This is an interesting one. With Witcher 3 Remastered now in the hands of fans and novice Witchers alike, and Crimson Desert Enhanced now being a version of Pywel that’s very different from the one we first dove into all those months ago, it’s only natural to compare the two worlds these games present us with.
They’re giant open worlds that are designed to have you exploring every available square inch of land you can find, with interesting rewards and intriguing stories just waiting for you to stumble upon them. They feature gruff-voiced protagonists who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and often add the burdens of others to the load.
Both games feature fighting systems that can have you feeling untouchable once you master their unique rhythms, while allowing for a surprising amount of nuanced customizability to the experience. But if you’re somebody who’s played both, you know that they’re also worlds apart.
With all of the improvements that have now been implemented in both Pywel and The Continent, we thought it would be a more interesting comparison if we looked at how both worlds have evolved since we first embarked on the respective journeys that they take us on. Let’s get right to it!
A Feast For Your Eyes
We felt the visuals in both worlds are a good place to start, as it’s an area where we believe both games are now evenly matched. However, Crimson Desert Enhanced does benefit from being a game that’s been made with modern technology, while Remastered is bringing modern features to a game that might not have been made to accommodate them.
However, it’s important to remember that CDPR’s 2015 title was quite ahead of its time when it was released, and the studio had already given the world a visual bump with that next-gen update from a few years ago. The remaster brings path tracing and improvements to existing ray tracing mechanics, alongside improvements to textures and assets to give us a very immersive and visually splendid world.
And yet, an open window in a room sometimes forgets to let rays of light in, forcing you to pull out a torch whose glow behaves exactly as it should with the new system governing it. Geralt’s hair often gets black when he’s in dark places, which can be quite jarring for those of us who know him as the White Wolf.
You see the game’s visuals working very well for the most part, until something out of place reminds you of The Continent’s age. It’s something that Pywel doesn’t have to struggle with, although that one did have its fair share of problems on the visual front.
However, the developer has worked to polish the visuals on offer over the course of the year, and Crimson Desert Enhanced is now a version of the game where every scene it presents comes with visual splendor and beauty to match The Continent, and perhaps even surpass it thanks to the benefits of being developed with more modern tech from the get-go.
But how does it feel to engage with the worlds themselves? That’s a facet of the experience that an open world lives or dies by, and it’s also interesting to see how both games have evolved their worlds over the years. It might look like Pywel and The Continent are similar in the ways in which you get to engage with them, but we’d say it’s more about what those activities encourage instead of what you do with each one.
The Continent’s a place that’s reeling from events in the past and present; its war-torn desolation forms a perfect backdrop for Geralt’s cynical examinations of the world around him. The things you do as a Witcher, when viewed through that lens, aren’t necessarily nudging you toward a more altruistic point of view, but challenge you to see the world as it is.
When you translate that into gameplay, you get choices that come with consequences you have to live with, and the potential for stories that feel personal when you play through them. Yes, the game has its minor share of generic open-world stuff, but given that Monster Nests, Hidden Treasures, and so many other activities directly feed into your role as a Witcher, the risk of monotony is somewhat offset by what you get to do with the rewards that come.
Kliff’s role as a Greymane is a little different, coming with more altruistic connotations and political intrigue that make Pywel a melting pot of different factions, cultures, and perspectives. That automatically lends a certain unique flavor to nearly every enemy you come across in a land where distinct biomes help maintain that variety.
Moreover, the spread of activities on offer is similarly aligned with making Kliff rise to his destiny while solving the mysteries of The Abyss. That means exploring the world makes you a better Greymane, while also showing off so many mysteries, quests both interesting and mundane, and a lot of things to distract you from the main story, no matter how determined you are to begin its next chapter.
Which one you’d prefer is sure to come down to personal tastes, but Remastered is the finest version of a world where the very writing forms an undercurrent of quality to it. In terms of nuance, The Continent edges ahead of Pywel despite being equally matched on visual quality in terms of how its world can not only pull you in, but also have you thinking about it even when you’re not actively exploring it, even if Pywel manages to have more scope in this regard.
But the world’s visuals and exploration are only parts of what make great RPGs.
A Challenge For Your Hands and Minds
The combat systems on offer, as well as the ways in which Geralt and Kliff are able to get around quickly in maps that span vast distances, are equally important in crafting a cohesive experience.
Let’s begin with the combat, and how Geralt’s abilities as a Witcher lend themselves to the illusion of a fighter with whom most opponents would rather avoid a direct confrontation. He’s got magic, his swords, his superhuman speed, and of course, potions, oils, and bombs, all of which are options in a fight.
He’s got the knowledge of Kaer Morhen guiding his preparations for fights against deadly monsters, while human enemies are going to be hard-pressed to even hold a candle to his prowess with a steel blade. He’s formidable, but not entirely infallible, and Remastered has done well to improve on his movements and animations, making them more fluid and quicker to give combat a much-needed boost.
But the enemy AI on offer is also important, given how Remastered has made enemies more coordinated, forcing you to switch out the original game’s pattern of “attack, attack, dodge/parry, cast sign, attack again”, instead making you pay attention to where attacks are coming from and respond accordingly. The dynamic camera is another nice touch and makes each fight all the more immersive.
However, from a progression standpoint, we’d argue that the new skill tree makes getting to your comfort zone so much easier if you’re coming back to the game after a previous playthrough. It’s so easy that you risk staying there and not taking advantage of how it now facilitates builds in a way that makes sense, something that a more casual player is going to miss out on, given how many other systems are competing for their attention.
Crimson Desert’s combat and progression mechanics are more woven into the gameplay, as are traversal mechanics. Geralt’s ability to swim, sail, and ride across The Continent matches in comparison to Kliff’s ability to fly, summon wyverns or Dragons, or use his own Abyss-powered abilities to cross even the most imposing natural obstacles with relative ease.
It helps that Pywel is designed to make you use those abilities intelligently, and to demonstrate that same cunning in a fight. Where Remastered brings Geralt into fights where he’s outnumbered by a group, Pywel pits Kliff against literal armies. It’s also relevant to remember that most of his main abilities have been refined, enhanced, and even added to over the course of this year to make Crimson Desert feel like a whole new game while retaining what was already working in these areas.
They’re vastly different experiences, to be sure, but we’d have to say that as far as combat, traversal, and progression go, it’s a tie.
Stories For Your Hearts and Souls
Ah, the main narrative. The reason why many of us end up spending several hours engaging with worlds like Pywel and The Continent. Be it the ever-present threat to reality that stems from misuse of the Abyss in Crimson Desert, or the devastating effects of the Conjunction of the Spheres and the desolation of a war-torn land in The Continent, it’s clear that both games have very interesting stories to tell.
It’s also clear that while those narratives are very effective at lending context and structure to worlds that would otherwise languish in irrelevance without them, Kliff’s time in Pywel can feel too disjointed, and perhaps even too slanted towards being a good guy to give you the same sense of agency you can get from Remastered.
The search for Ciri, and the people it puts you in contact with, present opportunities for you to put your stamp on the world, leaving it better or worse than you found it when you first arrived. The Bloody Baron and the manner in which your choices can influence his family long after his role in the main narrative is over is a great example.
That he isn’t the only character in The Continent whose life you can impact in such a fashion, and that every single such questline comes with so much nuance and depth that you might need a break just to process it all, is something that didn’t need any improving in Remastered, as it continues to be a very potent storytelling formula that has since lent itself to Night City with excellent results.
Crimson Desert Enhanced has done well to try and make its story more cohesive, but Kliff’s fight against the forces looking to destabilize his world isn’t going to measure up against a story that has so much to offer. Yes, there are highs such as the moment you bring Myurdin down, and lows like Damiane’s discovery of her mentor’s fate, all of which can give you memories to cherish.
But The Continent makes you think like a Witcher and allows you to inject a bit of your personality into its eventual fate. That your decisions carry as much weight as they do is something that allows Remastered to steal the win away from Crimson Desert despite the latest update’s effort to bridge the narrative gaps the original game came with.
We’d say it’s more interesting to be a Witcher than a Greymane as far as the story each role presents you with is concerned.
A Common Thread
There you have it. Crimson Desert Enhanced comes with better controls, combat, and traversal mechanics, but The Witcher 3 Remastered is the definitive version of an open world that continues to remain amongst the most legendary ones there are.
The Continent’s overarching story, and the world it thrusts you into, are simply too nuanced and well-written for Pywel’s relatively tamer take on destiny to compare to. However, if you look at how both games have evolved from their original releases, things get a little more interesting.
You see, The Witcher 3 has been beloved not only by its players, but also by its makers, and has thus seen two incredible expansions and two substantial updates over the years, with another one and a whole sequel on the way. Geralt and Ciri have also managed tos tay in the spotlight due to the franchise’s presence in other media, giving Remastered the benefit of a constant spotlight. It’s an improvement that brings new tech to an already great game, with noticeable improvements to the underlying systems that made it special in the first place.
Crimson Desert, on the other hand, has had to claw its way up from a rather lackluster release response, using every improvement it has made to earn back goodwill from its audiences, and as such, makes for a more impressive upgrade. Enhanced is the culmination of a journey that might have taken another studio a very long time to complete, and it now exists mere months after the original release and has already laid the groundwork for an expansion; it is something we can’t scoff at.
As a complete game, we’d have to hand the win to The Witcher 3 Remastered, but as an evolution of the game that came before it, Crimson Desert Enhanced is the more impressive upgrade.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
