It would be easy to take a quick look at Crimson Desert and assume it’s another fantasy action game where you hack and slash your way through enemies with repeated presses of the attack button. And if you equip your protagonist, Kliff, with a sword, you can certainly do that. But tap two of your controller’s face buttons together and he’ll lunge, thrusting the blade directly forward. If you then press both the light and heavy attack buttons at the same time, he’ll transition into a powerful, magic-infused overhead slam, bringing his sword down in an arc of dizzying particle effects. There’s more than one way to swing a sword, basically – and that applies to everything in your combat arsenal.
Transition from aiming a bow into a dodge roll and you’ll trigger a brief window of medieval Matrix slow motion, perfect for scoring a headshot. Cast a spell at the apex of a jump and you’ll launch yourself into the air, riding the energy of the magic’s blast (do it twice more to climb even higher). And, in perhaps the most entertaining example, hold two face buttons in conjunction with shifting the direction of the left analogue stick to unleash a variety of increasingly amusing wrestling moves, from simple grapples to human hammer throws.
For this month’s IGN First, we spoke to the design team at Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss to learn how they crafted this deep, multi-layered combat system. The very first thing they said was both surprising and helped contextualize everything: one of the key inspirations for Crimson Desert’s combat was retro arcade games like Samurai Showdown, Final Fight, and King of Fighters. Suddenly, all those multi-button combos and linked moves make much more sense.
But those fighting game combos are not necessarily the thing that Pearl Abyss intended to replicate. The team cites the strong sense of impact that comes with each blow, both inflicted and received, as a key aspect they wanted to capture. That’s clear not just in the visuals, but in the crunchy audio – the sound design team directly references Capcom as an inspiration. But across the 10 different boss battles I’ve fought so far, plus plenty more skirmishes in the open world, it’s clear that there’s more to it than that. Fighting game characters have access to many, many different moves that can be chained together to create unique approaches and strategies. Open world action games, on the other hand, typically have a much more restrained move set – a dodge, attack, and counter, for instance. But despite being a fantasy open world game itself, Crimson Desert’s long list of combat moves seems to be gunning for the breadth of options that fighting games thrive on.
Kliff’s ever-expanding ability tree means there’s a multitude of ways to approach any fight. It’s not just ranged vs melee, but the more minute choices within those options. Will you weave kicks and suplexes into your swordfight? Channel lightning down your blade? Use whistling arrows to summon artillery strikes? The important takeaway here is that Pearl Abyss refuses to provide any real strict definition for Crimson Desert’s combat system – unlike something like Batman: Arkham, there’s no rhythm or pattern to follow. The combat team told me that they had no interest in creating a game where you have to respond to on-screen prompts by pressing specific buttons, the kind of system we’ve seen in games like Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, and both Marvel’s Avengers and Spider-Man games. Instead, the studio aims to fulfill a player’s fantasies by allowing them to do whatever they want in any situation.
That arguably makes Crimson Desert’s approach to battle a bit loose, and for some, the distinct lack of rules or rhythm may be frustrating. There are no hard counters for particular enemies, for instance, nor any kind of strict rock, paper, scissors relationships between different attack or defence types. A particular weapon may be stronger against shielded enemies, for instance, but there’s no requirement for you to use it. The same applies to bosses – while they certainly have attack patterns that can be memorised and weaknesses that can be exploited, Pearl Abyss has no interest in demanding you pay attention to that. The team believes any method of attack should be valid (within reason – you can’t swing a 500-pound monster by its ankles, of course.)
This “there if you want it, but no worries if you don’t” approach extends out into the world itself. The BlackSpace engine that powers Crimson Desert is able to simulate elemental reactions, so water can either freeze or conduct electricity when struck by the correct spell, while wood will burn and smoulder when set alight. The combat team cites the modern Legend of Zelda games as inspiration for this, in which there’s constant interaction between you and the environment. But this is very much a system that you can master and exploit if you choose to, rather than a core component of combat. For instance, there won’t be a boss battle where you have to freeze water to hold your foe in place, or coax them into a metal grid you can then electrify with a lightning spell.
Kliff is not a wizard, and so his spells come courtesy of a bracelet that grants him simple mastery over fire, ice, and lightning. But new weapons and gear help expand his ability set further than the unlocks on your skill tree. There’s a spear, for instance, which opens up like a propeller and blasts enemies with bursts of wind like a deadly Airzooka, and a sword that summons an angry genie-like creature. The further you progress, though, the wilder the options become. Kliff is able to ride a number of mounts, which in the early hours are simple horses with no remarkable talents. But head into territory held by The Black Bears and you’ll be able to saddle up on a massive grizzly, which can swipe at foes with sharpened claws, effectively thinning out herds of barbarians.
Fast forward a few hours and things become stranger still. Your simple horse could be traded for a raptor. Yes, you can ride on the back of a literal dinosaur. If you prefer your scaly mounts to fly and breathe fire, then Crimson Desert also has that covered, too – fantasy’s most important creature is present and correct here, and in the game’s later hours you’ll be able to command Tristar the dragon, who’ll swoop in at your beck and call. But that’s not the wildest option. Dispelling any notion that this is a typical high fantasy video game, in Crimson Desert, you can pilot a mech. Yes, really.
The dwarven-engineered battle robot is a late-game treat that asks the question: What if a Bioshock Big Daddy and a Titanfall mech had a baby? Equipped with thrusters, machine guns, multi-target-lock homing rockets, and a wide-radius EMP blast, your sword-and-board-wielding enemies don’t stand a chance.
Fire-breathing dragons and machine-gun-toting mechs could absolutely destroy Crimson Desert’s balance, but they’ve been carefully plotted on the campaign’s overall power curve. Pearl Abyss’ combat team explained that such mounts are not designed to be simple tools that you can use whenever you want, and so all of the robot’s destructive devices drain a limited fuel gauge which, when depleted, will put the machine out of action. This means you can’t just use this modern marvel of technology in perpetuity – you won’t be able to stroll up to a boss battle and decimate a knight with your stock of missiles. But when you are in the pilot’s chair, there’s no denying that things become more of a massacre than an even match-up. Pearl Abyss is happy with this power spike, though; the team considers it something of a “present” or reward for players who have progressed so far into the game.
As you can see, there is a wide range of combat options, to say the least. And that brings us back to the fighting game comparison. Something like Street Fighter is arguably the inverse of Dark Souls, as in a FromSoftware game, the true challenge is learning everything about your enemy and then attempting to exploit that, whereas in a fighting game, the challenge is to learn everything about your character and master their moveset. Pearl Abyss subscribes to the Street Fighter approach, and explains that the goal is for Crimson Desert’s difficulty to become increasingly more manageable the more you master Kliff’s abilities.
That’s easier said than done, though. Like a fighting game, there’s the sense that every one of Kliff’s actions has an alternate version if you combine it with the right skill. This naturally creates depth, but also complexity – dive in without any instruction, and it can feel quite overwhelming. In an attempt to keep things as simple as possible, Pearl Abyss has put a lot of focus on what each button does. The idea is that there’s consistency in every action – if you want to introduce an element into an action, you build on your existing knowledge of the controller. Clicking the thumbsticks, for instance, fires magic spells from your palms. Click the left stick to use your left palm, click the right stick to use your right palm. And so to do a triple-jump, which is powered by your magic spells, you string together an L3, R3, L3 combo, rather than tap the jump button three times.
At first glance, Crimson Desert certainly looks like many other open world games. And that’s not an unfair comparison – as we’ll explore later in this month’s IGN First, there are plenty of genre staples here, from puzzle dungeons to faction quests to bounties posted on town bulletin boards. In totality, this is not an unusual game. But zoom in on the combat, and you’ll find quite an unusual beast. It’s built atop the classic ideas – there’s still dodges and parries and regular attacks – but never before have I played a medieval fantasy game where I can chain Spider-Man’s swing into Batman’s glide into a ground pound that’s delivered like Sonic the Hedgehog doing his best Hulk impression. In short, it’s safe to say Crimson Desert is trying something different.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.