Crimson Desert’s Patches Can’t Fix Its Biggest Issue

Love it or hate it, there is no denying that Crimson Desert has suffered one thing of a rocky launch. Its huge open world, stuffed with alternative and versatile creative methods, is spectacular, however its awkward controls, punishing problem spikes, and baffling strategy to stock administration burst the bubble of immense hype that had been constructed over years, resulting in “mixed” Steam reviews and equally mixed critical reception. But there’s additionally no denying developer Pearl Abyss’ dedication to doing issues proper. Its response to participant suggestions has been extraordinary, delivering a few of the most extensive initial patch work that we have seen this era inside days of launch. It’s unclear if the event group has needed to break their backs to do that, however their work has already paid dividends: consumer critiques on Steam have shifted into “very positive” territory, and the corporate’s inventory worth – which plummeted within the wake of uneven essential scores – you have begun to bounce back.

All this in beneath per week. It’s the form of factor that means that Pearl Abyss did not simply chuck Crimson Desert into the world unfinished with the intent of utilizing gamers as beta testers for some sort of stealth early entry launch – no person scrambles this tough except it is an emergency. Assuming that is true, it will additionally imply that Pearl Abyss did not see the obtrusive points in Crimson Desert’s design – be {that a} results of poor inside testing, naive designers, or just not seeing the wooden for the timber. Now it has an army of testers three million strongmany points will be recognized and stuck. But can the whole lot be mounted? Are these preliminary, profitable patches the groundwork for a comeback story akin to Cyberpunk 2077? I’m not so certain, as a result of Crimson Desert suffers from a lot deeper points that solely in depth genetic modification, not bandages, can repair.

Making a Difference

That’s to not say patches cannot do any heavy lifting. Crimson Desert’s latest patch notes are a protracted checklist of small adjustments that make a big distinction – the truth is, they’ve already confirmed genuinely transformative. The addition of extra quick journey factors has considerably altered the way you discover the world. Previously, the land of Pywel felt caught between two visions; areas needed to be traveled to manually in real-time, which advised an strategy just like Dragon’s Dogma or Grand Theft Auto – video games during which the journey is a key a part of the expertise, and any sort of “teleportation” is achieved via in-world strategies like hailing a taxi. But there was additionally a scattering of oddly positioned quick journey factors, which pointed to one thing extra like Elden Ring, during which warping between found areas is a part of the world’s basic material. The newly added quick journey factors – significantly those in your base camp and Hernand’s castle-crowned metropolis – deliver the play area extra in step with typical open world conference, permitting you to skip mundane journeys to and from repeatedly visited areas.

That new base camp quick journey level hyperlinks to the subsequent small-but-big change: a storage field. It’s considerably unbelievable {that a} sport so reliant on grinding crafting supplies did not have one within the first place, however there’s now a chest at your camp that you could dump all of your surplus ore, timber, and butchered animals into, quite than always carrying them in your particular person. Your private stock fills up extremely rapidly, even after you have considerably expanded it, so having the ability to warp again to camp, drop stuff off, after which get again to your journey with out a ton of strolling concerned is a big improve to your “quality of life.”

That storage box also helps with bosses – while the worst offenders have been nerfed, bosses still represent natural difficulty spikes and must be prepared for. Improved inventory management means it’s easier to keep up with the demands of the crafting system. It’s not a burden to grab that ore you just saw because you no longer have to spend five minutes working out what’s worth sacrificing from your unfit-for-purpose backpack. Combine that with the fact that you now don’t need to cook up a thousand bowls of soup to get through Kearush the Slayer and the need to put everything on hold to grind ahead of a boss is reduced.

The total result of all these small tweaks is that Crimson Desert now has more momentum. You get into the good stuff faster. And with a substantial change like that delivered in just a few days, it’s understandable if the idea of ​​Crimson Desert seeing something of a Cyberpunk-style reappraisal within a matter of weeks has crossed your mind. If you already like Crimson Desert’s unique, friction-heavy approach and have been pushing through its flaws, I think there’s a genuine possibility that it could be a contender for your game of the year by the summer if it isn’t already. But if you’re more like me, who is intrigued by Crimson Desert but has struggled to connect with it, then I think the outlook is gloomier. Because there are things patches can’t fix. Things like writing, story, structure, and quest design.

Story Slog

The reason why Cyberpunk 2077 (and other games that launched in a rough state and went on to see big improvements, like No Man’s Sky and Owlcat’s Pathfinder and Warhammer 40k RPGs) were able to turn things around was that their problems could be addressed by building upon already good design fundamentals. From day one, Cyberpunk 2077 had fantastic writing and brilliant quests – its initial issues were predominantly rooted in tech and performance, and the later 2.0 overhaul was focused on RPG progression and character skills rather than the game’s campaign bedrock. Crimson Desert, on the other hand, has pretty poor quest design and campaign structure, only worsened by paper-thin characters and writing that’s either dull or barely coherent.

In that sense, Crimson Desert is more akin to Starfield, which is incidentally getting its own major update in a matter of days. Bethesda boss Todd Howard has already warned not to expect a “2.0” improve that may convert skeptics into believers, and that is not less than partially as a result of truth it will require a substantial change to each the marketing campaign and sport construction to fulfill these expectations. Bethesda is as an alternative targeted on high quality of life enhancements and additional story content material, quite than overhauling the sequence of uninteresting missions that make up its unique marketing campaign, exhibiting simply how uncommon a turnaround of this type is in the case of single-player video games. Fixing that sort of challenge is not a case of patches or updates – it calls for a Final Fantasy 14-grade redesign, a factor that absolutely won’t ever occur.

But why is Crimson Desert’s strategy to story and questing such an issue? The sport’s most ardent followers’ typical rebuttal to this challenge is to not declare that these points are literally good, however that it does not matter that they are unhealthy. Games like Elden Ring and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild additionally lack compelling tales, they are saying, and but they weren’t criticized for it. Regardless of whether or not you agree with that (and for the report, I do not), it isn’t a lot in regards to the high quality of the story, however the best way it is built-in into the sport.

In Elden Ring and the fashionable Zelda video games, story is the framing machine that contextualizes your journey via their worlds. Become Elden Lord and uncover the secrets and techniques of the Shattering. Rescue Zelda and defeat Ganon. Beyond that, they’ve restricted impression on the best way you play – in Elden Ring, you are solely barely following a plot line. But in Crimson Desert, story quests are the basic spine of what you do. It is your guiding path via the sport, your essential goal to finish. Cutscenes, conversations, and plot-driven quests are all frequent, necessary elements of the expertise, akin to a sport like Red Dead Redemption.

These quests drive ahead your progress and dictate what you are able to do once you stray from the crushed path. If you discover the world of your personal volition, quite a lot of the fantastic areas you uncover are nothing more than set dressing until you actually reach the quests that make use of them. And whereas there’s numerous very cool issues you are able to do unbiased of the principle quest, it by no means actually quantities to a real sandbox expertise like Valheim, the place your entire level is to stay a life inside this digital world. Everything you do finally folds again into the principle quest – even in the event you benefit from the grind of upgrading your weapons and kit, it is primarily all in assist of defeating the marketing campaign’s hardest challenges.

All this implies the marketing campaign is much from optionally available, and thus the standard of its parts shouldn’t be a lot a thorn in Crimson Desert’s aspect, however a broadsword lodged in its backbone. You should endure actually horrible writing, contextless goals, repetitive quests, and rotate plot factors hour after hour after hour. As of writing, you’ll be able to nonetheless solely fast-forward via cutscenes quite than skip them fully, however even when that is patched, it does not push the worst a part of the expertise to the periphery. You nonetheless have to have interaction with all of it to progress your journey via the world – exploration alone shouldn’t be sufficient.

No quantity of conventional patching goes to make Kliff’s journey attention-grabbing. And no conventional replace can wrench the marketing campaign out of Crimson Desert. Unlike Cyberpunk 2077, these points aren’t rooted in efficiency or glitches, however the core, artistic selections set in stone years prior. As such, addressing them would require ripping out and changing giant chunks of the sport’s skeleton, quite than patching up with a sequence of minor surgical procedures. And so whatever the many enhancements Pearl Abyss is certain to make via in depth fixes, it might probably’t restore the basic construction that has seen many gamers {and professional} critics pen conflicted and even destructive critiques. Because to unlock Crimson Desert’s extra achieved aspects, you merely should dedicate hours to mediocrity.