Flying on a wyvern over a huge map, currents in the water, insects on rocks, furniture rising and being destroyed. Crimson Desert set a level of detail that had never been set before in Bethesda games, and against this background, the thesis that Pearl Abyss is superior to Todd Howard’s studio took hold on the Internet.
The most interesting thing began next. It was those who are looking forward to The Elder Scrolls 6 the most who came to argue with this thesis, and their arguments were not about graphics.
The main complaint concerns the plot. The two main lines of the game hardly touch each other, and a recent update that improves the narrative added Cliff’s monologues, in which the hero retells to himself the events that just happened to him.
A player who has spent more than 150 hours in the game:
I like the game. But for every thing I like or find truly inspired, there’s another that’s done poorly or mediocrely.
An explanation for this state of affairs was found in one of the interviews, according to which the developers had a fundamentally different idea, but the management was guided by Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and required adding mechanics that did not fit well with the others. The origin of the title, originally conceived as an MMO, also played a role.
Hence the formulation that is repeated more often than any other – an ocean a kilometer wide and a centimeter deep. A familiar situation if you remember Starfield with its abundance of activities and detailed systems that are almost unrelated to each other.
At this point, the conversation stops being about the Korean studio and becomes about what the Bethesda game is made of. The answer usually comes down to a sandbox, where an item can be picked up from a shelf, carried away, and tossed into someone else’s pocket, and every item on the NPC is actually in their inventory. The detailing here works not for the picture, but for the rules of the world.
Hence the difference in approach to cities. Thirty residents with names, routines and a couple of sentences of biography provide Nazim, who is remembered after a decade and a half, but hundreds of nameless passers-by provide no one.
A great example of this is the unmarked cart in Skyrim. Nearby lie the bodies of a merchant, his wife and horses, studded with Falmer arrows; the woman’s diary says that she set off on a dangerous road, not wanting to let her husband go alone, and a trail of blood leads to a cave. No quest, no marker, just a scene that might not be found at all.
To be fair, the reproach is for objects glued to tables Crimson Desert didn’t deserve it. 80–90 percent of what you see can be picked up and stolen, and the furniture is also susceptible to destruction. It is not the physics of the world that raises questions, but the reason for which it exists.
Fans of open-world RPGs called a real benchmark for Bethesda a completely different game – Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. In fact, Warhorse developed the ideas of Radiant AI from Oblivion, while Bethesda itself, after Skyrim, simplified these systems in favor of generated content.
It works like this:
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the merchant informs the guards about the theft, since he was the last one to see the hero in the shop
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wearing stolen clothing is recognized by its owner
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you can talk your way out of arrest and a fine, and the ability to drink allows you to pass off the crime as a drunken stunt
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skills open up new lines in dialogues, up to theological disputes
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In stealth, bodies can be dragged and hidden
The difference is also felt in the way games approach generation. In Fallout 4, the endless requests of settlements could be ignored with almost no loss, and in Starfield, a significant part of the game rests on procedural planets and tasks.
Crimson Desert will receive a paid addition Charting the Unknown with underwater depths and castle construction on October 15
Steam brought Valve $15 billion in 2026, Crimson Desert alone earned $203 million
However, from the Korean studio, fans are ready to borrow animations and facial expressions, animated loading screens, a number of unique weapons and armor with their own abilities, as well as a dynamic world where opponents recapture forts, and bandit groups have names and reputations.
What else is worth “copying” from Crimson Desert and KCD 2 for The Elder Scrolls 6?
