Crimson Desert is reaching RPG hype levels up there with Skyrim

Pearl Abyss' ambitious RPG and its massive open world is drawing comparisons to franchises like The Witcher and God of War

It's hard to describe Crimson Desert, the upcoming open-world RPG from Pearl Abyss, without breaking into a long list of other popular games. A newly released 15-minute overview trailer that's making the rounds will likely remind you of titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, God of War, The Witcher, Shadow of Mordor, Uncharted, Skyrim — you name it. It's hard to say what makes Crimson Desert stand apart amid the Mount Rushmore of RPGs, but that isn't stopping people from declaring the game and its massive open world to be one of the most impressive things they've seen in recent memory.

Between the trailer's upload on YouTube and clips shared on sites like X and TikTok, recent footage of Crimson Desert has amassed millions upon millions of views in just 24 hours. Most of the reactions fall into two buckets. The first one is hype, as people cling to the hint of their favorite games within Crimson Desert's lofty features.

"This is like open world [medieval], modern, future everything combined into one," one highly-voted YouTube comment says.

"Feels like you take the best of all our favorite franchises and put in a single game," another reads.

"I hope Crimson Desert will be as spectacular as it looks and sit alongside its illustrious peers," one popular comment states.

In the trailer, Pearl Abyss showcases Crimson Desert's fluid combat, its expansive exploration, a faction system, flying mechanics, crafting, hidden treasure waiting inside puzzling ruins, climbing gameplay, controllable mechs, and the vague specter of political intrigue. Like most fantasy RPGs, Crimson Desert assaults you with a repertoire of proper nouns that refer to your allies, enemies, magic, and items. At one point, the trailer has its own version of Bethesda CEO Todd Howard's infamous Skyrim description that's often misquoted as "See that mountain? You can climb it."

"You can pretty much go anywhere that captures your interest," says the omniscient Crimson Desert trailer narrator.

The second most common reaction to the Crimson Desert footage is a healthy amount of skepticism. Surely something with this much ambition can't possibly deliver on all of its promises?

"There's gotta be a catch man," one bewildered user on X says. "This is absurd."

"Just watched the full 15 minute breakdown and I’m speechless… looks too good to be true," another X user writes.

Though the circumstances are different, the chatter around Crimson Desert is starting to resemble the unbelievable hype that trailed Bethesda's long-in-development RPG, Starfield. As fans might recall, the intergalactic RPG was in development for nearly a decade. The pitch was Skyrim in space, which sounds excellent until you consider that Skyrim is one of the most successful and venerated games of all time. Combine that pedigree with Starfield's space-fearing premise, which proposed over 1,000 explorable planets, and what you get is a recipe for disaster. People wanted Starfield to be the ultimate RPG; an endless experience that contained the best of every game you've ever loved. Hype like that makes it impossible for the end product to meet anyone's expectations. Starfield came out and turned out to be a dud even after a number of updates from Bethesda. And when people see augurs of the most acclaimed games behind every detail in Crimson Desert, it's starting to sound like Pearl Abyss' RPG might suffer the same fate.

Perhaps it helps to ground expectations. Polygon had a chance to try a demo of Crimson Desert in August 2024 at Gamescom, where we fought against a number of impressive bosses. Even then, the comparisons abounded. Combat seemed like a spectacular mix of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's fast action and Shadow of the Colossus' creature-scaling, according to the preview. But while the fearsome encounters seemed thrilling, the particle-filled gameplay and its lack of lock-on options veered into chaos.

Granted, it's been a whole year since then — enough time for Pearl Abyss to try and iron out the kinks — the preview ends with cautious optimism. Since Crimson Desert releases on March 19 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC, and Mac, it won't be long before the world can make a verdict. Until then, hope and suspicion will prevail.

"They have to be hiding something, I just don’t believe that it’ll be nearly as good as how it looks," one X user writes. "If I’m wrong I’ll post feet pics as punishment."