The upcoming Crimson Desert’s world may just be the biggest to have ever come out of gaming, on this side of GTA 6, of course. But it’s significantly larger than the world we saw in Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 and about twice as big as Bethesda’s Skyrim, which is a mighty impressive feat on many accounts. In a recent interview, Will Powers from developer Pearl Abyss opened up on Crimson Desert’s enormous open world:
“I don’t think numbers really do it justice because, how big is that in terms of scope and scale?” he stated. “But what we can say is that the world’s at least twice as big as the open world, the playable area, of Skyrim. It’s larger than the map of Red Dead Redemption 2.”
Now of course, with all the huge technologies that are available at the fingertips of most developers out there, building a massive and dense open world is much easier than making it feel alive by means of filling the world with quests and other forms of activities that form a connection with the players. But it seems the devs of Crimson Desert are well aware of it and are committed to making the world be much more than just a pretty landscape for the player:
“The continent of Pywel is absolutely massive, but size doesn’t really matter if there’s nothing to do,” he said. “Open-world games are about doing things, having activities, having distractions. So we wanted to create a world that’s not only massive, but is also incredibly interactive.”
In Crimson Desert, you can fly around the map on a dragon which means you will be able to quickly get around to most places in the world, despite it’s massive scale.
Powers also shared on the role-playing aspect of the upcoming title:
“You choose the type of character you want to play as in terms of your progression within the systems in the game,” he said. “And then through head canon you’re having this very different experience than other players because of the scope and scale of the game. You’ll be distracted by something, you’ll go on this quest line, you’ll have an experience that’ll be radically different than someone else, even though they’re playing the same game and the same canonical storyline that you both are going through.”
Crimson Desert is slated to be released on 19 March 2026 for Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Windows and Mac OS.
