Crimson Desert's story and setting are my personal hell

My personal hell

I like it when things make sense, so my first few hours in Crimson Desert were very unhappy ones. Nothing makes sense in this game. The language is all wrong. The setting is a patchwork of medieval tropes tossed together without much consideration. And the lore frequently contradicts itself. For all of Crimson Desert’s grand ambitions, there's seemingly no attention to detail when it matters. And when the writers don't care about what they're writing, I find it hard to care as well.

[Ed. note: This post contains offfensive language.]

Pearl Abyss really wants you to buy into Crimson Desert as a medieval fantasy game like The Witcher 3, but no one could be bothered to check how medieval people spoke and swore. And it shows. Take the homophobic slur "cockswaggler" that pops up in the game's first five minutes. There's an Urban Dictionary definition that I'm pretty sure wasn't the intended meaning here, so the other meaning is cocksucker. So edgy! Except no medieval European person would've said that, for a lot of reasons — the main one being it didn't enter language until the 1880s. That's not very medieval, obviously, nor was the idea of calling someone a cocksucker as a pejorative very medieval. If you wanted to insinuate someone was the receiving partner in a medieval male-male exchange, you'd use derogatory words about women and female sex workers.

Here's a selection of other words that pop up frequently in Crimson Desert, all used incorrectly in this context:

• "Fucking" (occasionally used to describe sexual acts in the medieval period, not as an intensifier until much later)
• "Bastard" (frequently not derogatory in the medieval period and never used as an intensifier until the late 1800s)
• "Freak" (appeared in the 1500s, but as a description of a whim, not a person or behavior)
• "Cock" and "cunt" (period-appropriate, but used as bawdy jokes until the 1700s and 1800s, not as "dirty" words like Pearl Abyss thinks they are)

People in Crimson Desert sometimes call you a “stinking turd” when you bump into them, and that one is actually accurate! "Turd" was in use as early as the 1200s and meant, well, turd.

The actual "bad" words in medieval speech were blasphemous. Crimson Desert has several religious factions and plenty of opportunities to weave references to deities into dialogue, a small touch that could've added much-needed depth to the shallow world. But the religions exist in Crimson Desert because religion has to exist in an RPG; they seem to mean nothing to the people of Pywel, so they aren’t referenced in slang or curses.

Accuracy isn't mandatory in fiction, but there should at least be some effort to create a way of speaking that suits your world. Other games — including The Witcher 3 — are guilty of taking liberties with language, but not to such an egregious extent. Geralt's foulmouthed friend Thaler is a source of irritation for me, but there's still craft here. He's vulgar in ways that most people aren't and uses words other people don't. They're the wrong words, and it's dumb, but at least it's a contrast with everyone else. In Crimson Desert, everyone speaks the same way and uses the same wrong words because across all the vast land, there's no hint of culture or difference.

I tried being gracious and thought maybe this utter lack of care for detail and presentation was just a problem with the first couple of hours. It was not. You learn a little more about the Greymanes in Crimson Desert's first few chapters, like the fact that they function as a royal guard in the tribal state of Pailune. And they're known throughout Pywel as do-gooders. You can't have it both ways. At a guess, I'd say Pearl Abyss wanted something like the Rangers in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, remnants of a fallen kingdom traveling the land and keeping the peace. The difference is that "the land" was their former kingdom, so it makes sense that they'd feel a sense of duty for it. Plus there's no king and no royal guard duties for the Rangers. When did the Greymanes have time to travel the land and become Nice Mercenaries on top of being royal guards?

And it gets even better, by which I mean it gets worse. You learn that the Black Bears consider the Greymanes a political threat and treat them as outlaws. One of the aristocrats of Hernand, Crimson Desert's starting area, makes a political alliance with Kliff, the de facto Greymane leader, and offers the group shelter and supplies. He says it'll be good for Hernand since its leaders don't have enough manpower to deal with bandits. So you can't deal with bandits, but you just effectively declared war against Pailune's new leaders by openly allying with their enemies, with whom they are still at war? Sure. Okay.

The final straw for me was unexpected: a small lore entry. Crimson Desert has a system where you can observe memories of the past and unlock new lore entries from them. I found one detailing the origins of the Bleed Bandits, the group of rogues plaguing Hernand. The lesser scion of a noble house was blackmailed into leaving, and he started the group as an act of revenge. The lore entry this memory unlocks says he was afraid of his noble responsibilities and fled to the easier life of being a bandit. There's no narrative wrinkle here, no hint at intentionally conflicting narratives the family tells to justify its actions. It just straight-up contradicts itself.

Once I realized Pearl Abyss didn't care about storytelling, the rest of Crimson Desert's shortcomings made sense. Like the swear words and shallow attempts at world-building, most things in this game are just there because they seem cool. The survival elements add nothing but busywork. Housing is here because you expect it to be. Reputation systems and bounties aren't unique or interesting; they're just cool 'cause they've been in similar popular games, so surely they must be in here too. There's little thought or intention behind any of it. Most of it is meaningless, just there to fill space. If you can't be bothered to think about your game, why should I be bothered to play it?