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# Crimson Desert Is A Game Bereft Of Joy
- URL: https://aftermath.site/crimson-desert-is-a-game-bereft-of-joy/
- Published: 2026-03-23T21:18:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-03-23T21:18:29.000Z
- Description: All this for a game that has the skin, but not the juice
- Author: Luke Plunkett
- Tags: Video Games, Crimson Desert, Impressions

When the students of tomorrow inevitably study the collapse of the AAA games industry as we know it today, I feel like there's a handful of titles they will particularly focus on. *Red Dead Redemption 2* for its pointless bloat,[ major sports series for their refusal to innovate](https://aftermath.site/ea-fc-madden-nba-2k-recycled-dogshit/) and, tucked somewhere near the end, *Crimson Desert*.

An open-world action-RPG-adventure set in a sprawling fantasy landscape, where you play as \[a number of very boring characters\], *Crimson Desert* is a video game trying to be everything we love about classics like *The Witcher 3* and *Breath Of The Wild*. You, a big world, a horse and a sense of adventure. And if you are someone who greenlights video games based on their bullet-point features, and who thinks weirdos on Reddit comparing map sizes and the quantity of NPC dialogue in a game are a large and viable market, this is certainly a game just like those!

It's big. Very big. And it's beautiful, in a technical sense, in that there's a lot of things in this game and they get drawn at very far-off distances. And there is certainly a lot to do; you can talk to almost anyone, explore almost everywhere, and there are more sidequests and odd jobs lying around than you might ever hope to complete.

It's a shame that almost none of that seems to mean anything. *Crimson Desert* is an empty husk of a game. It gives you so much to do without ever providing a compelling reason for it, and it lets you talk to a world full of characters with nothing interesting to say, in a world where I couldn't care less what is happening or what has happened to it. In trying to copy the outline of better games it has entirely missed the actual reason we loved them: their heart, their spirit, their inventiveness.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/03/20260321222624_1.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/03/20260321163230_1.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/03/20260321164044_1.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/03/20260321221844_1.jpg)

My brief time with the game--I only played for a few hours before realising I had way better things to do with my time--was spent waiting for the fun to start, for the story to get a hook into me, for anyone to say something funny or memorable. Instead the entire time was spent doing– and this is no surprise given the developer's history with the MMO *Black Desert Online*\--what felt like someone else's shopping list; walk here, talk to someone, walk here, fight someone, listen to some utterly lifeless conversations. 

Like, *Crimson Desert* works just like *The Witcher 3*, it has the same shape, but ask anyone what they loved about the latter and they'll give you a very long list of things--fantastic writing, memorable characters with excellent voice acting, interesting designs, funny missions--that made the work worth it, that provided the impetus to nudge your way through a list of chores. *Crimson Desert* only gives you the list and the chores.

Apparently [this game took *seven years* to make](https://www.tweaktown.com/news/110554/pearlabyss-shares-down-30-percent-after-crimson-deserts-launch/index.html?ref=aftermath.site)? And cost over $130 million? All so we could play something that had the skin but not the juice, and which for all that work [still shipped riddled with AI-generated images](https://aftermath.site/crimson-desert-ai-art-images/)? What a waste!

[Crimson Desert Caught Using AI Images, Resulting Apology Written For Suckers‘We sincerely apologize for these oversights’![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/icon/favicon4-199.png)AftermathLuke Plunkett![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/thumbnail/Capture-4.PNG)](https://aftermath.site/crimson-desert-ai-art-images/)