Pearl Abyss, the developers behind the massively popular MMO Black Desert Online, have been hard at work creating their new game Crimson Desert.
When the trailer popped up at Gamescom Opening Night Live, I shamefully disregarded it as another MMORPG that I’ll probably never play, (who has the time!?) but after finding out that it’s actually a single player open-world action-adventure my interest levels spiked through the roof!
Going off the trailer alone, the game looks to be PACKED with things to do and see, a veritable parade of game mechanics that never seemed to end.
Here’s a ‘short’ list of cool shit I peeped in the trailer *deep breath*:
- Duels
- Arm wrestling
- Spartan kicks
- Dodge-rolls
- Leg sweeps and Dropkicks (must’ve put points into the wrestling skill tree)
- Small scale battles
- Large scale battles
- Destructible structures
- Destructible environments
- Suplexing some dude (definitely going for a wrestling build)
- Horseback riding
- Horseback bow-combat
- Explosive arrows
- Stunning vistas
- Bustling towns
- A noticeboard for quests
- A sheep carrying fetch quest
- Cloak physics
- GTH (Grand Theft Horse-cart)
- Chivalrous rescues
- A Deer-man merchant selling oranges for 145 coins (seems expensive… Inflation I guess)
- A refreshing drink from a magical fountain
- An ogre-looking fellow
- FISHING!
- OH F**K a giant crab
- Harvesting mushrooms
- Petting dogs while wearing a dog mask (probably made from a real dog)
- Cuddling cats
- Playing Pied Piper to a plague of rats
- Chilling against a hay bale
- HOT AIR BALOON RIDING!
- Floating ruins
- A portal to the Matrix
- Ancient alien-looking tech
- Climbing trees
- Climbing up walls and through open windows (forgot his keys)
- Horse taming
- A glowing gravestone (are they meant to do that?)
- Some Zelda style ultrahand ability, opening doors and activating traps
- The Fast and the Furious: Equine Drift
- POLE VAULTING!
- Jumping off a horse and gliding in style (but what happened to the horsey?)
- Ents
- Felony property damage
- Free-falling through a mid-air mine-field
- Fireball machine, bullet-hell battle
- An overloaded mini-map
- Soldier-tossing
- Horse trampling hit-n-run (they came out of nowhere!)
- A goblin king
- An automaton golem
- AN AUTOMATON DRAGON!
- Smoke assassins
- Seamless glide-to-horse transitions (is this the same horse? )
That’s one hell of a list from just one trailer! All while looking pretty damn stunning.
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It remains to be seen how deeply implemented each mechanic will be.
The pole vault, for example; can that be used anywhere in the game? Or is it a command that appears when you get close to a high wall?
It would be amazing if you were able to vault into a mob of enemies and then devastate them with a spinning attack.
What about that hot air balloon? Is it a fast travel animation? Or will I have full control? Can I just jump out whenever I like? Or steer it into a village of unsuspecting peasants?
I just hope the devs aren’t trying to do too much. With so many different mechanics working together in the one game, there’s the danger of features feeling shallow or unpolished as a result.
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Pearl Abyss is also the dev team behind that insane open-world creature-catching game DokeV, shown at Gamescom a few years back. I’m suitably excited to see more from both of these games!
Crimson Desert is currently set to release in late 2024 for PC and consoles.
