Pearl Abyss’ upcoming open-world RPG, Crimson Desert, a single-player spin-off of its Black Desert MMORPG, is set to feature an absolutely massive playable space, with its developer claiming that it’s larger than even Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2.
This comes via an interview with Pearl Abyss’ Will Powers on the Gaming Interviews YouTube channel, where he explained that although he couldn’t describe the size of Crimson Desert in terms of numbers, he could still compare it to two of the biggest games in recent memory.
“I don’t think numbers really do it justice because, how big is that in terms of scope and scale?” he explained. “But what we can say is that the world’s at least twice as big as the open world, the playable area, of Skyrim. It’s larger than the map of Red Dead Redemption 2.”
As far as open-world sizes go, the importance lies less in sheer size, but rather in the amount of interesting activities for players to engage in that determines its overall quality, something that Powers also addressed. “The continent of Pywel is absolutely massive, but size doesn’t really matter if there’s nothing to do,” he said. “Open-world games are about doing things, having activities, having distractions. So we wanted to create a world that’s not only massive, but is also incredibly interactive.”
While he didn’t go into detail on the specific activities players will encounter while traversing Crimson Desert, he explained that the amount of side content it offers will lead to players forming different “head canons”.
“You choose the type of character you want to play as in terms of your progression within the systems in the game,” he explained, “And then through head canon, you’re having this very different experience than other players because of the scope and scale of the game. You’ll be distracted by something, you’ll go on this quest line, you’ll have an experience that’ll be radically different than someone else, even though they’re playing the same game and the same canonical storyline that you both are going through.”
The size of Crimson Desert’s map shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, though, especially considering the studio’s expertise in the MMORPG format with Black Desert. The question is whether it will pack in enough engaging experiences to justify its size, or whether it will fall into the unfortunate MMORPG trope of copy-pasted side activities like fetch quests or the like to pad out its world. something fans will just have to wait and see as it approaches its release on 19 March 2026 for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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