Shortly before its release, Digital Foundry had the opportunity to review the PC version of Crimson Desert.
Crimson Desert is arguably one of the most ambitious and exciting new games of the year. The tech experts at Digital Foundry took a closer look at the PC version and say they are “absolutely impressed” in a video. GlobalESportNews editor Kevin Bathge also sees tremendous progress.
Crimson Desert could be the most beautiful game of the year
What kind of game is it? Crimson Desert is the new single-player game from Pearl Abyss. The South Korean developer and publisher is best known for the huge MMORPG Black Desert Online.
With Crimson Desert, the studio is now venturing into a story-driven action-adventure game with a large open world and fantasy setting. The title will be released on March 19 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
A visual treat: Ever since its announcement, Crimson Desert has stood out in two ways. On the one hand, the game is packed with exciting mechanics and features, and on the other hand, it simply looks great in the material released so far.
During a preview event, Digital Foundry had the opportunity to take a closer look at the technology behind the PC version. Unlike many other developers, Pearl Abyss does not rely on Unreal Engine 5, but on its own engine, the BlackSpace Engine.
And according to the tech experts, it’s really impressive. The material was recorded on a system with the following specifications:
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
- 32 GB RAM
You can watch the video here:
The use of ray-traced global illumination in particular ensures extremely realistic and believable lighting conditions, both indoors and in the open world. The time of day and the weather change dynamically, which also causes the light to change dynamically.
Physically based rendering also allows surfaces made of different materials to react differently to light, which is particularly noticeable in armor and hair.
In addition, the game world is very interactive, almost like the newer Zelda games.
Visually, Unreal Engine 5 delivers very similar results, but these are often associated with performance issues. The engine’s developers therefore called for games to be better optimized last year.
Pearl Abyss seems to have already succeeded in doing just that with Crimson Desert. Despite the many elaborate effects, the game runs very smoothly and in high resolution in the preview, even without an upscaler and frame generation.
