After the massively successful Black Desert Online, Pearl Abyss is hard at work on its spiritual successor in the form of Crimson Desert. Set against the backdrop of a fantastical world inhabited by all manner of beasts and foes, Crimson Desert is looking like an expansive experience and the game has consistently impressed fans with its pre-release trailers. With this year’s Gamescom, the developers gave us a fresh look at this highly-anticipated RPG with a brand-new trailer which is chock-full of information that fans should know about. To that end, here are 10 things that you need to know about Crimson Desert.
Traversal
Crimson Desert takes place in an expansive open-world, and players get to choose from a couple of options when it comes to traversing from point A to point B. For instance, you can hop on a trusty steed and explore the far reaches of the kingdom of Pywel while you try to unite the many factions under a singular cause. Furthermore, your horse companion can also ram into enemies and help you gain an advantage over stationary foes in combat. But if you don’t happen to have your horse alongside you at any given moment, you could always hijack a horse cart and get a quick ride to your destination.
Pet Animals
We can’t help but express our feelings of adoration towards cute furry beings like cats, and it’s a feeling that extends over to the virtual world as well. We’re happy to report that Crimson Desert’s world is filled with cats, and developer Pearl Abyss has made sure that you can indeed pet these animals if you happen to come across them during your travels. Sweet.
Parkour
Parkour looks to be a major part of Crimson Desert’s gameplay loop, and it should help in adding an element of verticality to the level design and combat encounters as well. As can be seen in the trailer, our player character can quickly clamber up buildings, scale trees, and other similar structures thanks to a surprisingly solid parkour system. The parkour inspirations are pretty obvious, but it looks pretty fun nevertheless. Players can climb up to a high vantage point to not only get an overview of the surrounding areas but also use it to strategically pick out enemies with ranged weapons like bows.
Dark Powers
Crimson Desert will also feature plenty of special abilities – and most of them seem to stem from a mysterious dark power. We see our protagonist opening up new paths and magical gateways to other dimensions by channeling this very dark power, and it can also be used to gracefully glide from the skies above. At one point during the trailer, the player is able to channel that dark power to create a kinesis-like ability and use that to move enormous wood planks around the space. Developer Pearl Abyss has kept the story details pretty close to its chest, which is why we don’t really know the origin of these dark powers and whether using these will have any ramifications in gameplay or not.
Boss Battles
Boss battles will obviously be an important part of the Crimson Desert experience, and the Gamescom trailer has shed some more light on this particular aspect of the gameplay. Our player character can be seen fighting a mechanical monstrosity against the backdrop of an abandoned fort when a gargantuan dragon composed of rotating gears comes into view, effectively turning this encounter into a handicap battle. Furthermore, we also get to see a sword duel against the Red Devil, a red-eyed knight who uses two machetes later in the trailer. Suffice it to say, the boss battles look to be high-octane adrenaline rides from what we have seen, and we are really excited to see what awaits us in the final release.
Crimes System
One of the more interesting things in Crimson Desert is that players will have to abide by a virtual code of honor during their adventures, so you can’t just go knocking around NPCs and hijacking their horse carts whenever you feel like it. I mean you could do that, but there will be repercussions to these activities. Inflicting such harm on innocents will brand you with the convicted status, as can be seen at one point during this trailer. We don’t exactly know if any authorities will pursue you after being convicted, or whether merchants will refuse to trade with you- so we’ll have to wait for more information on the matter.
Floating Kingdoms
Crimson Desert will obviously feature a large open world available for players to explore, but what’s interesting is that players will also be able to take to the skies above and explore a slew of islands that majestically float amongst the clouds. It seems heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s open-world, but it all looks pretty good in action regardless. These floating kingdoms look to be pretty large in size with castles and other giant structures visible from afar, and it seems like a fair guess that there will be no shortage of things to do while meandering these islands. The player character can also be seen free-falling from these islands to reach the ground level without encountering any loading screens, and it definitely looks pretty cool to say the very least.
Hot Air Balloons
The player character can also be seen riding a hot air balloon at one point during the trailer, which allows us to have a good look at the vastness of the world of Pywel. The hot air balloons look to be an interesting form of traversal, and they could serve as a reliable way to get from one floating island to the other. That said, however, we don’t know whether players will have the option to pilot it anytime they wish to or if we will get the opportunity to only ride it at specific points during the story.
A Quest Board System
Crimson Desert will offer players a vast number of quests that they can tackle at their own leisure. Apart from the critical path, you will also be able to take up additional side quests peppered throughout the world. The trailer showcases a quest board of sorts, and we see our player character taking up a scroll which then triggers what looks to be a side quest that involves getting back a lost sheep. We are expecting that the final release will have a lot more substantial side quests, but tackling them will be an important part of the gameplay nevertheless.
Another Dimension
As mentioned previously, Pearl Abyss has largely remained tight-lipped regarding Crimson Desert’s story – but we can infer from the trailer that our protagonist has some connection to a magical dimension or astral plane of sorts. We get to see our player character entering magical gateways at multiple points during the trailer, and we suspect that the aforementioned dark powers have to do something with these magical gateways. Of course, we’ll get to know more in the coming months – so stay tuned until then