Ever since its reveal in 2019, Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert has garnered a certain mystique for its ambitious open world and the multitude of activities waiting to be uncovered. It's a type of open-world action-adventure that's aiming high and looking to land among other AAA games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3. However, this mystique has also attracted some skepticism about whether the game will deliver on its vision of a grand-scale action game that pulls you into its world.
Fortunately, we recently got several hours of hands-on time with Crimson Desert, and the ambitious open-world game is well-positioned to deliver on its lofty goal of being a captivating action game. However, that skepticism from many online is still lingering, and with many games not quite hitting the mark at launch, it can be hard to shake — especially after many years since its initial reveal.
During this Crimson Desert media event, we spoke with Will Powers, director of marketing and PR for Pearl Abyss, to clear the air and discuss the game's current state. In addition to offering some frank thoughts on the nearly seven years since Crimson Desert's reveal, Powers also shared his larger hopes for what the game can accomplish as a standalone action adventure away from the shadow of Black Desert Online.
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.
IGN: The game has been on many players' minds for some time. But now that the release date is coming up, and people are learning more about the game, how has it been for you all to show more of the game and see the response from players, getting a better idea of what Crimson Desert is all about?
Will Powers: It's tough to say for sure, because, like with anything, there's a balance of making sure that the awareness is out there for Crimson Desert without over hyping or setting impossible expectations to be able to hit. That's really where you need to achieve that balance, because you don't want to let people down at launch by making them anticipate something to such a high level – like it's the second coming. So you have to strike a balance between awareness and not over-promising. This game and its heritage, both from when it was announced and from a studio that has made an MMORPG with over 55 million global players.
So that's the benchmark that this company knows. Releasing your sophomore project after that, there's probably higher internal expectations than there are external ones. But going back to your question, what's really interesting is the heritage of this game as an MMO and as a studio that knows how to make open worlds designed to serve the community. Even though this game has pivoted to a single-player open-world, those single players are benefiting from systems from when it was a different type of game, which is why many people say they haven't seen a game like this before. This isn't what this game was originally intended to be. This is an amalgamation of what it is morphed into, benefiting from where it came from.
IGN: Even though people are getting a sense of what Crimson Desert is all about, it is still a strange position to be in when you have a game that's been on the minds of many players for several years now. Has long-term attention been a hurdle to overcome, or has it added some motivation?
Will Powers: In a sense, we're kind of victims of ourselves – we announced the game too early, and, honestly, that's just inarguable [to dispute]. Things happened that way for multiple reasons; the game changed, and we built an engine, and not just for this game, but an additional engine altogether. So it's not just strictly development time for a singular title. But if we had to do it again, I don't think anyone would say we should announce the game six-and-a-half years in advance. That's just not a thing that happens often. But as a result of this situation, what happened is it created this air of mystique around it where people didn't really know what the game was, and that's become fun from my perspective.
So now we just let people play the game for hours and do hours of interviews as well. In this situation, what if we revealed six hours of gameplay footage? So then it becomes less of a question of people not knowing what the game is and more of a question of, "Well, how can this be too good to be true?" Or, "how can this not be real?" We never want to be accused of hiding anything, because we have a lot of ground to make up. We initially revealed this as something else, so we needed to do more than a game traditionally would to course-correct for our own actions from five and six years ago.
IGN: And as you mentioned, the game underwent many changes over the years — it was originally a direct prequel to Black Desert Online. Do you feel that the shift away from the direct connections to BDO helped bring the game to where it needed to be?
Will Powers: Yeah, I can only assume, since I wasn't in the room making that decision with them. Still, I can say that those types of conversations happen when the game is becoming something different from what we originally intended. At those points, there's a crossroads of sorts: "Do you want to lean into that experience of being different," or "do you want to shoehorn it back into what the original intention for the project was?"
Obviously, we chose the former of those two and let it really become its own thing. That's led to a little bit of product confusion in the marketplace, because we've announced this as a different genre and different universe through official channels, and that's changed a lot. But it's also led to some similarities with Black Desert Online, and I think one way to look at it is that this is now part of the Desert IP. What does that mean? It'll have similarities in DNA across Black Desert and Crimson Desert in terms of style and a lot of the combat DNA, regardless of the differences in genres.
IGN: On that note, I've noticed that the game's messaging defines it as not an RPG but an open-world action-adventure game. I got a sense of that from my hands-on time; there weren't any stats to look at, and it's all about the direct action. Was that direction important to help define Crimson Desert from Black Desert Online?
Will Powers: Well, there are really two parts to that. For one, we already have an RPG, and it has all the elements people want. But then there's the connotations of genre that create some expectations, but also some confusion in the marketplace for what kind of RPG it could be. Because we were changing what this game has been over the years, we didn't want to create further confusion by assigning a genre that we don't even feel is fully representative of the game.
So, to be completely honest, the most representative genre for Crimson Desert is open-world action-adventure. That carries many of the elements of combat, exploration, and storytelling that we're achieving with this game.
IGN: Looking back over the years, it's clear the game feels very much inspired by other games of this style, such as The Legend of Zelda, The Witcher, Dragon's Dogma, and Assassin's Creed. That's also created some expectations. Do you feel it was important to show that this game aims to match similar experiences while also making a stronger distinction about what Crimson Desert is trying to achieve?
Will Powers: I think that it would be arrogant of a studio to say that other games do not inspire them. That would just be pure arrogance to say that you don't take inspiration from some of the best games in the last 10 years. However, I'm at a point where I'm done comparing this game to others. We needed to do that at the beginning because we hadn't offered enough hands-on time to people. Still, I think now we're at the point where comparing it to any singular title is a misrepresentation of [Crimson Desert] because the elements that exist within it honestly transcend some of the systems in any singular game.
That's where I think it comes into its own. And sure, those similarities are still there, but I do hope this can become one of those games people look to and say, "Oh, I can't find another game like that." It remains to be seen how people will feel about the game once it's out there, and whether it's defining its own new genre or what, but in the end, those inspirations have created something special and a type of experience you can't get elsewhere.
IGN: It was surprising to see just how much detail there was in the game, and how much time I spent just exploring the towns and settings. This feels like a game that you can just vibe out with once you have unlocked a good portion of the world.
Will Powers: For me, that's one of the unique traits of this game. Oftentimes, when there's a massive game like this, I feel like, "Oh, I can't jump into it unless I have four or five hours free." I haven't felt that when playing it personally, because there are things I can do in just an hour. Like I can find mining materials to try to upgrade my weapon, or I can just set a task for myself and head out in one direction of the world, and in that time, I feel like I'm still accomplishing something grander. I think what's interesting within the world is that you're not limited by how much time you have to dedicate to this experience.
IGN: Lastly, based on your experiences with the game, do you feel there's something about Crimson Desert that you really value and that you want more people to know about?
Will Powers: Yeah, one of the guiding ideologies of the developer is that they want to create a world that is about having fun, and that's just the core of it. If you're going to make a game like this with all these different systems, then yeah, you gotta make sure it's all fun and that it ties together in a cohesive way. For me, that's resulted in really fun and cool interactions. My favorite experiences with this game come from telling people about what I've experienced. We have a room at the Pearl Abyss office with like four PCs, and every time we get a new build, we just sit down and play-test it a little bit. Every time we do that, there's like this almost offline co-op experience that happens, where I'm like, "Did you guys see this thing over here?" or, "Did you guys know about this?"
And it reminds me of when I played Fallout 4, where I was in party chat, and even though it's a single-player game, there's still a community experience. I really think Crimson Desert is going to inspire something similar, where players explore this world and share their discoveries and experiences with their friends. That communal experience is something special, and yeah, I haven't had that in a long time.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
