In Crimson Desert contains unusually much Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz thinks that’s great and is now especially hoping for fun physics play.
Where is Zelda in Crimson Desert? The new open-world adventure from Pearl Abyss reminds in several points of the open-world hits Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom by Nintendo:
- You can climb up or onto almost anything and are only limited by your stamina.
- You learn a gliding skill quite early, with which you can glide through the air from a higher altitude and safely reach lower areas.
- Thanks to the enormous visibility, you constantly see exciting points of interest on the horizon that encourage you to explore the open world off the main paths.
- You have access to a grappling hook, with which you can grab objects and move them through the air or interact with them. You need this skill, for example, to solve puzzles.
- Many of the objects in the world are interactive, and you can take advantage of the physical laws of the game world.
Don’t worry: The weapon degradation from the Zelda games doesn’t exist in Crimson Desert. 😉 And before someone complains: Crimson Desert may not like the RPG classification very much, but it has a whole range of RPG elements.
How do these physics play out in practice? A concrete example can be seen in the new preview video from the colleagues at GameStar on YouTube: the main character Kliff draws his bow and approaches a nearby fire bowl with the arrow drawn, causing the tip to catch fire.
With the arrow, Kliff then aims at a wall of brush that blocks access to a tower. The dense greenery then bursts into flames, thus clearing the way into the masonry.
A very different example is provided by a video clip from Leon_Dante_Raiden_ on Reddit. In this, you can see how Kliff uses his grappling hook to grab the tip of a tree and pull it back to build up tension. A moment later, the tree, repurposed as a slingshot, hurls the hero wildly through the air.
A Sandbox to Fall in Love With
This mix of exciting open world, believable physics, and absurdly funny sandbox moments not only reminds me of Zelda, but also of Dragon’s Dogma 2 from 2024, which I had a lot of fun with. There, surprising situations also constantly happened to me because the pawns and the inhabitants of the world have a certain life of their own.
Moreover, I just love it when at some point the idea comes to me: “Wait, it should work if I …”, and then it actually works when experimenting – like with the arrow, the fire bowl, and the flammable wall.
Or when the world is so interactive that you can throw objects lying around at enemies, throw enemies off cliffs, or gain unusual advantages in other ways. I am already incredibly excited to see what absurd ideas the community will successfully implement at launch and what the sandbox will have to offer in the later regions of the world.
At the most recent preview event, you could only spend a few hours in the first zone and then make a short detour into a later part of the game. That was just enough to scratch the surface. And to confirm that one of the greatest weaknesses from the gamescom version will unfortunately also make it into the release version for reasons: Everyone complains about the biggest weakness of Crimson Desert, but the developers say: It has to be like this
