Just over 20% of players are halfway through Crimson Desert’s story, and I feel like that says a lot about how people are playing the game

Someone, please tell me what’s going on in Crimson Desert? After 170 hours in Pywel, I feel like I’m still none-the-wiser as to what the Abyss actually is and why Kliff was brought back to life to spend his time walking into random taverns to arm wrestle with strangers. The moment I knew Kliff was built different was when he barely reacted to being transported to a secret realm in the sky and then proceeded to base jump 10,000 feet because a stranger told him he had wings.

Kliff is the goldfish of RPG protagonists—the abyss is unbalanced and he’s got to save Pywel from a sinister scheme that threatens the very fabric of- IS THAT A PET BIRD?? Maybe that’s what makes him the perfect protagonist for Crimson Desert players. The stats do seem to indicate that people prefer the side distractions to the game’s actual story.

There’s all sorts to do in Pywel (Image credit: Pearl Abyss)

I put a monumental 100 hours into Crimson Desert before it was even released, finishing Chapter 7 among a whole heap of other sidequests and activities. This is the halfway point at which you leave Pailune and Hernand for the game’s other regions and the eponymous Crimson Desert itself.

I was convinced, gamers being gamers, that a huge chunk of players would catch up to me in no time at all. Well, here we are five weeks after launch and just over a 5th of players have completed Chapter 7, 21.2% of you as of writing this (according to Steam achievements). Now, I guide games for a living, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a gaping disparity between the number of people playing, and those actually engaging with the main story.

And it’s understandable. Crimson Desert’s narrative is definitely below average relative to the game’s popularity. Kliff has the personality of a root vegetable, the boss design is often a total chore and, more often than not, quests focus more on tutorialising new mechanics rather than developing the story and characters—in this way, it’s very easy to tell that Pearl Abyss is an MMO developer.

But Crimson Desert’s world is undoubtedly compelling—an almost immersive sim-style sandbox of stuff to do, to find, to kill. Whether it’s hunting legendary animals, finding OP weapons and weird gadgets, or completing endless mundane tasks for strangers whose “problems” range from needing to purchase a pot, to not knowing how their spinning wheel works (turns out you spin it). Getting lost in the game is the best bit.

Bird taming is the latest shiny new feature added to the game (Image credit: Pearl Abyss)

I can absolutely understand players avoiding the main story for the side bits—after all, this is a game I see myself chewing on for a long time, especially in what is a fairly quiet year for game releases (until a GTA-shaped nuke drops). The best part about this slow approach is that Pearl Abyss is effectively building Crimson Desert while it’s flying, adding big quality-of-life improvements and revamping entire features at a ridiculous pace.

It means that, though this isn’t an MMO, there’s a constant stream of new stuff being chucked into the world that you can try out. Is it ideal for a game to launch in a state where it needs so many tweaks? Not really, but it’s already vastly improved over what I played pre-launch. Either way, it’s easy to see why players prefer losing themselves in the new shiny distractions versus slogging their way through a lackluster narrative.

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