Crimson Desert, the next game from Pearl Abyss has recently been showing off a lot of gameplay at Gamescom including different boss fights, We have also learned a lot of details about the game, especially about its combat and its surrounding mechanics .
Crimson Desert is an upcoming single player, open world action adventure game developed by Pearl Abyss, the makers of Black Desert Online. A game known for its beautiful graphics, customization and great combat system.
In Crimson Dessert you control Kliff set in a medieval fantasy world and follow along in his journey.
During Gamescom, we got different boss fight gameplay videos showcasing the various environments, enemy designs and combat abilities we can expect.
Crimson Desert’s combat is much more action focused compared to a typical RPG and involves dodging, parrying and countering to take down enemies effectively.
Of course there will be a mix of melee and ranged weapon options within Crimson Desert. From combat gameplay we have seen, along with usage of swords and ranged options, Kliff also works in moves like clotheslines, dropkicks and slams similar to what you would see in wrestling. This is a nice unique addition that you don’t normally see, making Kliff seem more desperate and using all tools at his disposal.
Examining the boss gameplay in detail and some of the combat mechanics, Kliff slows down time when firing from his bow and is able to heal quickly during fights thanks to a quick access menu that came up immediately along with a radial menu for quickly switching between weapons.
A big thing to point out is that moves and combos in Crimson Desert are done based on button input. Think similar to Devil May Cry where a certain sequence of buttons will do certain moves like sending foes flying into the air.
From Gamescom previews, there seemed to be a lot of possible combinations and inputs for combat so hopefully this doesn’t get too confusing on which inputs are needed depending on the situation.
Another interesting point is that combat has no lock on camera, this is an interesting choice since parrying and counters are part of gameplay so maintaining the camera may be abit more of a task. Some feedback during the Gamescom event was that sometimes the camera was abit hard to control during fights and that this may be a concern when the game releases.
These specific things however may change as we get closer to release based off feedback.
From the Gamescom boss gameplay, we were shown 4 different boss battles,
- Whitehorn, a large beast enemy in a snow environment
- Staglord, a humanoid boss
- Reed Devil, a boss that seemed to have puzzle elements as you take down decoys
- Queen Stoneback Crab , a giant climbable boss
These bosses showcased different locations with each looking fantastic. These bosses had great set pieces with cutscenes seamlessly woven throughout. One example is discovering the queen stone crab, after walking on this beast unintentionally thinking it was just a patch of land.
Environments also seemed to react throughout battles with various barrels, crates breaking on impact. During the Reed Devil fight, there were long reeds of grass being cut depending on where you attack. There was even the option to pickup random weapons off the ground during certain fights.
Some bosses also had multiple health bars with different phases. Previewers have said that some bosses definitely had abit of difficulty to them and the gameplay you are seeing is from a developer who definitely knows what they are doing so fighting these guys ourselves may vary greatly (hopefully not too much!).
During the Stoneback crab fight, the player also gets shot into the air and glides down to strike, indicating that most likely players will be able to use this gliding outside of the boss fight, unlockable at some point during the story. This example hints that players may run into other unique mechanics during certain boss fights.
The developers of Crimson Desert have said that the amount of Bosses in the full release will be anywhere from 20 – 40 so that’s a pretty wide range but I’m very confident from what we have seen so far.
The devs have also given details on other points of the game when it comes to character progression and mechanics.
- They are labelling this as an open world action adventure and not an RPG
- Big example of this not going the usual RPG route as there is no character creation/customization. Each player is going to be controlling Kliff, for a more focused experience
- Character progression seemed to be focused on finding equipment and learning moves after boss fights or through characters in the world.
- Likely no typical level up system but this isn’t fully confirmed.
Quest details were not touched too much on during this time as this was more of a focus on combat. Quest details and how they would work are still under wraps, however since this is less of an rpg experience, quests may be more linear and provide little in the way of choice and variation.
Crimson Desert’s genre and direction has changed around quite a lot from its first reveal, from being an mmorpg to open world rpg to now an open world action game. It definitely has had abit of a shift but with all the various gameplay being shown and it being open to previews, I would say Crimson Desert is not too far away from getting more concrete info like a release date and info on other systems outside of combat.
Crimson Desert is looking great, I will be keeping a close eye on this as we get more details leading up to it’s release!
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