You’ve been following Crimson Desert for years now. You’ve watched the Features Overview trailers front to back, gleaning any additional details, and consumed just about every gameplay showing. Even with just a month to go before launch, there’s this urgent need for more, maybe even a chance to go hands-on. After all, Gamescom attendees got the chance two years in a row, right?
Unfortunately, things aren’t quite that simple. On the Dropped Frames podcast, Will Powers, marketing director at Pearl Abyss America, said he “understood the ask” for a public demo, but it’s not happening. Why? Because, quite frankly, “This is a hard game to demo.”
“It goes back to like zero people in the world have played this game without Pearl [Abyss] staff present next to it. That’s because the demo builds that we’ve put out there aren’t standalone demos. They are save states of the game or the boss – like instances of bosses, which aren’t representative of the game as you’re seeing it as a whole.
“If I’m calling this an open world game and we’re doing a boss fight demo, then that’s not representative of the main thing that we’re saying the game is, which is open world. I understand the need for it. I understand the ask for it. We’re not ignoring that.
“What I can say is this. We are going to get the game in as many people’s hands that are authoritative figures that should be representative of what the experience is like before launch and we’re going to and we are going to release performance numbers. So, between the two of those, I hope that fully answers your expectations and what the game is.”
In a way, you have to sympathize with Powers, because this is a game with a world that’s larger than Red Dead Redemption 2. Where the campaign makes up only a “small percentage” of the overall experience, and he can’t put a number on the number of hours of gameplay. Trying to convey the full scope of the game into a single demo is next to impossible in that sense.
“The amount of development work to create a standalone demo like…I don’t even know where we would even start with what point, which would be representative of the game.”
Crimson Desert launches on March 19th and will be available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, with over two million wishlists and growing as of February 3rd. Despite pre-order bonuses offering cosmetic armor, there won’t be a cash shop with microtransactions for players to dump more cash into.
