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Pearl Abyss, the developer and publisher behind Crimson Desert, has (if you don’t count the cancelled MOBA Shadow Arena) produced one game since it was founded in 2010: the 2015 MMORPG Black Desert Online. Crimson Desert actually started as an online prequel to Black Desert Online, but shifted into a standalone single-player game set in a separate universe early on in its development. That may lead you to believe, as others have theorised before, that Crimson Desert is sort of like an MMORPG, sans the “Massively Multiplayer Online” part, and that it’s just a retooled version of Black Desert On

Crimson Desert will release on Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, MacOS, Windows, the Epic Games Store, and Steam on March 19, for $69.99/£54.99. Now you might be thinking that you could just snag a physical copy early and start playing but, as we learned last week, the game is actually time-locked, which means that the disc versions of Crimson Desert are effectively just fancy paperweights until it’s officially out. That means you can’t play Crimson Desert until a very specific time: 6 pm EST, and 10 pm GMT. Also, keep in mind that Crimson Desert is currently the fourth-most-wishlisted game on S

The game looks sharp in all three visual modes (optimal, balanced, and quality, with optimal being the performance-focused option), though some PSSR upscaling artifacts can ruin parts of the image. DF is hopeful that Crimson Desert‘s final version will look better, thanks to it using the upgraded version of PSSR seen in Resident Evil Requiem. As for framerate performance, Digital Foundry reports that all three modes do a solid job sticking to their target framerates, even the 60FPS “optimal” mode. However, framerates can drop significantly during big battles, though DF’s John Linneman made it

Crimson Desert is set in the land of Pywel and primarily focuses on Kliff, a gruff older dude who belongs to a mercenary clan named the Greymanes. Kliff is one of the only survivors of an ambush instigated by the Greymane’s “sworn enemies,” the Black Bears, and the story has you rebuilding his clan and tracking down any of its survivors. Kliff isn’t the only character you’ll play as during Crimson Desert, though, as there are two other playable protagonists in the game: Oongka and Damiane. Admittedly, we don’t know too much about these two right now, other than the fact that Oongka is an Orc-l