‘Crimson Desert’ Is Like Everything Else and Nothing Else | Button Mash

In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice.

“Just be yourself and the guests will come.”

Don't be the celebrity that this is there like 16 they're doing. I love chew-crime and cooking podcast. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So, join me for Good Hanging.

It's rough out there. We're just trying to lighten it up a little. [Music] Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse. Your Nexus feed for all things fandom.

I am Ben Lindberg Senior Editor for the Ringer and Crimson King of Button Mash.

“There are three playable characters in Crimson Desert.”

And there are three playable podcasters on this episode of But Mash. Let me introduce the other two, you know their names. Joining me bright and early on the west coast because we've got an embargo to beat. Ringer, Deputy Art Leads, Matt, Graymay and James. Good morning, Matt. Good morning, Ben.

Happy to be here. Happy to talk Crimson Desert. I know you are. I know you're a major morning person, so this just suits you perfectly. That's right, it called to Graymay and James.

I've never seen you without your cap on, so I can't actually tell.

You got any gray in that mean beard is getting a little gray. Yeah, okay, it's interesting, you know, that's most of what you can see of Cliff

“depending on what you're wearing. It's true. Touch a gray, kind of suits you anyway.”

Also joining us, Blonde is the day he was born. Ringer, Senior Audio Producer and Midnight Boy, Steve, Abyss artifact, Almond. This is actually the Yesified DLSS 5 which did it to me, so not a gray hair to be seen. It could tell. Well, fellas, the gaming gods have been good. We have had our hands full, Resident Evil, Requiem, Slay the Spire.

Two Pokemon Pocopia all released in the span of one week, not to mention Marathon. If you're an RPG player, you've already gotten Esoteric Edb and Monster Hunter Stories 3 this month. So the well has not been dry. We have not been in a crimson content desert, but every game is going to have to make way for the new behemoth on the block. The open world action adventure RPG in quotes called crimson desert after almost a

decade in development after all the hype it's here or about to be it's out on Thursday for PlayStation, Xbox, Windows, and Mac. We've been waiting a while. Can you believe that the day has come? The crimson day has done. A red letter day you might say. You might. Yeah, this is the this is one of the last advantages of a is this game real discourse for me that I've ever had. Not since we've called have I been like this skeptical about a game. Yes, yes, and we can't

call this the biggest game of the year in terms of anticipation, not with GTA 6 to launch the schedule. Plus the other huge hits from the past few weeks I just mentioned, but it might be accurate to call it the biggest in terms of content. And maybe in terms of anticipation too, if we exclude sequels and games based on high profile IP, known quantities essentially is that fair because leading up to release the buzz has been loud as has the skepticism. And we're about

to tell you whether one or the other was warranted or possibly both, but I don't know that there's another game that has prompted this much intrigue just looking ahead to what's coming the rest of the year. And it's funny because I feel like a lot of people this hasn't been on their radar at all. Meanwhile, there's been a large community of people who have been losing their mind and anticipation. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting hype cycle for this game. Yeah, it's not quite

grand theft auto six, but not quite. No, but although it's been in development for almost this long, I've been really looking forward to this podcast, not that I don't look forward to every episode of butt match, but this one is special because we're kind of in the dark here because on butt match, even when we have advanced access to a game, we usually don't really rush to publish a podcast

the second the embargo lifts if that's a good while before the release date. You like to take

our time as much time as we can with a game so that we can form our informed opinions and then tell you what we think when you can play it too, and I'd actually love to hear from our listeners whether they like that or not, do you want the earliest possible snap judgments, do you want spoilery deep dives later on or something in between, which is more the way we do it, email us at [email protected]. But in this case, it barely makes a difference because the Crimson Desert

this podcast will be posted. So combine the mostly mind-blowing footage that has surfaced of this game,

“the teases about the scope of it, a map that's more than twice the size of Skyrim's, with,”

as you alluded to Steve, all the reasons to reserve judgment. The late embargo, which is not always

the best sign. What are they hiding? The fact that this game is developed and published by Pearl Abyss, a Korean company known for the massively multiplayer online RPG Black Desert online, which is popular. It has a solid player base, but I would say is slightly lower profile in the West at least, and also that's their DNA that makes this their first single player offline game. Add the fact that it uses a proprietary engine called Blackspace, a choice that sometimes slows

down development and leads to lots of bugs and instability. The fact that Pearl Abyss has been

quite cagey about showing the game running on non-PS5 Pro consoles and distributed only PC codes

to reviewers. That's the way we played it. Put all of that together and you have sort of a perfect storm of high hopes and serious damage. Just like, would it be only a pretty face? Would it also have a pleasing personality? How would it play? How would it run? Like you said, Steve, rarely have I begun a game with as wide a range of plausible potential outcomes ranging from masterpiece, cinema, to disaster. And it was just an absolute enigma, the likes of which we don't often get these days.

“And now we know it's real, but is it spectacular? Well, that's what we are here to discuss.”

And look, think of this as our reviews in progress, right? Because we might be in progress with

this game for months. The reviewer briefing that I attended before they sent the codes out, they were just like, "Look, do your best. Play as much as you can." You were probably not going to finish this thing. Wow, before the release, which is not the typical messaging, but I appreciate the honesty. And so, as usual, we're going to steer clear of story spoilers. We'll talk about the mechanics and things that have appeared in previews, but specific plot twists, not all of

which we have seen in any way. We will not divulge here. And we're going to, at the end of this episode, guess the Metacritic rating. We're going to take advantage of the timing of this podcast recording, because we don't know, we don't know what anyone else thinks. We don't even really know what each other thinks. So we're about to find out. So we're going to guess what the consensus response to this game will be, and we're also going to give our own ratings. So maybe before we dive a little

deeper, we can just give our high level reviews slash impressions so far. And I should say that we have what combines much more than 100 hours in this game, much of which most of that belongs to Matt. Yeah. That may be close to that on his own, but I'm at 96 hours. Okay, this is Lord. I don't know how you've had the time as we've established. You have a secret time Turner or something, but you've played a time this game, and yet you even probably have sort of scratched the

surface, and I am less than halfway through. Yes. And I played a bunch of it too, put it all together. It's a ton of time, and yet there's a lot that we haven't seen here. So Matt, since you have

“seen the most, tell us what you make of Crimson Desert. I think this is going to be a very”

interesting review period. Yeah. I'm going to just briefly think, explain what I expected to see review wise and then tell you what I did to your score yet. I won't. I won't. Okay, not going to give the score. The number. Yeah. But I wouldn't be surprised to see scores ranging from six point five out of ten to five stars out of five stars. Yes. I think that there are a number of things in Crimson Desert that are worthy of criticism. I think there are frustrations involved in the game.

And I also think that it is a generational exploration game that has got me so entangled in it. I haven't quite been this obsessed and wrapped up by a game world since probably legend is Elder Windwaker came out. And that includes Elden Ring, obviously. That was a while ago.

for everyone, but I do feel like for me. This game even with its flaws is going to be

something that I am going to remember for the rest of my life. That's wild. I'm truly impressive. I have got the sense from our pre-release slacking that if Matt is closer to the 10 out of 10 end of the scale, then Steve might be closer to the aforementioned 6.5 heater that he is right. So Steve lay into it if you so desire. All right. So it's definitely not fuck this game because it's not. It isn't. But it's kind of fuck this game a little bit. Because I am both wildly impressed

what this game is hoping to achieve. And simultaneously, absolutely baffled and enraged

“almost every decision that it chooses to make for me the player. And I think in like, it most”

of its marketing and things that it wants to be on its face is entirely admirable and in line with every game that Matt just mentioned. It has the breath and depth of attempted depths and breaths of an Elden Ring or a breath of the wild to entirely explore and immerse yourself in ways that are kind of unimaginable and has the sort of like attention to detail and the things that the player character can do that attempts to be something like a red dead to that even the benalmanusia

of interacting with the world is represented. Like I have quests where I've just taken a broom and

cleaned the chimney and I have never done that again willingly. And shows you stuff here before the

“butt that's coming sounds like a great game. It sounds like a great game, but I think that it every”

turn for the first I'm going to say 10 hours that I played this, it is actively arguing against me in anything resembling intuition or intuitive gameplay that makes this an enjoyable experience. Because I don't think anything in this game in the first 10 hours is like ultimately rewarding you or enticing you to play it again. And it is an active determination and will to keep going until you are where Matt is right now. And I'm not saying that you're that you're being

dishonest Matt, but this is this has got for me this will be one of those games where if I somehow

manage to put in 200 hours into it, I'm going to just have to say that it's great for the sake of

“my life that I can't say that I've wasted that amount of time on a bad game. It'd be pretty”

impressive if Matt had sunk 96 hours into this thing just just to do it. And it's just like whatever. He can't. I'm committed to this podcast. You are. The ratio of playing to recording time when it comes to butt mesh and when it comes to crimson deserts specifically, slightly skewed. Although I could talk about crimson desert for nearly as long as it takes to play crimson desert. Don't worry, we won't. Arjuna would not be happy. Art is subjective.

All experiences are valid. However, Steve is wrong. Right. Of course. This is a good game. This is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious games I've ever played, which it sounds like you would not disagree with. I would not disagree. It is one of the most ambitious games that I have seen probably since like Death Stranding. Yeah. I kind of can't believe it's real though when you consider that it started out as in MMO as a prequel to pro this is existing MMO almost a decade ago. It starts to make more sense.

It might be the best looking game I have ever played purely in terms of photorealism and lushness. This is if you have a very good PC and are not playing it on any console, by the way. Even if you don't have a very good PC because I don't. And we cannot speak to the console experience. And the fine folks at digital foundry are doing their deep dives on all the versions. And based on what we've seen so far, it doesn't seem as if it's going to be a sort of cyberpunk

level lunch disaster. But your mileage may vary. Right. And it's not going to look the same on a base PS5 or Xbox as it does on a souped up high-end PC. But I can testify as someone who was quite concerned that I would not be able to run this game at all. Because I played this

it's actually sort of sneaky powerful. And it played this game actually perfectly fine. I had to turn some settings down. I'll get into that. But it did not compromise my experience. But it absolutely has the potential to take over your life. And I want to spend 200 hours in this world. Will I end up doing that doubtful? Because I have a family. I don't know how they would feel about that. But my heart desires to spend that much time.

And with my great main family in the world of Crimson Desert. And if I had to explain the concept

of an open-world video game to someone who had never played one, I might show them this just

because it's every game in one game for both better and worse. You can get lost in this game in good ways. And also bad ways, it can be overwhelming. There's always going to be a trade-off. If you're stuffing this much into a single game and this many mechanics and this many areas. Of course, it's going to get complicated. It's not going to be for everyone. There's going to be some Jenkins or some cumbersome aspect to it. But if you can get lost in this game in good ways

in bad ways for me, it's mostly good ways. So we're going to wrap our heads around this thing

“as best we can. And the pleasant surprise, I think, for me, is that I did not actually”

bounce off this thing. This was not a case of having to force myself to play for podcast purposes. I was worried that that would be the case because all the pre-release messaging, the reviewer briefing that I mentioned was, look, there's no tutorial and we're just going to plunge you down in this giant world and you've got to figure out where to go and what to do. That is not my experience with Crimson Desert. You can play it that way, but it does hold your hand. It does introduce you

to its mechanics and its areas. Yes, because I was worried, that completely open-ended, where do I

go? What do I do next? That doesn't always work for me as much as I admire it and appreciate it.

And I just have to commit to it and invest in it. But that's not what this is. When I said quote unquote RPG, obviously there's a lot about it. That's RPG-ish. But it's much more of an action adventure game. It does remind me much more of Red Dead Redemption 2, of Breath of the Wild Tears, the Kingdom, of Assassin's Creed, Ghost of Yote, type games. Not saying it says good as all of those games just that it's more in the mold of those games than it is, say Dragon's Dogma,

too, or Skyrim, or Kingdom Come Deliverance, too, which are all great games, but also do not hold your hand. And this is actually a nice middle ground for me. So Matt, how did you feel about how it on boards you basically? I think it's a rough start in this game. So I agree with Steve

“on that front. I think you have to come into this game prepared to be attentive to all of the things”

that the game is trying to teach you at the start. You need to, you need to be prepared to learn. And if something pops up on screen, you need to make sure you're reading it and taking that in. Because there is a tremendous amount to learn here. And it's at a great amount of it is not intuitive at all. One of the bigger criticisms that people will have with this game is that a lot of the way that things are designed is a bit obtuse. They do a lot of stuff in ways that feel like they've

never played games before. And they do a lot of other stuff in ways that feel like have they ever

stopped playing games for a second? There's like dichotomy, like in the control scheme, like there's, when you're jumping between platforms and this game, you would think in a normal game, like, okay, you'll move forward and hit the jump button, which you can do. Yeah. But there's also a way of precision jumping this game where you hold the left bumper in. You'll get an icon,

“you need to increase your jump. You aim the icon and then it is. And that is cumbersome,”

a platformer. It is not. No. Right. And it is something that people will initially say this feels awful. And it doesn't feel super great. But there are all of these little design decisions that are just like, how did you come up with this? Like, the inventory wheel sort of

The menu system to get into your menus, you have to hold start and then navigate up or down to whichever page you want. There's all these things that are like, very hard to grasp, while you are trying to do various different things all at once. So the onboarding procedure for this game is pretty bad. But hours, hours later into the game, when all of these things are

second nature and they're not clouding your view of what you're experiencing. It's a different story.

Yeah. I think that's all true when it comes to the UI and the menus and the navigation, everything. But where I think it's less true is in terms of missions and the main quest line and where do I go and what do I do? Which is often the thing that puts me off the most. That can be very intoxicating for people. It's just, hey, you set me down in this giant world. I now have complete freedom. For me, it's almost paralyzing because I just don't know where to go or what to do

and how much time am I going to invest in this thing and what can I accomplish in a short play session? In this game, though, and I know that Matt, you think that this is probably not the ideal way to play.

“But if you want to play this way, if you just want to follow along the linear main quest line,”

you can do that quite easily. There is never a time when there is not an objective. There is

not a mission. There is not an icon on a screen that is saying, here's where you go. Here's what to do next. And at least initially, until I got more comfortable exploring, I was very grateful for that because I could just play and progress and feel like I was on the right track. And that's my biggest concern with a game like this that I just won't know where to go or what to do. And I never had that sense in this game. My biggest problem is with the onboarding,

and it kind of makes me feel a tad more antagonistic when I play it because I think the biggest thing about what all of these great games that we compare this game to, like an Elden Ring or a

“Zelda, even a Dragon Dogmatu, which I think is actually a great cop for this in certain ways,”

is that the onboarding process actually teaches you and makes you at least feel like you are playing the game properly. And it's playing you right now. I'm not just talking about tutorials, but I'm talking about those first few hours that immediately, if not reward you, give you some level of dopamine or reassurance that this is done properly. And to me, like Crimson Desert is that meme of the person screaming in the back of the car at their kid, like just be normal and Crimson

Desert is just like like that for the past 10 hours of this game. And if you're not down for that, that is going to be like might might be like some of the worst gaming you've ever had because of the fact that it's going to offer you everything at the start. And nothing works. I think the precision jumping and the picking up items. Oh my god. Very, very finicky at first. There wasn't even that. It's about having to lock on to a character simply to talk to them and not have to like

listen to them and like I walk through a shot. You might just want to greet them Steve again. You might want to just wave at them. I wave it every single beggar and gave them like five bucks because I didn't realize how much money I even had. It's a big spender. I was just splashing cash over the place. You want some oms? You can some of the beggars now. Yeah. That was the

“question for that. There is a question for that. It seems. But no, I think that like the biggest”

pushback that I've had with this game is the fact that it never actually felt like it rose

rewarding me as I was playing it until I already have this like sort of idea of how I think the game is played and then I just go along with that. And this isn't me saying like oh man if this game was just normal it would be a masterpiece because I don't like to think that like there can be only one way to make an adventure game or only one way to make certain games that we think games should be played in order for them to be good. I don't want to be that person. But in every formal convention

of an adventure game action RPG action game this goes against that. And only until you learn the game on its terms will you be rewarded for it. And for some gamers like myself that is too much to ask for. stubborn Steve Alman there are definitely times where like you know it's not just

objectively not great in this like instance. Like I had my frustrations too early on. In fact

“I have a little I have a quick little story of my frustrations where which was right at the”

jump of the game. There is this mission that for my understanding has been fixed. Oh love us. There's a very early mission where the mission is you are to create it says fish porridge right that is the mission. And you go to the vendor and they give you all the ingredients. They're like I just don't know how to cook it. Can you cook it? And you're like okay so the prompt on the screen on the left the mission title will tell you that the mission is to cook fish porridge right.

So I go to the cooking pot and I have my ingredients and I see oh there's actually a few options that I can create a party fish porridge or a fish porridge or a modest fish porridge. Just your regular bog standard fish porridge. I was like oh you know and I have like a lot

“the shit will give me more ingredients I need it's all I'm just going to create a hardy one. I'm going”

to like over to get here. Look at fancy yeah it turns out that in the details of the quest at the time. It said make three modest fish porridge. I had made one hardy fish porridge and as a result did not have the materials needed at that point afterwards to make three modest fish porridge. Sounds like a reading comprehension as you know. Oh no that's that's that's yeah and it into a degree it is it is absolutely my fault. But simple mistake obviously and I was like okay

well I'll just get more of the materials needed to make the modest fish porridge usually rectified. Sure I'll I love fishing I'll go get more fish right so take my fishing rod and I go down to the water and for 40 minutes I am unable to catch fish and sometimes they're biting sometimes I end up jumping into the water when I see a school of fish and grabbing fish with my hands. Yeah and I later learned that I didn't know how to fish properly and here's why

when you start fishing there are controls listed on the bottom right there's the control that says move with the right stick or you were to move the line and then there is real in which you would wind the right stick say move is left stick. Real in is circle circling around the right stick. So I was like okay that's simple enough fine. So when a fish bites on my line I start tugging and railing instantly flies off every single time every single time for 40 minutes. I later learned

that once the fish starts biting while I am looking at that fish because the fish is what I'm looking at in the bottom right hand corner it all of a sudden tells you you can hook the fish

by hitting right trigger and I've never saw that because I was never looking in the bottom right

hand corner while the fish was on the line. It's little things like this so it took me an hour of time to end up making the modest fish porch and this is the language on this quest I understand has since been fixed but like there are tons of little design things in this game like that where you're just like why did you design it? Why wouldn't you tell me like it hooks the fish in the controls listed at the start of fish? Why wouldn't why did you not say modest fish porch in the quest I like list

on this? Let me tell you something. If I was confronted with four different types of fish porches I'm uninstalling the game. I'm telling you that right now if I have to like if I have to discern that like you lost me there already and that's the type of thing I'm like I get it they want to do so so so so much but like there's nothing in this game that's offering me any sort of onboarding to reward me for trying those things it is only figure it out and if you don't figure it

out too bad you're going to keep figuring it out like I'm not going to be surprised if a third of

your play time ends up being fishing because of the ways that those quests are struck now I'm really good at it now. I'm certainly hope you want get good. It sounds like a skill issue to me no I think it's supposed to mirror the frustrations of real-life fishing that's true to my experience as an angler I would say but no I've had that same experience where sometimes things are complicated just because

“they inevitably have to be you're cramming this many mechanics into a game it's a lot to remember”

there's going to be a learning curve and once you get a hang of it then it's rewarding you are

five hours or so might be the tiniest fraction of the two to three hundred hours that this game

“offers you I also think that as you said Steve there's a lot about this game that is not normal”

and that is both a blessing and a curse because many of the best things about this game are that it is not normal. It's extremely abnormal game in a lot of good ways too and some of it is just that things are sprung upon you you know 20 hours into the game I discovered that there's a banking system because I just I happened to wander into a bank and there was a giant teller and suddenly I was learning all about interest and investing and I'm kicking myself because I could have invested 20

hours ago I could have made my money work for me that kind of interest could have made my money work

for me and that and it was all man yeah got to start saving early but I'm constantly still coming across things like that where it's like what did not know this was in the game and and sometimes the game has its ways of telling you those things it introduces those concepts in the course of a quest line or a crow randomly shows up and lands on you and brings you a letter to tell you something and I say thank you crow how consider it of you to tell me about that game mechanic

but yeah there's a lot to wrangle here and for me it's mostly charming after you get past the initial you know Matt because I was slacking you to be like I can't unacquip my weapon like I have to be unarmed for this mission I will fail if I'm holding a sword but I can't just go into my inventory and press unacquip on my sword it's great out for some reason instead

“you have to put fists into your secondary weapon type and that's very weapon weapon wheel with”

unarmed options yes so things like that the puzzles also yeah let's talk about the puzzle it's not the the most puzzle heavy game but there were absolutely times I just agree well are you trying are you talking about navigating menus plainly is that well that mean well yes that that's the meta puzzle but yes sometimes look the setup for this game which I probably should have mentioned earlier without giving anything to detail the way that you don't

learn almost immediately you play as this brooding warrior named cliff cliff with a cape it could not

quite amazing as fitting if it were cliff with a scene but even so and cliff is a warrior and he is

gruff cliff and he is a gray man which is a faction that is in one particular part of this gigantic continent and in the beginning of the game your gray man gang gets split up and attacked and it turns out that there's something supernatural about cliff and he gets a second crack at things and so for the first part of the game at least you're getting the gray man gang back together you're trying to round up your buddies who have been split up essentially and it's a fantasy setting

you know kind of your your classic medieval for the most part except that it's not purely fantasy because there's also sort of a futuristic steam punkish sci-fi elements to this and sort of a supernatural mythological element to this it's a really interesting blend of influences and sometimes gets wacky and weird like this game is quite funny sometimes so I I give it kudos for that but there are many types of gameplay there's combat which I think is strong we can get into that

but there's also puzzles and some of the puzzles depend on your axiom force I keep wanting to call it axiom verge but that's not the name of it but it's essentially a yeah here's the kingdom style way of grabbing stuff and manipulating it and twisting it around and reorienting it to solve various puzzles that's not the only kind of puzzle that you will confront in this game but there is a distinct lack of signposting in the puzzles and obviously there's a fine line there

puzzles should be initially kind of confusing because you shouldn't be able to solve them immediately

“and you should get some sense of satisfaction when you finally figure them out but too often”

in crimson desert it was unclear in a way that I found unsatisfying because it became trial and error and sometimes I would solve a puzzle and not know how I did it exactly and the parameters of the puzzles were just not made clear in the way that I wanted to office and I think that

I think my main question for the game designers of crimson desert is when do you want to either subvert or issue traditional game design to make something compelling or interesting versus actually taking the time to teach the player and give them tools to be rewarded for thinking the way that you do because that to me is just the testament of good game design if you give the player the tools and onboard them in a way that makes them

educated in your game's mechanics while still allowing them the freedom of thought to solve something that's where a good game is made and especially like with the puzzles of this game forget trying to know the mechanics of how to incorporate everything that you have because like I've seen like a couple of times where like you could use your sword to like reflect light off the

things to burn them and stuff like that never really really reinforced never actually shown to you

that this is like a main way to like burn away ivy or certain things in the world

“I think that to me is what makes something more and more rewarding for a puzzle is if the game”

enforces the fact that you can do something and I think my main question to you Matt is like does that matter when it comes to making a gaming experience that are rewarding because for me it's not well I I think said man the puzzles in this game are a huge topic because I think a lot of people are going to come to this game you know looking for red dead right and they're going to hit a lot of puzzles that are puzzle game level puzzles and I think the difficulty of a lot of these puzzles is

pretty high I think the vast majority of the puzzles are good I think that there are a few that are

horrible I do think though that the first so basically the the the tears of the kingdom of this

is that above the game world sits the of this high above and and that's you probably seen in trailers you know cliff falling from the abyss down to the main world tough thing to make the abyss above something but yeah we did it true but it's yeah very here's the kingdom coded in that way yeah but the abyss is is primarily puzzle based and it has puzzles that operate in a certain way and the first abyss puzzle that you encounter is part of the main line quests of

“the story I think they could do with a bit more handholding on that because that initial puzzle”

sets a lot of rules for what the abyss puzzles are like like how they function and you can

discover the way that first puzzle works on your own I feel like most people are going to get

a little stuck there for a while so I think that could be handheld a little better the deeper into the game you go the more familiar with their sort of game logic you are the less frustrating these puzzles tend to become another art again some puzzles that are bad there are few not most of them not a lot of them I think there are a few that are bad but the big benefit that players will have that we all didn't right is that if you get stuck just go online look at it right

I was in the the the discord the review discord constantly sort of interacting with people sharing knowledge and everything and that was a really fun experience that kind of reminded me of blue prints just in that way of discovery and a game before it's come out that has so much to figure out but I think that the puzzles are going to really mess people up and hammer a lot of people's enjoyment who aren't puzzle people now people who do like puzzles I think are going to find a lot

to like here eventually yeah and I can't emphasize enough how much is crammed into this game you mentioned the cooking the number of different options for fish porridge it's very breath of the wild fish but even more extensive even in that sense though one of the weird little quirks of this game is that whenever you go into a shop and you find an item or a type of food for the first time

“you have to learn it essentially by just got of putting your cursor over it or selecting in a menu”

and so your constantly just acquiring knowledge about bread yeah cliff is learning beer yes which I would have here this guy lived long enough to know bread at this point like there's got to be something that this guy knows before we came into his life the play yes came into life yes you have

no judging but yeah I've been cliff is so I don't I don't know how to explain his complete

ignorance in every way but he is essentially just like a babe in the woods he's he's brick camelent of video games and he says I love lamp I love bread I love bold so that was just a funny little quirk but there's so much in this there's sort of a management sim because you essentially you know as you collect graming buddies and allies you can dispatch them to do things you can build up your camp which is one of the more red deadish elements I don't think any game has reminded me

more of red dead to then I curse game yeah just in terms of what it's like to be in this world the depth and detail of it the deliberate pace at which it encourages you to play that base that you develop and the faction that you collect it's extremely red deadish now I think it falls short far short of red dead story wise at least in what I have experienced that is one of the week this is I wouldn't say it's got nothing going for it the writing and voice acting

just on a line by line level is fine is good even yeah but I don't care deeply about cliff

“I've had enough narrative masterpiece that red dead no but you know but to me I think that's what”

makes red dead so special is because of the fact that the story is so immersive and so incredible

that it almost makes you the player role play Arthur Morgan like you will just have him fish for a while because you think that that's who he is and like he'll like all of those things that can be done outside of the main story adds to the depth and who you think that my character might be inhabiting such a beautiful and amazing world what this game has is a beautiful and amazing world with the character that to me is absolutely nothing I mean you're talking about

breath of the wild too then yes but like yes okay so fine we have like 35 years of precedent with behind that character to like imbue upon him some meaning rather than a game like red dead that tells you exactly who a character is as opposed to crimson desert that actually makes

“a character kind of nothing and then you need to learn what bowls and bread are”

and doesn't know how to fish doesn't know how to do anything and just kind of talks and grunts and all those things but all of that wouldn't matter because if the game world and the story and

all of the immersion that happens within again I can't I don't want to be hung up on these first

10 hours but I'm very much in anti it gets good after X hours gamer and I and I love the fact that both you been and Matt have been enjoying this for a lot more hours than that it is great but to me that's a lot to ask for something that you're just not giving me any form of reward into who this character is what the story is to immerse me in a world that is fully realized but not presented to me in a way that makes it that attractive only for the pure fact that it

is discovery yeah it's a barrier to entry for sure now it helps that that 10 hours might be 5% of the game so in the grand scheme of things it's a trap in the bucket that's also daunting because not everyone has that kind of time and it is tough to say oh just watch you know it gets good in season three that's essentially but I didn't find it to be that dramatically tough to get engaged in but yes your mileage may vary and you can customize cliff you can shape the way you

want to play and you can express your preferences just in terms of play style and so what you wear and the skill tree which is an excellent skill tree yeah you know there's a fine art to risk

“your skill tree and easy to respect if you need to yes you are not locked into your choices forever and you will want to do that”

depending on where you are in the game and there's a real sense of progression and everything that you unlock actually gives you some tangible upgrade and ability and another clever thing that I haven't seen much if at all is that you can learn a lot of those abilities just by observing them in the game world kind of organically and so you can buy them you can use your epis artifacts to upgrade or you can just kind of come across them and they don't skimp on the epis artifacts either you're going to get

those pretty regularly they will drop if you have a big fight of some sort and there's a comp of enemies you will often get that instant validation and satisfaction of oh I can get stronger now

of shaping the story it's interesting you can interact with almost everyone in this world on some

“surface level but there are no dialogue trees in this game you don't get to choose what Cliff says”

right and so a couple times but yeah it's definitely no well there's Kate no it's very rare and and you can choose which quest lines to pursue and you can ignore the main quest line entirely to and play to your hearts contents what I did yeah but but there's sort of limited interactivity in certain ways even though there's extremely impressive interactivity in other ways and just like you know is there a GTA style wanted level system in this game yep there's that

there's just stuff that like would be the selling point for many other games it's almost just an

afterthought it's just part of your fish porridge of crimson desert and that's just incredibly

impressive because I just think of the amount of time effort that went into making this thing it's sort of staggering as are the visuals and I know we mentioned that but I don't want to undersell that right because of course it's cool to say gameplay matters more than graphics and it's true too and it's especially true these days because usually the distinctions aren't that great you know like we're all sort of jaded and we've seen these great looking games and how much better

quote unquote does one game look then another plus many games are built in the same sort of engines I just read in the game discover co newsletter this week that the percentage of games

that weren't built in some sort of off the rack preset engine that a lot of companies use it's

decreased from 27% in 2017 to 13% last year so it's very rare now that something is not built in unity or unreal or gato or whatever and it's risky you know there's a reason for that because you want to start with those tools and those scripts and something that's proven instead of striking off on your own but if it works and this time it worked it is it is spectacular because it's a real differentiator it doesn't just look like any other AAA on real game it looks

“like I've never seen anything like this really I think in particular the incredible draw distance”

is the thing and it's the macro and the micro because often the weak point of games with great graphics are like you'll look at something super close up and then the textures expose themselves you know you look at a leaf or something or a fern and it looks like you're on N64 or something not here you can zoom in on stuff and it looks fantastic but also and I don't want to get too Todd Howard about oh you can see that amount you can go to it but like even when you're looking

clear across the map and this map is enormous you can see that stuff and it appears to be and maybe there's some trickery I don't know how they pull this off but it appears as if they're just rendering this stuff clear across the map because you can see individual trees swaying in the wind what would take you probably like half an hour to get to and somehow it's like dynamically moving it's not their shadow that's well yeah and their shadowed and there's you know wind and things

are blowing and their leaves scattered through the air and it's just so dynamic and there were absolutely times where it was really you know it's hard to impress us these days when it comes to graphics but this was literally like breathtaking jaw dropping I just had to sort of stop and take in the scene

“and again I was not playing anywhere close to top specs here right I think you probably playing”

fairly comparable to the PS5 experience I would think so yeah because again like I'm not typically a PC gamer so this was sort of an adventure for me you you can't bring on the steam machine soon enough but there's no ramp left on earth as we have covered so I made do with what I had here and it becomes kind of a game within a game it's a meta game of configuring your PC settings you know it's sort of a puzzle to figure out what can I optimize here so that I'm still getting a good

frame rate maybe I could just this one setting and there's an anxiety to it that I haven't done it right that I'm leaving something on the table this could look a little bit better if I just went to that one setting and ticked it up one bit and there's a phomo there's an envy because I know that other people are getting a better looking game than I am and I know that when I'm playing on consoles too because you know a multi platform game is typically going to look

it's best if you have a high powered PC but I can at least tell myself well this is what every other console player is getting it's just the generic one-size-fits-all experience whereas here I'm more conscious of what I'm lacking and also that I might be doing it wrong so

the game ran quite well for me I have experienced one single lone crash in my time with this game

and we should have stipulated this earlier but we're playing pre-day one patch which is another reason why we like to get a look at what this game is actually going to look like for people when they play it because sometimes there's significant fixes on the day that a game comes out so the fact that we were playing this pre-patch and that there are no issues and no graphical bugs etc and I was still so blown away by this I mean that's pretty impressive the the engine

“this this black space engine that they've created I think it's the star of the show here”

I think in addition to just looking great the it feels like a whole new experience walking around in this game it's something that's hard to to fully articulate but this adventure being in this engine really just feels like a unique experience at the lighting the the way that they have enabled like ray tracing even in like lower-spec systems and the scalability of this thing and the stability I have played 96 hours I've had two crashes if there are parts of this game

that are unpolished that need fixing later they are in dumb little things like like text or like you know the the steps of a quest but they're not in the engine they're not in the bones and structure of what makes this game run yes and I think that you know when we think of

“graphics we you know and the boy we've thought about them a lot this week with that DLSS five news”

yeah boy howdy yeah but as you're getting to Ben like this this game even if you don't have everything dialed up is so beautiful in in unique ways that we haven't seen before and there's so much detail to it the way that after a giant rainstorm the ground will stay wet for hours of game time and you can hear with each step that the ground is as wet as it appears visually and there are so many little details like that the audio in this game is fantastic

by the way yeah it's it's exciting to be excited about graphics again it's been a while and and not just art

style which routinely were amazed by indies that just looked distinctive and incredible but

it's not just this year number of polygons they're pushing you know this is just the sheer

“very similar to it of this world is pretty awe-inspiring honestly it really is”

difficult to describe how new this game feels purely because of the fact that it is not one of these conventional engines and the way in which they design to visually present this game is something that's like awe-inspiring because it is something that I thought of like with Wu Kong which is which is namely made on another on another conventional engine but it's doing things that a lot of games don't dare because of the restrictions of these major popular engines

that we've been used to and to see like I frankly the the types of like the loading back into this game after playing it for a while it's a very like Assassin's Creed S load screen where like the character is sat in like this neather space and then the world like kind of like digitally reforms around them and it starts with the farthest point out into the map and then it draws itself back in I'm like I don't understand how that you could even conceive of something like that

let alone showing like from when you fall from the top of the abyss and then just seamlessly drop down onto the main world like we've seen this in Breath of the Wild we've seen this in other games

and it's never looked this good yeah I don't know if this will translate to consoles but for me

it felt like the first true next gen game it really does finally this is like there's a top in there's none of this thing like I know digital factory has done their work and doesn't their homework but it really has to be seen to be believed of how that looks so good and I am worried about this being lost on the console folks because of the fact that like the amount of step setbacks that it has to take and how this might look just like another game to some people

and that's a real shame because the fixes that come from like a debacle let's say from like a cyber punk which was like wholly insufficient for console gamers and PC players that you could say

equipped to handle this and it's gonna make the legacy of this game something that is gonna be

underappreciated at least until another generation of consoles comes out or this gets optimized a bit better for PC and consoles yeah yeah the specs are pretty permissive and pretty

“forgiving I think given how good it looks and and I was using DLSS 4 not 5 crucial distinction but”

yes I for everyone who's wondering what we're talking about in video just a demo to this new DLSS that was quickly criticized by everyone is essentially AI-slapifying visuals, yesifying everyone to make them look sort of generically quote unquote better but perhaps taking away the artists intent in video disputes this says the developer has some input but

this is gonna be a big thing as AI upscaling becomes more and more common and maybe more and more

necessary given the RAM shortages that we're gonna be dealing with here for the foreseeable future when does it become kind of tampering with the developers intent and what is actually better as opposed to stripping some of the character in personality out of a game especially when it comes to characters and faces as opposed to environments but this game is not just beautiful but also feels handcrafted feels curated this is not some sort of star fields

look how huge it is but we kind of forgot to put anything in it and so everything sort of looks the same and there's procedural generation and so yes you can go to all these places but why would you exactly I know they're a new star field updates maybe that'll be better but probably not that or enough anyway this map is so huge it takes forever to cross it I even come close to crossing it there are of course many mounts from horses to dragons yes there be dragons and even if you're

on one of the faster mounts it will take you forever to cross am I right in thinking that none of us has actually been to the titular crimson desert not even close not even close we have at least the crimson deserts not in the 96 hours been to the crimson desert there's a lot that we haven't seen here I could have and yet but I haven't right as big as it is it does not feel empty it has that kind

“of breath of the wild sense of around every corner over every hill there could be some secret”

there could be some encounter there could be some treasure there could be the inside of the field spot on yes and and part of that is the graphics but it's also that they have actually crafted stuff it's not just a look how huge our map is yeah it's it's actually that it it feels like there's a great attention to detail here which is again why it just blows me away thinking about how much work went into this but that's one of the the greatest redeeming factors of

this is not just that it's big but also that it it doesn't feel I mean it feels big in the best possible way but it doesn't feel empty and you can sink a ton of time into this thing and just not notice how much time you have been playing at least it doesn't feel like a chore beyond a certain point at least and also just wanted to shout out some other we've given it some grief for some of the lack of quality of life stuff I do appreciate as I said how forthcoming it is

with the skill points also with the inventory slots I never really run at a room for anything so

we have to talk about that really quick okay because I hopped into this game like right when we got codes and the inventory was very limited and there's as of right now no real you know chest storage that you can drop things in it's all sort of on your character there are have been some talks that you know to some degree there might be storage added in the future but basically we wind so inscessantly about storage in the review discord that they already patched

“more inventory slots by a large amount into the game that's what you experience been yes and I”

think that like a lot of the problems that are present in this game are things that could be fixed fairly easily and you know we've talked a lot about on this show over the past few years about the live service push and studios that are typically single player games studios being forced to make live service games or pivoting into that unfamiliar space and what we have here is we have an MMORPG team that's pivoting to a single player experience and I think that when we were in

the review discord talking to them about issues and all of a sudden they're like okay we got

to making MMORPGs right so it's a possibility like I don't fully know everything that's going to be in the day one patch yet but I do know that this team is very responsive and quick to fix things

like the inventory thing was a massive issue within the first few hours the game especially

and that is not a problem for as you we've only had this code for what we can have two weeks

“I forget it's hard to grasp time that's what most of that time how many weeks or $200 let's see”

yes so that's been in highwell for most of that time that's impressive to hear the and to know that like I think my problems with this game aren't like existential to the game itself it's just things of little details it's details and those things that make to me a game playable and rewarding that make me want to keep playing it rather than finding that on my own I'm the type of gamer that can you know arguably you could say get good but also like I like to

be rewarded immediately and then encourage to be constantly rewarded by those things and to know that that team is essentially just being like alright people don't like this we will change that rather than we've seen this before like the like like a no man sky or a cyberpunk or other games that either refuse to change because they think that that's the intent of the game and people just misunderstand them this is okay we are listening we are hearing and like to for me like I bristle

at the idea of participating in a game when a official game's discourse simply for the sake of quote unquote fixing it yeah you know it's it's not an early access it's a $100 game or actually not be right and and these things like like it's a double-edged sword of like this should have been like fairly obvious and play to you guys play tested this right but then on the other side it's like oh my god you're so responsive yeah like you're telling me that an MMO developer doesn't know about inventory space

guys yeah and lots of little preplexing choices that would just require small tweaks for instance this was a source of some frustration for all of us you can fast forward through cuts oh this is oh my god you forgot about this this is my biggest complaint this is my biggest complaint if you're listening to this at 1.5x speed you're gonna love this yes it's it's very much like that and that's quite clever because you can fast forward through a cutscene I don't the first time

but you can and you don't miss anything important it's just it's sort of sped up but you're still seeing everything and hearing everything essentially but you can't ever skip a cutscene even after you have seen it if you're going back to a boss who's beaten you a bunch of times then you still can't skip the cutscene and so it's you're giving me the option to fast forward even on the first playthrough but then on my tenth playthrough I still can't skip it preplexing but presumably a pretty

easy fix yeah actually inferior in my opinion because of the fact that like it's not like and

“here's the thing it's not like I'm like banging my head against a boss or whatever to where like”

there's like a cutscene right before an important fight and I keep dying and thus like made to

re-see a scene all all over again but the mere fact that you can always fast forward a scene

and never actually skip it it it feels like playing in my face a little bit because why was you want to fast forward it if you could simply skip it and the fact that as I like I tried it for like an entire scene and some scenes go on for like minutes at a time and the dialogue the pre-recorded dialogue that each character says it goes so fast that it's plays at a normal speed but it has to cut off to let the other person speak because that part of their scene is about to play

great so it's like it like maybe every third word in their sentence gets cut cut off sometimes

“and it's just it's completely baffling to me that's what that's my brand about don't fast forward”

scenes why would you fast forward scenes I've never had a game fast forward scenes or get me the

option to do both I'm fine with fast forwarding yeah but I don't fast forward that game I've seen this before yeah but get put this with a picture and go jima games how about that put that and go jima games where you play at a one point five here see a couple other stray observations we haven't talked about the combat but and we should strong I quite enjoy the combat there are a number of ways you can play you can kind of customize your preferred play style and weaponry etc now one concern

is that there are difficulties bikes because your generic run of the mill enemy presents no challenge

in this game when it just turns into dynasty where you're suddenly and you're taking on dozens of

“guys which I actually love that hundreds of guys in submissions yeah which is kind of cool but”

each of them is extremely disposable and so you get logged into this false sense of security and then you hit a boss and there's a difficulty spike and some of them work quite challenging quite frustrating however I will say that that is to some extent to skill as you now that the inventory isn't large because you can just stock up on food you can just cram your pack with every healing whatever you need and you can just have sort of an infinite heal that helps a lot

and the checkpoints are fairly forgiving too and there isn't like a cool down on eating something right right yes so you're just if you're having a hard time with the boss it just means you're overeating yes but it's not it's not sort of like dragons dog or something where it's like well the combat is not necessarily the selling point here like clearly they they focused on other aspects or kingdom come where it's unique it's distinctive some people of it some people hate it it's

realistic to the extent that we can tell this is not bad this just feels like it could be any other top tier action adventure game just in terms of the depth and the responsiveness and just how good in satisfying it feels so the combat is extremely strong I think the the math is good because

there's always something to do but there's never too much to do or at least it's not overwhelming

I did comp this to Assassin's Creed etc but it is not a Ubisoft math game it doesn't look like that at least by default when it doesn't feel that bad either no it doesn't yeah there's so much to do and yet it's not constantly hammering you over the heads with there's too much to do so you never feel overwhelmed and you never feel like you're just checking off a list of things that you've

“got to do and you have to be a completeist and it becomes a chore it's not really like that in my experience”

so that's pretty impressive too a couple other little things I like this is just generally in games I love when you whistle for a mount and they come out of nowhere you know and they just suddenly appear and you turn around I love when they sort of sneak up on you and they're just like lurking there and it's like what do you mean I've been here the whole time I constantly try to do that thing where I'm like 360ing the camera just so I could see yes yeah yeah and then suddenly my horses

just like lurking over there as if it was just there the entire time no I'm on to you you weren't there there's a little horse head icon on the mini bath so that's convenient but also I find it quite funny I also find it funny when you're wearing a helm much at the time or at least I am because I want to get my defensive stats up and so Cliff testament to the sound design but when he's wearing a helm he's voices extremely muffled you can barely make out what he said that's he's just like

over the border boy it's like Charlie Brown and the teacher voice and yet somehow everyone understands him and also almost everyone recognizes him immediately it's like Cliff I can't believe it I knew I thought I'd see you again and it's like this could just be anyone who is wearing a helm and is completely unintelligible but I guess the gray main bonds just goes that deep so those are a couple of little things that's uh I quite enjoyed to about this game and and games in general like open worlds I know

we all have some degree of open world fatigue but this felt fresh and exciting and like something new and it doesn't make me that you have so many studios building these absolutely massive open worlds it almost makes me think like what if they could just combine their efforts in some way like this is just seems like almost wasted work where you have separate teams who are building these enormous enormous maps that if they could somehow pool their resources I guess that's

sort of what you get in a unity or an unreal or something but it is kind of incredible and good

because I would not want every game to be set in the same open world and for everything to be sort of fortnighted and robots basically so I love that we have many different studios making many different open worlds but my mind just reels at the thoughts of how much work goes into making something like this and goes into making dozens of games every year that are not this scale

“but still a big scale and it really does I think the game to me as for all of the”

grites that I have about it and I would say that like ultimately I can't personally recommend it but like the most rewarding this game feels and the best looking and best presenting this game feels is that it does feel like the culmination of every possible open world influence that has ever existed nothing has been forgotten nothing has been left out like to my knowledge and gaming

that you can't say that this game doesn't have because I like a majority of the time that I

“had spent after the opening hours the game I just walked around one town to see how many things I could”

just do in it and it really was daunting but like you walk in you can arm wrestle a guy at a tavern you can help somebody make food you can play kids at rock paper scissors all of this doesn't actually affect the game at all in any meaningful way but it is to the best parts of it quite immersive yeah and you can tell okay this is probably something that they borrowed from this game and there's clearly an influence of that game here but it doesn't feel so derivative

or as if they're just saying how do we steal this mechanic from that game it's just integrated and implemented well enough that it does feel like it's own thing and obviously you know in all mediums and art forms people are constantly learning from each other you know the old mind about the best artists stealing etc like everyone's standing on the shoulders of giants or sometimes literally in this game but it does feel like yes they have kind of incorporated

everything so in that sense it's it's exhaustive and maybe exhausting your mileage may vary but it is just a monumental achievement in that way and I feel like you just you got to try it like you have to experience this you might bounce off it the way that Steve did and yet are you sorry that you at least experienced crimson desert because it is sort of a singular experience it feels like

a capital e-experience like no I'm not I'm not regret it for a second true yeah I don't like

I am very happy to have experienced this and known for a fact that it is not for me but I infinitely admire every swing that this game takes because it's taken the most of any game I think I have ever seen in my life the mission is ridiculous and the sense of discovery is just unmatched from from what I like Steve you mentioned earlier like it was frustrating that didn't tell you that if you reflect your sword you can generate fire from it right to burn yeah vines so

sure that I didn't know that when I got to a bunch of vines but what I did was I was like oh there's fire over here I wonder if I draw my bow and just kind of walk in this line and you'd like

“sure sure now I lift my arrow on fire and that's how I got that vine to burn and I didn't”

I didn't realize the sword shining thing until a little bit later either but like there there are a number of ways in this game that you can stumble onto things in your own way organically there are puzzles there is a puzzle without spoiling anything or you're having to adjust pillar height and you're using this mechanism to adjust pillar height and I was getting thing I was getting really frustrated because it wouldn't just snap into like this is one high

too high wouldn't it it was it could be off five or ten percent and by the time I was done with all these moves that I made there's like I solved it but like things are off and they're not lining up so the puzzle's not completed I was getting so frustrated and then I was like hold up let me I just this is a theory and I climbed on top of one of the fillers and I butt stomped it and it went down like two percent and I was able to butt stop it to find a mountain I needed into place and I was

like that's crazy that like yeah and there is a magical sort of super punch that sometimes you have to deploy to punch things into place and sometimes it can be quite awkward because you have to punch at a certain angle and so you sort of have to jump and punch and it's just weird

and it doesn't always work that well it can't be quite frustrating but then you can incorporate

that into combat too and you can just figure out the way you want to use that the way the skills can can be simultaneously related to puzzle solving and combat and exploration is is awesome yeah it's amazing so we promised that we would make our predictions for what the Metacritic rating will be I was going to suggest that we all say our number at the same time but then no one would understand what we were saying we would all sound like how could we figure out for you so so on the

honor system here we have all pre-decided what we think the number would be not going to be influenced by what one another says so I don't know who should go first I'm I'm happy to

to go first who's how about this who thinks that they have the lowest

“Metacritic you do I think you do I think you do that I think that you yourself are an outlier”

and that everyone else will love the game a lot more than you do I think this is what I think I think that this game will sit at a 68 on Metacritic holy shit you are way off my friend

there will be there will be but not enough of you will be that wrong to drag down the average I'm I'm going 87 I said 87 as well 87 I was born between 86 and 87 and I just I opted to go because to me this game sits firmly in in the mid 90s despite all its flaws I was going to say

“well this isn't a reflection of my personal score this is what I think that like I think that”

this will be a wild or divisive lower if that he thinks there are like there are like definitive flaws with this game that that will will keep it I think from hitting those scores in the 90s on Metacritic obviously which I think it otherwise would have been capable of getting to but but there are there are going to be people like you Steve Hope been so turned off

in the first you know 20 hours the game and and there are people who are going to have had

worse experiences than others by by chance by interacting with things like there I have experienced like bugged quests that I found ways around luckily but like there are there are definitive flaws and and I think that they're going to be some scores that reflect that yes it it's like everything else and nothing else simultaneously

“and I think if you can play it you oh it to yourself to try just because”

love it or hate it it's just going to be I think a defining game of this year enough this generation it's a game that people are going to want to talk about and are going to want to

analyze you can probably tell I'm kind of giddy to be talking about it finally today and yeah

I could go on so it's it's a game that people I think are going to find fascinating and are going to have a lot of thoughts about and I would guess that the embargo is so close to the release less because they were trying to sneak one bias then to encourage reviewers to see more of the game yeah sometimes it reflects a lack of confidence you're trying to hide something that you know as a stinker that's not the case here I can't speak to the console experience I'm sure that

you know even though this game went gold months ago they were probably polishing and optimizing up until the last possible second but but I don't think that they were trying to sneak past

people and not give people a chance to see the critical consensus because I do think the critical

consensus is going to be strong despite the distractors there will be a high standard deviation when it comes to the review score some 87's they're all between 80 and 90 this is going to be an 87 where you have some mid 90's and some sixes and it's just going to be kind of across going to be but phrase I think it's going to be crazy do you think that like there's genuinely going to be a lot of people that like a big portion of this I think is going to want to be played on

consoles and I think that this is going to actually kick up a lot of like again I don't encourage this discourse and I certainly don't even think that like hey use medicritic as a way to outsource your opinion on a game before you play it don't listen to me or really anybody unless you really want to find out for yourself please play this game it is worse your time do your own research you do like truly but like I truly think that there's going to be a lot more bad faith

both reviewers and like general populist discourse around this game being like it's too hard it's

“impossible like you need to have either a PC or a PS5 Pro to run it and it's not going to be”

penetrating to a lot of people I think there will be some of that and I think there will be some just because the hopes were so sky high and the expectations were so boundless that some people are bound to be disappointed though I don't know how you could be by purely the scope of the stuff just in this game but I think between that and some of the flaws that we've identified yes there will be detractors but I also think that people are going to give the game the benefit of the

doubt to some extent just because it aims so high that I think you almost have to be like you know what I have to hand it to you because not only was there degree of difficulty in having your own upgraded engine here and going from online to offline and issuing live service but also you just aimed as high as anyone could possibly aim and even if you fall a little short of that in some respects you do in fact have to hand it to the world this year yeah I think so too and just a quick note

for for people who are trying to play this on console if you're trying to play on a PlayStation 5 or a Series X they have a few modes for you they have performance balanced in quality performance is going to be 60 frames and it's going to upscale 1080p and quality is going to be 30 frames rendered

would assume that it is going to be the balanced mode that targets 40 frames per second but if you're

“going to do balanced mode you need to have a TV or display that has a 120 Hertz refresh rate”

which a lot of people don't have on their TV if you have a newer TV you might so just that's something to be aware of if you're playing on console and you have a PS5 and you don't want to get a PS5 pro but I don't know maybe one TV you have has 120 Hertz like that's what you're going to be looking for is that 120 Hertz displayed play this with yeah before we go to is the onboarding process and maybe lower that difficulty level and and learning curve a little bit

for people so that people can have a smoother experience than our pals Steve here did.

I wonder if we could all or you especially Matt could share a few tips a few things that

made this game a little more intuitive for you once you've figured it out fish porridge and fishing aside for example you will want to invest in stamina early on it's it's very much like breath of the wild in that respect because you can kind of go anywhere you can kind of climb anything but not only are you going to want to climb but also you get gased quite quickly in combat when you're running when you're sprinting when you're stringing combos together when you're going to run

out of stamina when you're you can fly in this game we made it we made it this far into this they we didn't even mention cliff can fly people I'm glad cliff cliff has wins cliff yes you're going to want a lot of stamina to cover as much ground as you can with that yeah so invest heavily in that it will make your experience much smoother and also you will want and you gave me this tip Matt and it helped but there is one particular skill upgrade in the stamina area that is

sort of about swiftness and and perying and blocking in combat and rolling and evading and that's very helpful it is the keen sense that's right set of skills that is under the green side of the skill tree that is going to let you do dodges and and and stuff like that a lot easier

that's when you definitely want to target early on for sure trying to think of other like critical

“I think just generally when you're playing this game a lot of people if you're mainlining the”

story I think you're going to come up against that boss difficulty wall pretty quick I am like a side quest and exploration fiend so I will like basically clear entire maps before progressing the story you don't have to play that way but I do think that because of the way the game works when you're fighting a boss you're going to consume a lot of food so it only kind of makes sense after you beat a boss maybe go on a side quest in exploration spree and that'll help you kind of

replenish your ingredients to make food and also sometimes to just stumble upon meals and that will sort of naturally replenish your healing supplies rather than like you're going boss after boss and and you're like oh Matt of food like we're gonna get food from like so just that kind of like boss exploration side quest like doing all of those elements stinty with the fast travel early on so there's a lot of traversal you do have to unlock fast travel points any giant question mark

that appears on your menu is going to be a fast travel point there are some that are not giant question marks but any giant question mark is guaranteed to be a fast travel some of them you can just step on to activate others you might have to solve a puzzle or use a skill but definitely

“go after those giant question marks on the map yep all right well I think this is an unforgettable”

game and I hope other people get to try it we said 87 Matt for me I think it's it's a 92 or 3 for me most likely and I'll hedge some what just because there's still so much that I haven't seen right get there it could work hey yeah even after 96 hours so just take that with a bit of food grain of salt and the asterisk and caveat but yeah it's it's at that level for me let me just really quick I just want to articulate exactly where I am in this at 96 hours I am less than half

the way through the main quest line and I have roughly like I would say like one and a half to sections of the map which is in I think five parts uncovered like almost fully so you have a fifth of the map unlocked no I have like two fifths of the map so hopefully it's one and half to two fifths of the map fully explored and less than halfway through the main story quest yep he's a skill it's this thing I am a slow game I will say that I do tend to be on the slow

at where you're playing clock stands but guys I very much enjoyed this conversation I'm glad that

“we we're not all in lockstep here that we had some some points of difference and also a lot of”

things that we agreed on so thank you very much for joining me on this crimson desert experience thank

you ever have you noticed I don't be need to leave online about this okay I'm on the midnight

boys man I've done my best you take it for yeah you've had so many terrible takes over the years

“it was a hell it really helps this hardens you quite a bit but thanks Andrew”

and don't be intimidated there's this is set by the way in the same universe as the pre-existing MMO but you don't need to know the word or I assume you don't because I didn't so don't worry don't worry about that and I really I can't wait to hear and read what others think yeah I'm going to be refreshing my metocrine at six eastern just to see it was the cut off do you think like after two weeks would you say when it sort of stabilizes you can yeah it's usually faster than that but

“it depends I think on just how much the game of all said it's probably a long time for this one”

because for this one I think people will reserve judgment yes so I can't wait to hear if we are in line with others or we are outliers we'll find out along with the rest of you and I'm also very curious for your thoughts on crimson desert you with the listeners so please do let us know send us questions about the game send us comments send us your reviews in progress at [email protected]

thank you as always to Devon Momenato for producing this podcast and to our junior rainbow pal for

his senior podcast management we will be back in a couple weeks to discuss the super Mario Galaxy movie on butt mesh and hopefully this podcast and this game will crimson tide you over until next time that's a world in the back of the street a love in balesa al off-blued and magie a whole echo word this world is much more than a big Britain from the country in the real life of the war star of the history in decommere of trippetwiser.de schrägstrich groß britannian