapon has its own advantages, so switch back and forth to the ones that best fit your style and the situation you're in. Now, as for difficulty and balance, you should know that there are no difficulty sliders and enemies do not dynamically scale to your level. There is just one difficulty curve, but despite that, Pearl Abyss has stressed that this is not a Soulslike.
There are no razor thin dodge windows you have to perfectly memorize. Instead, the game relies on you overpreparing. Say, if a boss is folding you like laundry, you can just straight up leave.
You can go craft revival items, cook massive buffing meals, upgrade your gear, and come back to essentially brute force the fight if you want to. In essence, you dictate the pace. And to stop you from just grinding side content and becoming an absolute god before the second story mission, gear upgrades require specific regional materials, which naturally gates your power behind main story progression.
Also, because people are seeing obvious similarities with the modern Zelda games, I have to touch on gear durability because I know that's a massive sticking point for a lot of you. So, the good news is that your primary weapons do not break. [music] The only things with the durability meters are utility tools like pickaxes and other specific single-use item drops.
And when it comes to the big rewards, some bosses actually drop exclusive equipment that allows you to wield their specific signature abilities in your own combat rotation. Now, moving beyond just hitting things, let's talk about life in Pywell. Because as much as this game is an action adventure, it's also got a surprising amount of life sim DNA baked right into it.
So, a big part of your overall journey is actually rebuilding your faction, the Greymanes, after your homeland gets destroyed, as previously mentioned. After that, you get this central camp in Hernand that serves as your base of operations. Hernand being the region you start in.
As you gather resources and funds out in the open world, you can actually upgrade the facilities, arrange furniture, and expand it into a bustling settlement. And if you're running low on supplies, you can even manage a working farm and a ranch to produce your own crafting materials. Now, as you explore Pywell, you'll reunite with scattered Greymane comrades who will head back to your camp to regroup, and you essentially act as their commander.
This means you can dispatch them across the map to gather timber and ore, or you can actually order them to lay siege to enemy fortresses to thin out their ranks while you're off doing something entirely different. And speaking of resources, Will Powers, the marketing director for the game, has mentioned that while the combat is incredibly flashy, the game really shines in its quiet moments because of the deep life skilling system that directly ties into your combat readiness. Because you will be hunting and fishing for ingredients, cooking meals at bonfires to buff your health and stamina, mining for weapon upgrades, chopping down trees for wood, and gathering flowers and insects for alchemy to brew medicines and clothing dyes.
Now, of course, interacting with the world goes both ways. You see, Pyell is full of towns and cities where you can accept bounties, get into mud fights or gamble. You can liberate occupied towns to restore homes and make the area safe for travel.
But then on the flip side, you can be a full-blown criminal. Indeed, Crimson Desert has a wanted [music] system. Say if you decide to do an evil run and start harming residents or pickpocketing people, you will gain a wanted level.
The local guards will swarm you and you'll either have to fight your way out, pay a massive fine, or actually serve time in a literal jail cell. Now, we have to talk about customization because that is the real endgame for a lot of us. Now, while you can't change Cliff's actual bone structure from scratch, you do get a barber shop to heavily customize his look with different hairstyles, facial hair, and face or body tattoos.
Of course, this also applies to the other two playable companions as well, Damian and Unka. Also, you can dye individual parts of an armor set, your horse, and your pilotable dwarven mech, and probably other types of mounts as well. All right, that's basically everything that you need to know before you play Crimson Desert.
There is a few other details, actually quite a lot of other details about the game, but I don't want to spoil too much for you in case you want to explore and discover the stuff in the game yourself. So, I'm going to stay off from talking about the things that other creators have revealed that have actually played it. But hopefully, you enjoyed this video.
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