Reason 2: Will the Technology Hold Up?
In the numerous trailers, Crimson Desert shines with a lovingly detailed open world, great visibility, and spectacular lighting moods – even the sparks from clashing swords are said to cast accurate shadows.
The demos of Crimson Desert confirmed last summer the graphical splendor and also shone with strong performance (on very powerful PC systems), but also had some issues to tackle in detail. Among these were low-resolution shadows, flickering shiny reflections, and objects popping up in the distance.
The good news: At the latest preview event, these issues were not as negatively noticeable, as the developers’ optimization efforts are showing results. However, the fact that stuff continues to appear out of nowhere in the field of vision remains. Additionally, the wind effects, which make trees sway back and forth, still appear quite unrealistic.
Given the size of the game world and the number of systems and contents, we must also put a question mark over the bug density in Crimson Desert. That the review versions have already reached testers is a positive sign for us.
The assurance that the release version will have sufficient technical polish for later areas of the game will only come with the final test reports on March 18, 2026, at least concerning the PC version. We’ll discuss the console versions on the next page.
