Crimson Desert is shaping up to be a massive deal for fans of open-world RPGs. Pearl Abyss’ first major release following Black Desert Online promises large environments to explore, mighty foes to overcome, and a myriad of stories to experience.
The high expectations have also created doubts among audiences, with many curious about the technical elements of Crimson Desert. Recent optimization hurdles across titles have made audiences weary of large open worlds, but Pearl Abyss promises not to disappoint in this regard.
In fact, the team’s PR Lead has commented on the state of the genre, particularly in relation to Unreal Engine 5. He says that it would terrify him if Crimson Desert ran on the engine.
Pearl Abyss PR Lead Will Powers was recently interviewed by Luke Stephens, where he discussed Pearl Abyss’ custom engine. He outlined that the team built this technology specifically for open-world games.
On the subject of Unreal Engine, he admitted that the technology has historically struggled with open-world games in technical areas like asset streaming, draw distances, etc. This is also why stuttering remains prevalent in Unreal Engine-based titles, and even moreso for games with large worlds.
Will Powers confirmed that the team has worked hard to make Crimson Desert’s open-world experience as seamless as possible. He discussed the game’s promise of seamless gameplay when traversing through the large map and diving from the abyss without any loading screens or hiccups.
According to the PR Lead, this level of seamlessness would have been incredibly scary if Crimson Desert had been made on Unreal Engine 5.
“This would terrify me if it was running on that (Unreal Engine 5). Panning the camera on those vistas with those thousands of LODs, those trees loaded in and the diving from the abyss with no loading, that’s scary.” -Will Powers
Will Powers also discussed pop-in in regard to the open-world genre. He admitted that eliminating pop-in entirely is almost impossible, but Pearl Abyss is focused on bringing it down to a point where it no longer becomes immersion-breaking.
