It’s starting to sound like Crimson Desert will offer up a stern challenge when it launches on PS5 next month.
There are still plenty of questions surrounding the hugely ambitious open world title, but developer Pearl Abyss is at least starting to answer some of the bigger ones.
Case in point, marketing and PR director Will Powers took to the Dropped Frames podcast over the weekend (as per GamesRadar) in a bid to clear up the title’s finer points.
When asked about difficulty specifically, Powers reiterated that Crimson Desert is not a Soulslike — something that the developer has stated at least several times at this point.
However, he quickly adds: “Does that mean the game’s easy? Hell no.”
The way Powers describes it, Crimson Desert is going for a kind of open world design that’s similar to Elden Ring — but again, without the typical Soulslike level of difficulty.
That is, players will be encouraged to back away from any foes that are simply too powerful, and explore other locations instead, until they’re strong enough to survive the clash.
“You can just leave, you can do something else, you can upgrade your weapon, you can do side questing, you can find different things in order to make that fight easier for you,” he explains.
“I think that [the design] allows that layer of accessibility so you’re never hard stuck, which I think is really, really important in the single player game,” Powers adds.
Of course, upon hearing this, our immediate question was whether Crimson Desert will offer difficulty settings — but that apparently won’t be the case at launch.
In a fresh Game Reactor interview, a Pearl Abyss representative gives a straight answer: “At the moment, Crimson Desert does not offer distinct difficulty modes.”
We’re left wondering just how difficult Crimson Desert can be. Everything we’ve seen of it suggests that there’s an impressive, but potentially intimidating degree of gameplay depth on offer, and so we’re hoping that it does a good job of easing players in.
Are you looking forward to Crimson Desert? Are you ready for it to put up a fight? Throw some punches in the comments section below.
