Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Pearl Abyss' upcoming open-world action adventure Crimson Desert is definitely "not a Soulslike," its marketing director says, but "does that mean the game's easy? Hell no." Speaking in a recent episode of the Dropped Frames podcast, Will Powers, director of marketing and public relations at Pearl Abyss, discusses "the beauty" of Crimson Desert being an open world game, noting, "There's no progression gating in the sense of, 'I just need to get good in order to do this.'" While there will be some bosses on the critical path you'll need to beat in order to progress the main narrative, Powers explains that "you can just leave, you can do something else, you can upgrade your weapon, you can do side questing, you can find different things in order to make that fight easier for you," so in theory you should never be stuck being forced to attempt the same thing over and over again if you don't want to. New open-world game Crimson Desert won't have microtransactions, says Pearl Abyss, because it's "a premium experience" Crimson Desert's hack and slash boss bottles "play a crucial role in shaping the game’s intensity", but there's more to the open world adventure – like fishing, cooking, and dragon-riding With a map twice the size of Skyrim and larger than Red Dead Redemption 2, open-world game Crimson Desert is real big "That's something that I think is really interesting, because when people see the boss fights in this game, they immediately think Soulslike. This is not a Soulslike game," Powers continues. "Because Soulslike, again, has connotations and has specific definitions of narrow dodge windows, things like that. This is much more combo-driven and you kind of dictate the pace of the fight. So there is no 'get good' moment." While "there are definitely skill checks," he clarifies, if you struggle with any of them, then "you can get additional buffs from food and camp, you can grind a bunch more consumables to make the fight easier for you, you can find a blueprint for an item that lets you revive in a fight to get an extra, second shot [...] and you can craft multiple of those. So you can overprepare and make any fight accessible to you. "Does that mean the game's easy? Hell no," he laughs. "But I think that it allows that layer of accessibility so you're never hard stuck, which I think is really, really important in the single player game." In the same podcast episode, Powers notes that Crimson Desert won't have any microtransactions since it's a premium game, so "that is the transaction. Like, full stop." While we'll have to wait and see how the game lands, we don't have long to go, as it's finally launching on March 19. With a map twice the size of Skyrim and larger than Red Dead Redemption 2, promising open-world game Crimson Desert is real big – but still "incredibly interactive."