Crimson Desert has 2X speed cutscenes for our TikTok-addled brains

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Published Mar 5, 2026, 2:22 PM EST

Who's got time for all that yapping?

Fans of the blockbuster MMO Black Desert Online have been waiting more than six years to get their hands on its single-player successor, Crimson Desert. But even the most eager fans have limits to their patience — sometimes you just want to breeze through the chit-chat and get to the action. Developer Pearl Abyss seems to understand that impulse, so it's added a feature to Crimson Desert that allows players to speed up cutscenes and spoken dialogue to 2X speed, without skipping scenes entirely.

YouTuber Jake Lucky shared a post on X about the feature, along with an example of how it works. The dialogue has clearly been sped up, but it's still intelligible. All the essential information is still there, but it's presented in a more concise — if less elegant — fashion. It's a handy option to have if you're retracing your steps or only have a limited amount of time to play.

The feature may also be an effort to connect with players who are used to watching sped-up content on platforms like TikTok, which allows users to easily play videos at 2X speed with a simple long press on the side of the screen. The feature has proven so popular that Instagram launched its own copycat version of it back in March 2025.

Though there are plenty of games that let you skip entire scenes or individual lines of dialogue, there are surprisingly few games that let you adjust the speed of written and spoken dialogue on the fly. Final Fantasy 7 Remake added a toggle for 1.5X and 2X cutscene speeds in a December 2024 update. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing something like this make its way into the Yakuza series, which has a real affinity for 30-minute "dudes sitting and talking" cutscenes. On the other hand, plenty of commenters on Lucky's post seem aghast at the idea of skipping dialogue in an RPG. But hey, no one's forcing players to use this option. It's just there for those who want it. If that's you, godspeed.

Crimson Desert is coming to Mac, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on March 19.

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