Video Gamers Podcast - Crimson Desert Hype – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace break down the ambitious world of Crimson Desert, one of the most talked-about upcoming video games. From its massive seamless open world and endless boss fights to its wild mix of combat styles, this early look covers why it stands out—and where it might stumble. We dig into the lack of traditional leveling, the overwhelming early hours, and whether its “Elden Ring meets Breath of the Wild” identity works in today’s gaming landscape. If you’re curious whether this massive experience is the next big thing or just another bold swing in video games, this is one gaming episode you don’t want to miss from the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, and Dettmarp   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, PeopleWonder, Bobby S.   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/h2cHKAvSmu Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

fellow Gray Wardens and welcome to the Video Gamers podcast. Crimson Desert is the most hyped game since Cyberpunk 2077 that we can remember in recent memory. Is this just a solo Black Desert Online experience? Why did the world collectively decide to lose their minds on this? And what exactly is this game? Well, on this episode, we're breaking down everything you could possibly want to know about Crimson Desert so that you can decide if it's right for you or not.

Before we do, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh and joining me, he was poised to dive into the world of Pyewell until the world of work decided to pull him away for its launch. Your loss, sucker, it's Ryan. My name is Cliff of the Grey Mains. and I will have my revenge. That's pretty good, right? Yeah, I am oddly awake all of a sudden.

Let me put you to sleep, baby, girl. Oh, yeah. All right, all right. All right, this is going to be this kind of episode, huh? Okay. And joining us, my new bestie for playing games, because he'd never let a little thing like real life get in the way of our true passion of video games, it's A's.

That's correct. Nothing will stop me from playing Crimson Desert except for Project Hail Mary, because that's coming to theaters. Okay. I am, I am taking a two and a half hour break from Crimson Desert to go watch Project Hill Mary in IMAX. Mandatory. I was my daughter on Friday, and I have no issues with that whatsoever, because I am

stoked for this. For me, real quick, though, this kind of feels like, you know, like the anime gatekeepers that are super annoying. Like, I feel like that's where I'm at right now because I'm like, you guys don't even know Project Kilmerry. Like, you guys don't even know. Josh didn't even listen to the book. He just read it like a-

I read the book. Yeah, that's not the same. You were the only human in the world that has ever, like, complained about somebody literally reading the physical copy of the book. The audio book is tenfold better. And I will, I will challenge anyone who says differently that if they've done both. There's no way that the paperback is better than the audio book. I've listened to it six, seven times, but, but I'm excited that it's getting the, the, uh, rightfully

deserved love and attention that it, that it, you know, it should have. So I'm excited. Yeah. Well, Ryan has infected half of our Discord server now, too. They're all, he got people, they're all messaging me. Yeah. And they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited for this movie now. So yeah. All right, well, there you go. There's your little movie tidbit for this episode also. Guys, before we get into everything Crimson Desert, our goal for this episode is we are going to talk about what this game actually is, some of the features of the game, the way that the game will actually play,

the things you can do in this game, about the world of the game. We're actually going to talk about who this game might be for and who should probably avoid this game because this game will have some pain points for people. and if those pain points are a no-go for you, then this might be a game that you want to avoid. So that is kind of our goal for this. The game is coming out in two days, and we thought,

what better time for us to really break this down for everybody out there so that they can understand what Crimson Desert is, what it's not, and what kind of game or this is actually going to be for? So before we do that and we get into the hype, we got some hype of our own, boys, because we have a new supporter of the show

and a huge shout out to Andrew for signing up for rare status. Now, yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, boys, because, you know, we are very active in our community on our Discord server. And I noticed normally we'll shout out the handle for somebody. I reached out to try to clarify this,

but I'm pretty sure that this is Lupo, who, if it is, is one of the best artists that I have seen in a very, very long time. So Lupo, I'm hoping this is you. And if it's not, Andrew, sorry to hijack you or thank you. But I got to say,

Lupo has done some incredible artwork, you know, in regards to the podcast and on his own. And my goodness, dude, you are super talented. Lean into that talent because it is rare in the world.

So thank you, Andrew slash Lupo. Hopefully. hopefully All right And then Ryan I believe you've got a review for us

That you are going to read I do I do I do This one is another five star review Called review Number 900 from locked in Or locked on Blazers And it reads Awesome podcasts

Listen while I'm at work And as an older gamer dad I love to relate to the show You guys do such such I great job ready for more. Thank you. I didn't read that wrong by the way, but we understand. We read them as they write them.

We read them as they write them. I will also take a little bit. I love the review. I love the five stars. I'm sick of being called an older gamer. I'll tell you that much right now. Ryan, you know how we always talk about that honesty and truth in this podcast? Oh, here we go.

We're never going to glaze a game that doesn't deserve to be glazed, right? We're not paid for any of our reviews or thoughts or anything like that. This is true. In the pursuit of honesty, Ryan, you're an older gamer, buddy. I'm an older gamer. Yeah. I'll just take it. Let it out.

Let it out, Ryan. All right. No, I'm just going to hold it and bury it deep down inside. I'm not. So I'm good. Ace is, you can say that for a couple more years, Ace. I got a few more. I'm only 26.

Yeah, but boy, you're going to be 30 and old and gray before you know it, Ace. He's going to blink. And your game, your game boy advance isn't going to work anymore. And then where will you be? I don't know. Probably in the nearest Apple store. All right, boys.

Let's get into Crimson Desert. All right. If you had to rate the world's hype level, the internet's hype level for Crimson Desert on a scale of one to 10, where would you put it? Not your hype level, just the world's hype level? Yeah. This hype level.

level is absurdly high. I have not seen it this high in a long time. Like, I thought GTA 6 would have a high hype level. This might be more hyped than GTA 6 right now. People are fiending. I'm gonna say because it's on, it's on ACE's list. It's zero hype. Nobody likes it.

Oh, yeah, because I'm not. I still can't believe you snake this for me. Why didn't you pay for it, Josh? You could have. I didn't have. I didn't have any money. I would have bought it if I had money. Look what you didn't pay for.

Guys, look at it. Look, sometimes you got to roll the dice, man. And I rolled the dice that neither one of you two turkeys knew anything about Crimson Desert and you weren't going to bid on it. And then Ace comes swooping in and freaking bids it up and then grabs it. And I had other plans. And I'll be honest, at the time, the hype for this game was non-existent. You know, like hardly anybody knew about Crimson Desert. And that's why we're doing this episode.

So because we, I mean, we're a very. video game podcast. We have a video game Discord server that you should be part of because it's over 1,300 gamers strong and it's very active throughout the entire day. And we have people in our server that are going, guys, why is everybody excited about Crimson Desert? What is this game? Like, why is everybody losing their minds?

Or they go, I haven't even seen a trailer for this game yet. I've been seeing that too. I don't even know what this is. I've never heard of this. So, okay. So what we're going to do is, like I said, we're going to break it down. So let's start off what? with what Crimson Desert actually is.

Okay? And I'm going to start off at the source, Crimson Desert, via their PR guy. So straight from the source, describes the game as an open world action adventure game. Okay. So right off the bat, this is not Witcher 3. This is not Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2. Okay. Those are open world RPGs, all right?

And they're very narrative and story focused. and that is not what Crimson Desert is. The best kind of combination, and of course everybody throws out, well, it's like a combination of this game and this game, right? And it's this game with pieces and DNA of this game. And then you kind of go, okay, well, that doesn't help when all you do is name like some of the greatest games. They do that so much in sports. Yeah, of course.

Yeah. So I will say that the greatest, like, reference that I have seen across the board is that this is very much plays in the the style of Breath of the Wild, tears of the kingdom, and Eldon Ring. Okay, and you go, wait a minute, what are those two games have in common? So what do those games have in common, Ace? Yeah, big open worlds that are just ridiculously large to explore,

and there's always something to do. There's never a dull moment. Yep. Ever. Yeah. You know, they have said that the kind of underlying theme for Crimson Desert is discovery and exploration and discovery through exploration and discovery through just simply playing the game, right? And again, this kind of references Breath of the Wild

Wilde, Tears of the Kingdom, Eldon Ring, right? Like, I'm still seeing videos from, from freaking, you know, Tears of the Kingdom with people making these outlandish sonai devices. Yeah, I still see those. Like, that's insane to me. But this is the kind of world that Crimson Desert is trying to be, to where it is saying, here, go out, do whatever you want to do, experiment, right? Like, just try, try different things out, and you might just find out that you're actually able to do a lot of this. Eldon Ring, they are very, very clear. This is not a Dark Souls like combat. The references to Eldon Ring for anybody that's played it are you get put into this gigantic world with very, very little direction.

and you just go and you fight the horse guy and you die a thousand times and then you go, this game is stupid. Why would anybody play this game? Okay. And what happens with that is a lot of people bounce off right away, right? And they go, hey, this game isn't for me,

but you didn't really play the game, right? That was a trap in Eldon Ring. You start to explore the world. What's this little thing over here? Ooh, what's in that nook and cranny over there? I feel like this is the perfect game for Ryan. Oh, definitely. I'm excited.

But this might be the worst game. for Ryan because Ryan's ADD is going to go wild. So like, Ryan, you say one of your favorite games of all time is Skyrim. Yeah. And I'm assuming because you always have something to do in Skyrim, you always have that point of interest you can go explore, that new dungeon you found. Like, is this a good thing for you? Oh, absolutely.

I've been, I mean, there's a reason I've bought Skyrim as many times as I have. there's a reason I love Red Dead as much as I do. The ability to just explore a world and discover all of these amazing things. Every time you look around the corner, it's not just kind of a bare and empty wasteland to just fill up space. Like you find a little door and you're like, oh, could this go to a cave? And then it leads to a whole dungeon and you're like, oh, this is awesome. And it takes up an hour and a half, two hours of your time from this weird little spot. And so having the ability to do things like that, I've been craving that so much because I've, I mean, I've got thousands of hours in both Red Dead and, um, in Skyrim. So like, I've exhausted those resources mostly. I'm sure there's more I haven't seen. But having the thought of, of that again, that being fresh and new and new and exploring something fresh and new with a new character, a new IP, a new world, I'm, I'm all in for it. And just also the additional.

craziness of this game and what you can do, which I'm sure we'll get into. Like, dude, I'm, this is like made for me for sure. Yeah. I actually feel like this is like, kind of like I say, like there are certain games that I feel like like like custom made for Josh. Like I do kind of feel like this is like custom made for for Ryan on this one. I would agree. Um, one of the other references that I want to make because we've mentioned it plays like Breath of the Wild, Zelda, Eldon Ring, that kind of thing is there is no leveling up

system in Crimson Desert. Okay. And what we mean by that is in those types of games, you kind of progress by simply just exploring the world. Right? And it doesn't mean that you're not going to get better gear, right? Yes, you're going to get that cool weapon. You're going to get that cool suit

of armor. You're going to get that new cool combat ability or something like that. But this is not a level-based system, right? You're not just going out slaughtering monsters and hoping to ding that next level. And then now your guy is stronger, right? So this is very important to the gameplay aspect here because I know that a lot of people are thinking this is like RPG based where you

just do achieve levels and then you go to the harder area. But now everything scales because you're stronger and that it's not like that. So you progress in Crimson Desert by simply playing the game, exploring the world, finding gear, uh, learning new skills and things like that. Um, so there is no grind to the leveling up system. And there is also no monster scaling. If you wander a little bit too far, you're going to get wrecked. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here.

I'd love that feeling, guys. Honestly, for me, that is such a good thing because I'm an idiot and I'll try to kill that monster that I'm not supposed to fight for like a dozen times before I kind of go like, all right, I'll be mad. No, no, I can do it. I can do it. I kind of like those indirect barriers of like, oh, I shouldn't go this way. Yeah. Instead of just putting an invisible wall up or.

Like, you can be here, but you can't be here. But you shouldn't be here. But we'll let you, you can try to sneak around and explore a little bit, you know, and then you realize like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm not ready for this area. Yeah, I really do like that style of just letting people kind of wander and explore. And then just getting obliterated by something and then being like, I'll come back. I'll come back later.

I see how it is. Yeah. So another thing that is an important feature for Crimson Desert. is this game is actually built on its own proprietary engine. So with the world of, you know, Unreal 5 now, right? It's like, you know, everything kind of looks the same place, the same, has the same issues with stuttering and performance on some of these things. Crimson Desert went, nope, they have built their own engine.

It's called the Black Space Engine. And the main benefit here is that, and this is proven, it has been tested, is that the game runs freaking incredible. Like, that was the big thing for a lot of people is massive open world, the draw distance you can see for miles and miles in this game. It's going to run like garbage, right? And then every tester that has tested this game said,

it's insane how well this game runs. Like, like, legitimately, like the frame rates, the beauty of this game, the flow of it, there's no stuttering, there's no, you know, it's like, they're basically, praising it to the highest high as they can to say, guys, a game like this that looks this good and is this big should not run this good. And in an age where we are not optimizing games very well, this is a freaking breath of fresh air to me, man. That's a relief to hear, especially if you

don't have the most high-end specs or you know, you have the previous gen console, like you have a PS5 instead of PS5 Pro, like knowing that it'll still run flawlessly is great to hear. Especially since the game is 135 gigabytes. It is a big game. That is a massive game. It's big. It's no Call of Duty 150, right? Yeah. That's pretty close.

I kind of expect it though. Like, honestly, the game's filled with dialogue. Yeah. Cutsenes. It's got amazing graphics. Like, dude, honestly, this world is gorgeous to me, dude. Yeah. Like, gorgeous.

So I kind of get the size of this game because the size of this game warrants, like, the actual file size being this large. I get it, but I have concerns about future updates really bloating the size of it to like pass 200. But if it works, like if it's the, the, if it's that good to warrant it, it's fine. Yeah, exactly. Like, like, you know, a lot of these games, they're poorly optimized and they're just like bloated games that have too much filler and too much gunk. And it's, you know, 100 gigs for something that should be 45. You know, there's just so much there.

It's not optimized right. And if this is what like Josh was saying that people are saying, it's, It's super optimized. It runs flawlessly. And the world is as big as we think it's going to be. Like, that's awesome, man. For 135 gigs, you know that they utilized every gig properly. And then anything we get in the future is probably going to be just as such.

So, yeah, dude, I'm stoked for this. And I mean, it's been in development for like eight years. So they've had their time. And for them to just be like, nope, we're doing our own thing. We're going to make our own engine. And we're going to make this right the way we want it. it like I there's something to be said about that so I'm I'm so stoked this started as an m-m-o didn't it it's the idea started as an MMO so these are the same developers that made

black desert online you can you know similar name right which is an MMO and is still active and current and then they kind of said hey we're going to make Crimson Desert and they did start off by approaching it from the aspect of it being an MMO and then they went you know what we actually think we could make this like a really really good single player game. And so they scrapped all the MMO elements and went, we kind of have the foundation and the basis for this because we went so big in our planning. But like, what if we make this a solo game? And they kept that kind of size and scale to it. So I mean, yeah, but it did start off, you know, at inception and maybe even early development as it intended to be an MMO. Now, one other

thing before we, before we get into some of the features of this game is, I mean, almost universal. because everybody goes, well, this sounds too good to be true. Almost universally, people did say, hey, game runs beautifully, looks beautiful, combat's great, there's a little bit of jank. You know, there's a little bit of that kind of awkward jank here and there. It's not like super prevalent, but, you know, when you have a game of this size and scale, you're going to run into a little bit of jank here and there on like, not everything is going to work flawlessly because there's so many systems in this game

that not everything is going to be just perfectly flawless. And so they did say, you got to be okay with a little bit of that. It's not game breaking. It's not super distracting, but just understand. Not everything is going to work at the exact same level. I'm okay with that. I grew up in the old school jank is kind of familiar to me. Stalker too.

Like when we did our deep dive of stuff. That's what I thought of immediately. Like, I mean, there's some comfort in having a little bit of jank in a game. And sometimes a little bit of jank means that you can experiment and kind of go like, how can I abuse this jank, right? Like I find it to be fun as long as it's not an infuriating performance issue type jank, then a little bit jank here and there is nothing. As long as it doesn't soft lock me, I don't care.

As long as it doesn't gate me out of progress or trap me somewhere and I have to restart and lose hours and hours of progress. Totally fine with jank. And they'll patch stuff in, I'm sure, and they'll clean it up, you know, as it goes. you know, I'm sure they're going to get inundated like 10fold in the first week. One thing I did notice, too, speaking of a jank is, it made me laugh is, speaking of the MMO thing in the jank is like when you watch some of the cutscenes, like it looks like an MMO cutscene where you can see like,

it's just a certain look that you see it and you're like, yeah, that looks a little weird, you know, you can see it a little bit. But the world is so beautiful, but then it's funny, like the cut scenes look the way they do. Yeah. Yeah. All right, I'll tell you what, what I'm going to do, because we got so much to cover guys. There's so much here. So I want to talk about the features.

I'm just going to run through a few features. And then if there's something where you're like, hold up. Let's talk about that for a second. All right. Let's do that. So here are some of the features of Crimson Desert. There are 76 boss fights. Hold up.

Hold up. Wait a minute. First one, 76, dude, right off the bat. 76 boss fights. in this game, dude. Have they confirmed if it's a one and done thing or if they respawn?

I don't know. I do know that you can learn moves from various bosses by observing. I did know that, yeah. So that is one of the features in the game, and I don't know if that means

that there are 76 learnable moves from every boss in this game, but there are a plethora of boss. Josh's skill tree, like brain is going right now.

He's like, oh, we're going to get to that. Don't you worry. Don't you worry. One of the things, and this is a cost of, for a lot of people, okay? This is one of the ones where this kind of ties into this game may not be for you, all right?

Is a lot of people said that the initial eight hours, so six to eight hours of this game are very complicated. This game does not hold your hand. Okay. There is no yellow paint. There is no explaining and giving you super big hints on how to solve this puzzle. There are a lot of different elements to this game. We're going to actually get into some of those things here in a little bit. But when it's a gigantic world, there are factions.

There are, you know, there's just a ton, dude. They swung for the absolute fences on the amount of content in this game. And anytime you do that, they are not going to spend six hours of a tutorial to kind of try to teach you everything. So a lot of people have said, hey, the game initially, there's a learning curve. and it's a fairly steep learning curve. And if you are not okay with that, you are probably going to bounce off this game within the first few hours.

If you're not okay with putting in the time for this game to really simmer and cook and show you everything that it's got. And so if you're the kind of person where you go, bro, if a game can't hook me in the first 30 minutes, I'm out. Right? And if that's you,

you're going to have a major problem with this game unless you go into it with the mindset of, I understand what I'm getting myself into. I'm willing to be patient because the payoff is going to be worth it. Yeah. I think if you've played like Breath the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, though, you're kind of used to that starting, like getting the ball rolling, you know, getting things figured out.

I think that's a good reference ace because how many people 15 hours into Tears of the Kingdom realize what they can actually do with these Zonai devices and stuff. That was me. Right. That's exactly me. I was not good on Tears of the Kingdom at all. I didn't like it. I was talking trash to Paul and I'm like,

this game is dumb. It's bland and boring. And then once I realized how to play the game, I know Josh never figured that out, but once I realized it, then it's a whole new game. It's literally something completely different when you figure out what you can do

and what you're able to accomplish within that world. And then it clicks. Yeah, and then it clicks. And then you're like, oh, I love this. This is awesome. So, yeah, I think this, yeah, if you're not one that is able to put in the time or kind of really kind of settle into a game that you're, or a world that you're going to experience for a while, like it may not be for you. But if you can, I have a feeling this thing is going to pop off for sure. I like to reference The Witcher 3.

And again, this game is not Witcher 3. Let's be clear about that. right, but in, you know, we tell everybody, Witcher 3 starts off slow until you get to the Bloody Baron quest and kind of go through that, then you see where this game is heading and how incredible it can be. But that's six hours in to the Witcher 3, right? One of the greatest games ever made, but you've got to be willing to put in six hours before really starts to open up and then you go, okay, I get it.

Same thing with Red Dead 2, right? The infamous snow level. Okay, that's only 45 minutes, but, you know, it's pretty darn boring, right? You got to be willing to truck through that to get to the good stuff. So, cyberpunk. Like, honestly,

until you get to, like, the, the heist part of cyberpunk, like, it's a good game, but you kind of go,

I don't see what the hype is, and then you do the heist, and then the game takes off, right? Like, but that, that's what, three, four hours into cyberpunk at that point.

So if you want to get the most out of this, you have to be willing to be patient. If you are not a patient person, this may not be the game for you. Okay? So, you know, that's the best way that we can describe it,

because we see a lot of people go, I don't know if this, games for me. I don't know if I want to play it. And that's what we're trying to do with this episode is kind of give you the knowledge you need to decide whether this game is for you or not. A couple other quick fire things. There's a bounty system, just like in Red Dead Redemption, too. You can go bounty, honey, Ryan. I know you love. I'm so excited. I love bounty honey. I know Ryan's excited for that. Guys, have you ever heard of a game this size that has destructible environments? No. No, but did you also see how complicated the destructible environments are?

Yeah, buddy. Depending on the impact, will depend on the size of the shrapnel. Yeah. Which is insane. Yeah. This game is absolutely, like we're not going to,

there's no way we can touch on all the little features on this. Oh, there's so much. That alone is crazy. So. You got to watch like all the 20 minute videos on YouTube. I mean, we watched a lot.

We watched a lot of those, dude. A lot of them. I think I've watched like three hours worth of videos. So the world of Pyewell is massive. I have seen a lot of misinformation out there, because people love just saying, hey, oh, this is the size of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Eldon Ring combined. And it's like, no, it's not.

It's not. I did hear, and again, this is a grain of salt because I didn't vet everything. But I have heard more often than not that most people say it is actually larger than the world of Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2. I have heard twice the size of Skyrim quite a few times. I have heard that, yeah, I've heard reference that it's much larger than Skyrim. So I don't know about two times. That's so big. That's massive.

And it takes like four hours to ride horseback across the entire world. That would be crazy. But they have a solution for that later in the game that we'll also talk about here in a minute. There are five major regions to the overall world map. So you are going to get different biomes. They're going to be massive. We've seen some of this in the previews. Obviously there's a desert region.

There is a snowy region that I think looks beautiful. And I think they're saving some of the other stuff for us as well. There are major cities. that you can go through little villages, little towns, that sort of stuff, but a absolutely massive world to explore as well. You are the main protagonist, but there are two side characters that you can play as that change up the gameplay. Now, you are not getting their stories.

They are not like main characters in the game. They're not your party members necessarily. They are side characters that you do meet and do follow you that you can take control of and play as to get a variety in the gameplay in the combat, but there is no real story connected to those individual characters that you, uh, that you tell through playing those characters. That's my understanding with this is that if you want to change up your combat style, just kind of play as somebody different, but they are not going to progress the main story like

you would as the, you know, Cliff, I think is actually his name, the Grey Warden. That is the main character. Yes, that's my name. Yes. He's the last one. You don't have a story. They also have different ways of traversing. So the girl that you can play as has like a parasol that has like blades on it,

almost like a helicopter where you see her flying through the world with that. I forgot about that. Yeah. So I mean, they have they have thought of everything on this. And then finally, um, this absolutely massive world that you are going to playing in is also completely seamless,

guys. There is insane. loading screens at all. Like at all, unless it's maybe loading to a cutscene or something maybe. But like there's not like, I'm in a new region. Let me load this region. Please wait. Even like if you were to go into like a dungeon or a tower or anything, it just goes right in.

Just right in. It sounds like. Yeah, just like Eldon Ring. What? Man, I am curious just because I don't understand like the development behind it all. Like how much more does it take? to develop the ability to do that within your game than to make a cutscene. Like, you know, is it like an extra six months of progress for each area?

Like, it's got to be crazy. It's probably ridiculous. It's probably something insane to like make it be seamless. But that, I mean, what do we play games for? We play it for immersion to escape the real world and have fun and have a good time. And in any way that you can continue that without breaking that third wall without like having to have like a loading screen, I am all for it. I think this is so cool.

It just goes again to like, I'm fine if it's a million, bajillion gigs. If I have to buy an extra hard drive, like to be able to play it, if it's like that good and it's got that crazy immersion, I'm all for it.

I'm already looking at another hard drive. Give me another terrible, baby. I'll look at the prices right now, boys. All right, listen, we got to take a quick break. We're going to get into the combat. There's a billion different things to do. So stuff to do in this game.

We'll talk about, a few more of the cons on this. We're going to have to speed this up, boys, but we've got a big list to get through, and we're going to tackle that right after this break. One plus one equals more of the greatest stories. Hulu on Disney Plus.

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9-88 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. All right, guys, we are talking about Crimson Desert. Now combat, this is the meat and potatoes of this game. This is what they've shown off time and time again. And this is the main concern for a lot of people is if the combat ain't fun, then I'm just running around and this is a walking simulator, right? So here's the thing with the combat. And this gets me so excited guys.

Oh, my goodness. There is a absolute gargantuan number of ways to approach combat in Crimson Desert. And they know that this was the focus of the game playing. They know that this is important. They know that variety is important. I'm just going to run through this. And again, stop me if you guys want to talk about something. Okay, there are a myriad of weapons.

You've got sword, spears, axes, great hammers, twin blades, daggers, bows. And they all play very differently. They all have their own combos. They all have their own moves and animations and powers and things like that. You also have guns. You have wrestling. There is hands-in-hand combat. I'll stop you there at the wrestling.

That's what I want to talk about. Because I was going to stop. Oh my gosh. I've never been more excited to not fight with a weapon in a video game. Thank you. I love it. I'm going wrestling, dude. I'm going to beat the crap out of everyone.

Dude. Watching that guy grabbed that other dude by the legs and just hammer throw him off a cliff was the best thing ever. Dude, you see in one of the previews that were the guy, like, you're fighting like eight guys at once. And then you just grab this dude and freaking suplex him. Into the ground, dude. Like, what game lets you suplex the enemies, man? You know what I mean? Another one, you're on a cliff,

and you go running off the cliff and you jump, and you flying splash, like the guys that are on the ground and they all go flying away, you know? And it's like, what is this? Like you said, Ace Hammer throwing, they didn't show it, but one guy confirmed that there is a flying leg takedown where you put a leg around the neck,

like a la, you know, John Wick kind of thing, and then you like, you fling him over. Exactly. They said, like, this is the crazy part. That's just the, like, the hand-to-hand combat part of this game. That's not counting what you can do with a spear or what you can do with twin blades. You know, there's magic in the game if you want to go to that route. Yeah.

There are elemental infusions for various things. And all of these aspects come with their own animations, their own flashy, and it looks sick, dude. It looks great. The wrestling moves, like, shake the ground and clouds of dust to, like, pop up, when you suplex somebody, lightning hits the ground and you see the crackling, like, spread out across the grass and stuff like that. It's like, it's one of those things where if, it's like, uh, I mean, obviously we talk about big, expansive worlds and the ability to explore. And that's cool, um, for like a walking simulator. But if you have the ability to have really awesome combat combined with that, you're going to seek out that.

You're going to look for people to fight. You're going to look for areas to go like, oh, look, a bandit camp or, oh, this or that. And you can go and you're looking forward to the combat. You're looking forward to fighting people. And that's like, that's what the game is. And that's how you explore. You'll explore through combat, explore through battle. And you'll level up.

You'll get better items or not level up. Get new moves. You'll upgrade. Yeah, you'll get new moves. You'll upgrade things. You'll get better gear. You'll get money. You know, I'm sure.

Like, there's, there's, you know, it'll just, it'll be a natural. draw and advance to the game that you want to do and you're not just forced to do, you know? Bro, I'm going to Tokyo drift my horse into a crowd of enemies so I can boomba-stomp a tank. So one thing to be clear about the combat on this, because I did see this address and I think this is important, is this game is not a button spamer game. This is not Spider-Man 2 where you're surrounded by 8 to 10 guys and you're just parrying and dodging and stuff like that. this is very much more of a combo and intentional input type style of combat okay they were very clear this is not Dark Souls

so let's be clear on that but they were also very clear to say this is not a button spammer where you were just smashing A and B over and over because that gets repetitive and old after a while to me this is a bonus can I get can I get Leon's hatchet I'll just I'll just parry everything just Perry everything so a lot in a lot of the previews

and trailers we see you know we see cliff fighting you know six to eight people at once but there are also the boss fights that we talked about there are epic one-on-one fights that occur in this game as well so this is not just slaying and fighting hordes of people you will face off against very tough enemies that you have to face one-on-one which again i love that because that variety of kind of bouncing between let me fight a bunch of guards or bandits okay now there's this guy that is super strong and He's like me and I really got to focus on this particular fight I love as well because again, Ryan, what you said is adds that variety to the combat and the gameplay. Do you know what that kind of reminds me of? It reminds me of the nemesis system from Shadow of Mortor where you'd just be like, you'd be in the-

Dirty to me. Talk dirty to me, Ace. Dude, what a game with a phenomenal combat system. Exactly. Like you would be in the crowd, you know, slashing down goblins and orcs and stuff and then out comes a general or something. You're like, oh, no, here we go. Yeah. Okay, and if all that wasn't enough about the combat guys,

you do have variety to switch weapons mid-combat. So if you like one style and you're like, but I don't want to be locked into a spear, guess what? You can switch weapons mid-combat and now you can change up the way that you do that fight. And on top of that, that's not even counting the mounted combat in this game.

So you can fight while mounted, And let me just give you just a few of the mounts that we know. You can mount a war, which is a wolf for those that don't know. Horses, bears, dragons, flying mecks, like a velociraptor-looking thing. And you can do combat from all of these. And they all have their different style of mounted combat as well. So I am very much looking forward to the combat in this game. Now, I did see something.

And again, this is a precaution to people where they said, look, if you want a button masher or you don't like in-depth combat systems and you are not willing to take advantage of the amount of variety that this game gives you in its combat, you might start to feel like this combat is a little bit of a drag. If you are not willing to experiment

and you're not willing to get into these various button combos and learning these different moves and the kind of learning curve that goes with that, and so you just default to some basic style of fighting guys, it might start to feel a little bit repetitious to you after a while because combat is a main focus in this game. And so that was like, I thought that was kind of neat because it's like, look, there's a lot to learn

with all these different moves and styles and mounted combat and this and that. But if you don't really want to take advantage of that, you might start to fall into this repetition where combat starts to feel a little bit mundane after a while. But that's more on you as the player, not the game, because the game is offering you a lot of ways to... Yeah, you've got options.

You've got plenty of options. What do you mean? I can't get a square, square, square triangle. What? What? All right, let's get into some of the crazy stuff that you can do. I say crazy, but just some of the side stuff in this game. Okay, so, you know, there are full-fledged dungeons. This is a beautiful open world, but people said, what about dungeon?

They go, yeah, we got plenty of dungeons. Don't worry. There are puzzles. I am somebody that loves having puzzles in a game like this. It's a good distraction. It's fun. You're rewarded for it. And they say the puzzles, not super easy either, guys.

They don't hold your hands. It's not like you have that person that's going, move that. thing over there and then put it over there. Like you actually have to use your brain and look around and kind of go, okay, what am I supposed to do here? I know not everybody loves that. So if you're that kind of person, that might be a negative for you.

For me, again, that's a positive for this. You have the whole sky world thing, broken up islands that you can visit and explore all the tiers of the kingdom. And they said they're massive and there's a bunch of things to do on these. Camp life. This game has an absolutely robust camp life. you can cook.

There is animal husbandry so you can get into like having, you know, growing a flock of sheep. And then what you do with those sheep and tending those and like selling them to vendors and butchering them for meat so that you can cook and things like that. There's horse taming. You can send NPCs on missions. So when you get a base and you kind of liberate a base, you can get into this whole base building aspect where you can actually customize your base, design your house, which full-fledged like furniture placement and all this stuff. You can send your NPCs out on missions.

And then you can actually watch them go on the mission if you're so inclined because you see the little guy go out. And it just fully plays out his little mission for you. And you kind of watch it from this overhead perspective. I'm never sending him out again. Yeah, I know. Right. Lots and lots of mini games.

Again, I don't know if this is like a little bit of that MMO flare that maybe they started with or they just went, guys, we're shooting for the moon on this. But like there are, you know, you can learn full-fledged wrestling. one-on-one wrestling moves. There are fight clubs that you can participate in. Gambling. Ryan, we know you like gambling. You know, all kinds of different little mini-games and stuff like that.

We mentioned the bounty system where you can go and track down wanted criminals and collect the bounties on those. There's multiple factions to work for in this game. So you have, you know, tons of different factions that you can do work for and try to level up with and things like that. And then finally, a good boy, Paul, his favorite thing. Fishing. Yeah.

Fishing. Now it's a video game. Now it's a video game. It's super starved valley. So if you are somebody that loves getting distracted on these little mini games and skills and things like that, there's mining. You know, I mean, it's just an absolute plethora of side things to get distracted with if you don't want to focus on the main story or just exploring and things like that as well.

It sounds like this game. game has literally everything that somebody could want and that sounds too good to be true. But like I have not heard anything opposite of that in any of the dozens of 20 minute videos and previews and first looks and all that stuff that we have looked into. Yeah. Okay. I will say it was not on this list, but you could also Pied Piper yourself an army of rats, which was that is ace's number one.

Which is my goal. That is my goal to get the biggest army of rats. This is where I wish it was MMO, so then I could just come and kill your whole army. No, my rats. Oh, no. I don't, yeah. The fact that you can do that in this game is says everything. Like legitimately just kind of says how many different options you have.

Okay. We talked about the mounts. You know, at some point in the game, you're going to get to ride on a dragon and just torch like some kind of city or something that you were assaulting. That part looks freaking awesome to me. You get to pilot some crazy big daddy flying mech robot thing. And then you're flying around with flame throwers and gatling guns. And you're fighting off like a bunch of people in a city. Like set pieces where you're doing these different things that change up the gameplay once again.

These all look awesome, dude. Does the setting of this game confuse you guys as well, like what we're like looking at here? Because I've seen knights. I've seen gladiators. I've seen bandits. I've seen Vikings. I've seen goblins. at all, man.

And then I see steampunk creations like golems and I'm like, where am I? You're in the world of Pyewell, man. A blend of science and magic, man. How freaking cool is that? It's the craziest setting I think

I've ever seen for a video game, genuinely. It's what gets me excited because it goes, guys, if there's this much in the game that I can get distracted with, like, I love this so much. Now, that can be a little worrisome. That can be a little worrisome.

And so here's, I want to talk about, and we're going to focus on this for a minute. So again, we're not trying to be negative about the game, but we're just trying to inform the listeners out there about what might not work in this game. Okay. So here are some of the cons that people have talked about that you need to be aware of. The lack of hand holding. This game does not use yellow paint. It does not hold your hand. It doesn't have, you know, 50 different tutorial pop-ups that are going to gently guide you through everything in the first few hours of this game.

to some people, this will be a positive. To some people, this will be a negative big time. You know, if you were the kind of person that likes to experiment and test and explore and see what a game can do, I think you'll find that this system is really rewarding. But if you were somebody that's like, bro, I don't want to put in this much time to learn these systems. This may not be the game for you. All right. Tied to that is the fact that almost universally people say this game takes a while to get going.

With this many systems and this many side options and this deep combat system that it has and the faction systems and, you know, the base building and all this stuff, this game can absolutely feel overwhelming at first because it also doesn't spend the time to explain all of those systems. Again, I'll repeat, it doesn't hold your hand on any of these things. And so it just expects you the player to kind of figure it out. All right. So you do have to be willing to be patient with it and give it time to evolve. if you're not willing to do that, you might have a hard time with this. And you might be like somebody that says,

hey, I don't understand the hype for this game. I tried it. I don't like it at all. I feel like I wasted $70. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, $70, it's a big, big number. But also, if it's $70 you really like it, this could be the one game you bought that lasts you all year.

It's that massive. Yeah. It would be the one game you just spend the rest of your year playing. All year or more. Go ahead. It's like Red Dead. too where you can just keep going back and try different things and hunting and then

fishing and then let me go do this bounty and I wonder can I tie this guy up throw him on my horse, ride them to the swamps and feed him to an alligator yes you can. I don't ask me how I know that but I'm saying yes you can you know and so if that sense of like testing and like fooling

and fiddling with a game like if that's something that you appreciate then I think Crimson Desert is really going to resonate with you. There are a lot of puzzles and like I said earlier they don't explain the puzzle They expect that you are going to figure out what the puzzle needs and kind of experiment and then go from there. So if you were somebody that does not like puzzles at all in your game, there are a good bid in Crimson Desert that you need to be willing to get through. So again, that could be a positive for some people, but a negative for others.

And one of the main things, and this is straight from the developers themselves, is they said, we expect that players are going to experiment with our game and that they are going to, through that experimentation, learn about things and then share it with their friends. and so that again kind of that sense of community I think we're going to see a gazillion reels in the coming weeks where it's like look what you can do in Crimson Desert that nobody figured out nobody saw I was actually going to

I was going to I'm glad you brought that up because I was actually thinking with the success of Tears of the Kingdom and all of that do you think they tailored some of this stuff towards the ability to do certain crazy things

for clips and reels and create this kind of social media kind of trend where you can show like the crazy things you're doing within this game. Yeah, I mean, I think yes, I don't know if they intentionally did that, but if you create a world where people can experiment, I think naturally they're going to find

like neat things to do. And so that's a testament to the game itself where if you make it a sandbox, people are going to build a castle, you know, or they're going to build a tunnel or they're going to bury them. or something, you know, where it's like, what can I do? Like, you gave me these tools.

Now what can I do with them? I will say, I haven't heard even a single instance of this game having any kind of fast travel. I'm sure it does. And the fast travel might be the fact that you can fly on your own. You get a flying cape. You get this grapple hook that we've seen in almost every video recently where you can just pull a tree and then the tree slingshots you across the world.

So I don't know if there's like loading fast travel where it's like you teleport from point A to point B or if they just expect that you're going to start flying everywhere. I'm just wondering if they're going to do the same things like Dragon's Dogma 2, where fast travel was very limited. Oh, gosh, I hope not. I really hope not. I really hope not. That was interesting in theory and then really terrible in gameplay as well.

Okay. And then I did touch on this, but with combat specifically as the game progresses, combat can get more and more complicated with the number of inputs and combo buttons that you've got to do and stuff like that and just the sheer number of moves at that point. You know, let's be honest, if you've unlocked 30 different new moves from boss fights, plus the different moves that go with the weapons and the different combinations that you can unlock, like some people were saying that this almost approaches like a street fighter type button input, where it's like light attack, heavy attack, back in light attack, forward in heavy attack,

jump in heavy attack to pull off this insane combo. They're saying like, that actually exists in this game. It doesn't mean you have to play it that way. but for some people the combat as it progresses might start to feel a little bit overwhelming. And again, if you dumb it down, it might start to feel a little bit too repetitive. So there's probably a fine line there. But again, they're giving the tools to the players to say, hey, if you want to do it like this, take advantage of it.

But if you don't, then again, it might not fully resonate with you like it would with some people. Okay. And then last but not least, the control scheme. This is the number one complaint that I have seen with people. When you have a thousand different things to do in a game, how do you button map all of these different things? How do you even map that? Right?

Like how do you button map this versus that? And so a lot of people said, hey, the control scheme in this game is not the most intuitive. You know, it makes sense with how many different systems there are, but it definitely takes them getting used to. It takes some time building up the muscle memory. the game does try to approach this with this thing that they call focus mode

to where if you are trying to like precision jump from one platform to another you press a button which pulls up a little cursor that kind of floats over the ground and highlights an area and then you say yes that's what I want now this could be interacting with an object it could be jumping to a specific point

but it's almost like a it's almost like a separate mouse pointer right like built into the game where you have to activate it, move it to what you want to do, and then kind of push the button, and then the context of that will just kind of fire off. That sounds horrible. It sounds so...

This is why a lot of people have said, hey, the control scheme and this... Now, this isn't everything, mind you. You know what I mean? So one good example somebody gave. They're doing this boss fight. You're fighting this guy. You knock him down.

He goes down to a knee. And in this boss fight, he's been knocking over pillars, right? So you would think, think that you would just run up to one of the fallen pillars, push A, your guy hoists it. You push A again and he throws it, right, at the guy to do extra damage to the guy. And they're saying that would be the intuitive system, but it's not the intuitive system in this game. So for this, you knock the guy down. He falls down to one knee.

You can tell it's time to do something. You look at the pillar. You pull up the focus mode. Put your cursor on the pillar, push the button to activate it. And then your guy will pick the pillar up. Then you aim the pillar at the bad guy. push the button again and then throw it at the guy. You know,

and so it can feel a little bit janky. It can feel a little bit slow. Not immersive, slow. And this is like, this is where people said. Now look, five hours into the game, this is all going to be second nature, right?

Like you're just, you're going to have done it a dozen times and it's just going to feel normal at that point. But at first, the control scheme is going to feel wonky to a lot of people. And that is the number one complaint that most people had was just, I don't know if there's a better way around it,

but this is what it is at the moment, you know? And so that was one of the big negatives. And they said, look, if you're not willing to kind of develop that muscle memory, you're going to have a hard time in the beginning with this. That's fair. It's fine. I mean, to that, it's like, it's fine to get complicated, but also you don't want it to make it to where you push off too many people.

You know, you don't want to push off people away that can, you know, want to just have a little bit simpler combat. Yeah. This might be something that I could see them addressing in like patches and stuff like that. Yeah. As I can see this being fixed in the future. When you get too, when you, it's one of those things where you like if you're,

you have a great idea and in theory, you know, like, oh, we can do this and this and this will stack onto that. But it just, and it's too complicated and it's just better to sometimes things are just better, you know, when they're simple.

You know, burgers are still burgers for a reason. and it's meat and a bun, you know, like it's simple and it's easy and it's good. Pizza. Yeah. Same thing. Delicious and easy. Yeah, exactly. So all right, boys, well, listen, that is everything Crimson Desert.

You know what to expect from this game. You know what you might struggle with. You can tell the grandeur that they have shot for in this. The one positive thing that gets me really excited is almost universally. Everybody that got to play the preview event went by the end. of this five to six hours, I was craving more of this game. Like I cannot wait to see where this goes. You know, it's going to be something special.

Is this game going to be for everybody? Absolutely not. One last thing before we get out of here, boys, because we are going to be deep diving this. It's going to take us a few weeks to really get this game, you know, to get familiar with it and all that stuff. I want us to predict our individual scores on this. There we go.

Oh, brother. I am fully, fully bought into the hype on this. All this research that we did for this episode only got me more excited and I was already excited. I'm saying my prediction is a 9.4 for this game as my rating coming out of this. So that is my prediction for this. I hope I'm not disappointed. Ace, what do you think? I'm slightly higher than you.

My prediction for this is a 9.6. part of that is just because I drafted it myself and I wanted to be really, really good so I can rub it in your face. That's fair. Honesty there, Ace, we love it. But also, I'm very excited. Yeah. I will say this game, like I said, is, and you said, that is probably Taylor made for me. I'm very excited to see kind of where it goes. My brain immediately goes to like a 9.2.

So I have a little concerns with some of the stuff. I don't want to deal with it getting overly complicated just for the sake of it. Just like we say hot things for the sake of being hot is not good for food. So yeah, 9.2, I hope it's better than that.

And I will more than happy to be disappointed as far as my score being too low. I'll raise it up. I'm going to make a prediction here that this is either going to be game of the year or biggest flop of the year for a lot of people.

Yeah. I can understand. And this is the big worry is that the hype level's too high. The game's going to be overly complicated. The button, you know, the control scheme's not great. It takes too long to get going. There's really not that great of a story. We didn't talk about the story because honestly, there's not the focus of this game.

You know, and so I do think that there are some obstacles that it's going to have to try to overcome to get there. But I do think for a lot of people, they're going to go, I don't get this at all. This is not what I thought this was going to be because they're either not willing to put in the time. Or it's just, it truly is just overly complicated for no reason. And then that can put off a lot of people. And I think that's going to be its biggest challenge.

The game is beautiful. I mean, my goodness, this game is gorgeous, dude. It's stunning. It is absolutely stunning. The number of things to do in it is staggering. I love the idea of just go out, go forth and explore. You know, like I love games like that. I personally can have a little bit of a hard time with that with getting too distracted. And then I just fall off after 40 hours because I don't even remember where I

was on the main quest kind of thing. You know, so we'll see. But we're going to put in our time on this. There you go, everybody. You should know whether you're interested in Crimson Desert now or not. You know, if you're not, probably in the minority, that's okay. Not every game is for everybody. But for us, we're in, baby.

I have not been this excited for a game in a long time, people. So there you go. All right, listen, if you haven't done so already, please follow the show. Hit that plus button, that follow button in either Apple Podcasts. or Spotify or whatever your podcast app is. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, please take a few seconds to leave us a review. They really do matter. We like to read them on the show, but it helps other gamers find a really awesome gaming

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It's a big episode. But this is the end of the episode, everybody. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya. Peace out.