Crimson Desert - Korean devs really like deserts huh?

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Not as interesting as you think. Either the original faction simply redpawns or your faction the greypubes or whatever will occupy if you are past a certain point in the main quest.

All this amounts to is a bunch of generic non hostile npcs idling around and occasionally sandboxing. They don't fight or provide services or anything.

Like everything else this mechanic is beyond shallow.
I wonder how many shallow faction systems were caused by Warner Brothers patenting the Nemesis system so people try to stay away from anything remotely like it.
 
So my question for those who are enjoying the game, do you feel that the size of the map is necessary or did they make a large map only to fill it with mediocrity?
Yes

I think the large map was necessary to make an open world game with a bunch of crap in it. Which is what I think they intended.

They weren't looking to make a Morrowind or an RPG with this game. That isn't what you should go into this looking for.

I would honestly say that the closest game it reminds me of is Breath of the Wild.

Of course, I'm still only 4 hours into the game because I had to go and get some stuff done today so maybe I don't even really know WTF I'm talking about yet.
 
Another weird thing about this game I haven't seen people talking about

There is a compendium of "knowledge", and there's a whole section devoted to people. There are FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY EIGHT entries. And it's literally just like little backstories for the bar keep and the smith and the guy who works on the farm.

Maybe they all become important later but from what people have been telling me they probably don't so it's just weird I guess.
 
I want to hear the opinions of kiwis once they have 100h+ in the game.
This thread proved that first impressions are mixed, and those brave enough to forge on, I'm curious if your opinion will still stand, after the honeymoon period.
 
The mixed reception and talk of weird controls makes me want to try it, but I'm not spending money on it. I miss the days of when you could go to the rental store and just rent a game like this.
 
Now that some time has passed I want to ask the Kiwis who have been playing the game a question.

One of the major selling points is the size of the world map, but in my experience games that advertise the size of their map end up wide but shallow in terms of content. Lots of space without much depth.

Hearing about AI gen fetch quests and sub-mid dialogue makes sense for filling a massive world, but its the kind of content I can't appreciate. That's why my favorite single player game is Morrowind with Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel. The map is still quite large and its filled with hand crafted content of the highest quality, all for free. The trade off is its taken over 20 years to get to where it is now and they're still far from the end goal of making the entire map of Tamriel playable.

So my question for those who are enjoying the game, do you feel that the size of the map is necessary or did they make a large map only to fill it with mediocrity?
I feel like the towns are fun because they’re filled with people and the buildings all have unique interiors, but the actual world seems more like a means to an end. You only really explore it to get resources to upgrade or craft. It’s not Ubisoft style, but it’s definitely offline MMO. Secrets aren’t really the point and the rewards for deep exploration aren’t as great.


I’m 15 hours in and am just now getting to the main quest. There IS a lot to do and I’m finding it interesting, but if you don’t like finding your own fun in an open world it is not the game for you.

Also people talk about how bad the dialog is, and it is, but no one has mentioned how awkward it is. Every sentence is followed by a pause before they continue. And the instances where a character is supposed to interrupt another just has two audio files playing at once which almost sounds like a glitch.

Example:

Hey can you help me?

-10 second pause-

What do you need?

-10 second pause-

I need you to fix this!

Every exchange is weird


Another issue I have is the fact that quests have to play out in the order the game wants. Example, an early side quest is using a broom to clean a chimney. For some reason ever early preview gamer mentioned this quest. Well I already had a broom before this quest so once it started I just climbed up and tried to sweep, but it wouldn’t let me. Why? Because the quest demanded I pick up the broom from the quest, the exact same item first. The game didn’t make me equip their broom since I had mine already equipped, but I could not sweep the chimney until I had that specific broom. Every quest is like this, it doesn’t matter what you’ve already done, you must do it exactly how the game wants, which is fine in an MMO but not in an open world single player game where you have the freedom to do whatever you want.
 
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So I got more time in the game and beat a boss not tied to the main story (the one DSP rage quit :story:)

As I have been playing, I’m starting to appreciate the combat more and have become a lot more comfortable with the controls. I had a dynasty warriors like moment fighting like 20+ guards and they actually will all attack you all at once and you can easily die very quickly if you aren’t mindful about positioning. The game is actually pretty demanding in that encounters can require parts of your kit you may not be expecting to use. It also really requires you to have a lot of healing consumables on hand if you want to try and win encounters you may not be upgraded enough for.

Overall I’m enjoying exploring the world and farming upgrades to scale my power. The story and quests have been mostly lame yea but not that big of a deal. I also really appreciate the sound design and finisher animations for the combat, which is where the game has been really shining for me.
 
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This popped up on reddit a few hours ago. Some of it makes sense but the random God of War glazing makes me suspicious...
 
Also people talk about how bad the dialog is, and it is, but no one has mentioned how awkward it is.
That sounds horrible.

I'll add this, I made it about 5 minutes into Spiffing Brit's video on the game before I knew it wasn't for me, here are the specific things that influenced my decision.

1. The main character, Cliff(?), is fixed, but comes off as a default CAC option. Open world games with fixed protagonists are very hit or miss with me, and more miss than hit. For example, aside from the eurojank feel of the controls, I bounced off The Witcher games because I don't vibe with Geralt. Meanwhile I was able to enjoy RDR2 because Arthur Morgan worked for me. That doesn't mean I necessarily think Arthur is a better character than Geralt or vice versa, just that one vibed and the other didn't. It doesn't take long to get feel for the vibe of a character, it has as much to do with appearance as it does story. When you see how a the developers put forth the default appearance of a character it says something. The Crimson Desert guy says "generic MMO character" and that does less than nothing for me.

2. The fast travel system feels incongruous with the rest of the setting. I did not expect weird eldritch looking parachute magic in what appears to be a fairly straightforward adventure fantasy setting. Its kind of like Hermaeus Mora's realm in the Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim, except the difference is that Apocrypha is intended to be that way while the fast travel system in Crimson Desert isn't.

3. While the concept of your character phyically having all their equipment on them is cool, something about the way Crimson Desert implements it feels off. There's a fine line between looking like a realistically equipped adventurer that doesn't have magic pockets, and looking like a walking storage shed. I think it strays a little too close to the latter. Going back to RDR2, something that game did well is the visual depiction of equipment, what kept it grounded is the limited number of slots and the horse system. In Spiffs video it was the presence of what looks like a picaxe on the guys back which I think is a bit too far.
 
10 hours in I requested a steam refund. Combat is fine, gathering mats and shit is fine. But fuck me the precipice of truth sky puzzle.

Earlier I saved after getting the checkpoint because I have other shit to do. Load back into my save, guess what? Puzzle breaks when you do that . Reload 30 mins earlier save, go entirely through previous puzzle, get up to precipice, fall 5x times and have to restart completely from save.

I like a lot of what this game has going on. But I am not going to put myself into this cock and ball torture of puzzles bugging out to waste 10 minutes per reload. My opinion is to completely nuke the sky puzzles because they are buggy and untested.
 
The fast travel system feels incongruous with the rest of the setting. I did not expect weird eldritch looking parachute magic in what appears to be a fairly straightforward adventure fantasy setting. Its kind of like Hermaeus Mora's realm in the Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim, except the difference is that Apocrypha is intended to be that way while the fast travel system in Crimson Desert isn't.
Oh it’s extremely obvious the entire Axiom was a late response to Tears of the Kingdom, even the puzzles are very similar, you click the left stick to sent out a whip like thing that is very similar to the Ultra Hand ability from TotK and use it to move things around in a far less polished way. Even the diving moment for the first time is basically just “TotK did an impressive sky dive so we have to” only there’s a very undisguised loading screen between the sky world and the ground world that really ruins the effect. How Nintendo could pull that effect off and make it look seamless on a Tegra 1 while PA couldn’t do so on significantly stronger hardware is beyond me.

Kliff is absolutely boring, wooden, and lacks any personality, if he were silent the game would lose absolutely nothing, which is frankly embarrassing, going back to TotK, Link has no dialog, but his vocal inflections and emotes clearly give a sense of who he is and what he’s thinking, he’s far more of a personality.
Gerald and Arthur talk a lot and are fully realized characters. You could hate them, but not mistake their motivation, Kliff has none and everything he says makes no sense for the context, it’s almost like the voice actor was not given the script to know what he was supposed to be reacting to, so he used the same tone for everything. Though oddly when you make your horse run, his “heyah” is very clearly said by a different actor, likely the Korean original.

In general I’m okay with not creating a character if my own If the game is built around the character, Kliff doesn’t feel like that, he feels like the generic protagonist used for the pre-rendered cinematics at the beginning of the MMO.

Someone in the thread said the dialog sounded like FF14, and I disagree. FF14 wants to be Shakespearean and comes across as a really bad larp. This dialog sounds like a movie being shot where no one has seen the script and the director doesn’t speak English to guide the actors which is probably exactly what happened.

That said, the combo system is very appreciated. There is no mashing the button here.

Another issue though is how resource heavy everything is. For example one early quest is to upgrade a basic shield. But it requires 16 timber. If you cut down a good sized tree and break the 3 logs, you get maybe 4, and that’s if some of them aren’t “fine timber” which is a different variety that does not work for this. So you end up cutting down several trees. But again, this is where the game is oddly more engaged because horizontal and vertical swings are different buttons so you can’t mindlessly mash the chop. But you also have to remember to re-equip your sword after using each tool from the quick menu. I’ve gone into three fights now wielding the tree ace by mistake
 
My opinion is to completely nuke the sky puzzles because they are buggy and untested.
Oh it’s extremely obvious the entire Axiom was a late response to Tears of the Kingdom
Sounds to me like the game would have been better off completely scrapping the sky realm and having a more traditional fast travel system, or even better no fast travel if they had the balls for it. Imagine a massive open world that challenges you to cross it. Perhaps a series of side quests to establish an in-world travel system for late game convenience.


In general I’m okay with not creating a character if my own If the game is built around the character, Kliff doesn’t feel like that, he feels like the generic protagonist used for the pre-rendered cinematics at the beginning of the MMO.
It sounds like CAC would be an improvement over Kliff, though apparently there is some sort of character switching system at some point. Maybe the other characters are all amazing but that doesn't matter when they make you play someone so uncompelling to get to them.

If the game had a challenging open world full of interesting content and a better character I'd have to give serious consideration to looking past the awkward dialogue and my niggle about the way equipment looks. Alas it does not, and besides all that denuvo is a dealbreaker anyway.

I'd like to say I might reconsider when the FitGirl crack comes out, but I probably wont.

110AUD for this. 125AUD for Death Stranding 2. The prices of games are almost matching their disk size *sigh*
The ol' Dollarydoo isn't doing to good eh?
 
It’s just the orc guy and the girl from the beginning of the game, the two that you help escape from the raid on the camp. They are not any better but have their own quests.
Dang, you'd think the Orc would be an improvement since being of a brutish and blunt race helps sell the dialogue.
 
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