Transcription
It is almost very close to Crimson Desert Week. I mean, if you count Sunday as the start of the week, like some businesses do, it is Crimson Desert Week, and there is going to be a lot of it being talked about on this channel. Uh, I know a lot of you, I've seen the comments, are so excited for this game.
This one is going to be about some early and leaked reviews for the game, as well as some footage that I have never seen before, as well as a tech. There's a lot to talk about here, but I want to start out with the early reviews. This came out on Reddit um a little while ago, and this is says, "Potential Crimson Desert early reviewed leaked/impression. Spanish content creator Revenant with 700K subs on YouTube allegedly shared impressions from a Crimson Desert review copy before the video was deleted."
Um, this is actually a lot more reputable than this makes it sound. It was actually on a podcast and he just started talking about it and then the podcast got removed. So that basically tells us that this is legit. These are his opinions. So there's some interesting things in here. First off, um not really an RPG or story focused. Narrative is better than Black Desert as I would expect with a single player game, but nowhere near a Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come game. Focuses on epic battles and moments.
Now, I'm interested in this because we have seen quite a little bit about the story. Some people who don't pick up nuances in stories in gameplay from character speeches and things like that might think it's not a great story, but I also think most of the people reviewing it actually haven't beat it yet. We'll get to that in a minute. Um, combat is standout. Large scale, very deep, comparable to DMC/ Ninja Gaiden, but in a huge open world. Lots of context contextual moves. grapple charges depending on position or grapple changes depending on position. Sorry. You can interact with the environment creatively. Use trees or even enemies as slingshots. So, in other words, very deep combat like we've been hearing. Very little handhoving, which is confirmed by early impressions, too. Steep learning curve for about 8 hours. Once it clicks, it's extremely satisfying. Not a soulslike, but similar rhythm learning. Not totally sure what that means. huge scale and verticality. We're going to get to that. We We have, like I said, we have some footage that I've never seen before and it looks insane. Uh world/mission design compared to Red Dead Redemption 2, which is sick. Um which if you're comparing it to that, like this is from the same reviewer, and this was one review. We'll get to that. But if you're saying uh mission and world design similar to Red Dead Redemption 2, some of the best storytelling in Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't the missions or characters talking. It's the world design and like the way that that is run. Uh mechanics to Breath of the Wilder, Tales of the Kingdom. Massive game. He's 50 hours in and still in the first region. We're going to see another thing about that as well. Uh music and atmosphere are amazing. I heard the music might be the best music ever in a video game. People are saying I don't know how that's possible. Uh I thought um Expedition 33, last year's music was wonderful, too. Witcher level soundtrack, strong sense of scale like Shadow of the Colossus. Knights are very dark like Dragon's Dogma.
Cons and issues, weak quality of life, confusing inventory, quest items not removed, limited inventory, no camp storage, only a bank. That's actually pretty surprising, especially cuz you can like build a camp. Uh, enemies bodies despawn after clearing camps unless you leave one alive to loot. Ooh, so that's a weird quality of life thing. We'll have to wait to see how bad that is. I don't like that though. That's a weird quality of life thing. Uh, other smallable small fixable issues. Wow, I can't read. Um, so that's one. So that's one person's review. Keep that in mind. It's taken from a podcast just shooting the [ __ ] with his friends.
Um, this is another one that I found on Reddit. Uh, now this one's different. This one is someone who um was in a discord um that had a bunch of people in it who played it early and they were all talking amongst each other and he kind of put it together into one big write up. So he says uh one says that they have 40 plus hours in the first area alone and they aren't even close to beating all of it. The first area alone it starts slow but when it gets going it gets going. So that's exactly what we are hearing from this review. Uh they are talking about how exploration is wondrous. Many dungeon style locations with unique loot, insane enemy variety and mind-blowing verticality and nooks and crannies. Impressions are it takes the best elements from openw world games and masterfully combines them together. Tears of the Kingdom sandbox and physics plus Elden Ring enemy variety and dungeons plus Red Dead Redemption 2 immersion and detail.
Um, as far as when it comes to saying Elden Ring, apparently there's 76 bosses in the game, old different, like not the same boss, like old different mechan I don't even know how that's possible. Like that's insane. Like game level. So, we're going to have to wait to see like how this all plays out. But like everything we see, everything we hear now, the reviews, as we're going to talk about in a minute, the performance, it all sounds too good to be true. Now, uh, they praise the atmosphere. The world has excellent ambient music that invokes a feeling of serenity and adventure. Nighttime is stunning. Like Dragon's Dogma, it is actually dark. The scale of the world and feeling is like Shadow of the Colossus. So clearly whoever wrote read this on Discord, one of these people was at least reading it for that review in the podcast. Uh the visuals are incredible. Of course, next level black space uh black space engine is like black magic. Sound design excellent. Music is absolutely incred incredible. All of the combat uh all of it from combat to ambient tracks. enemies praised as they have excellent DLE animations and make them feel alive like Breath of the Wild enemies for example. NPCs swear like sailors and uh they are rich with life and personality. I've heard that as well. I think when we watched Skillup's early review um he said that the uh voice acting was incredible too. They discussed the Metacritic score and impact of the game. Uh they expect it to be this year's Elder Ring/Ballers Gate 3 game. A game that is so vast, so except exceptional, and unlike any other AAA game that it's almost impossible for anything else to win. All of them are currently rating at 10 out of 10. I've seen another thing here um where some people are saying that early on the reviews might get like like 8.5 or 8.5 85 out of 100 just because of the quality of life problems. Um but players who are playing it are rating it super super high. We've seen this many times before.
Now this is Digital Foundry. They got to do an early review of the PS5 Pro version. Um, and basically throughout the beginning of this, um, they were saying more or less that it runs really well. It's not perfect when you're using the super quality version, but when you're using the optimized version, it basically runs flawlessly, which we've seen a lot with a lot of games. Of course, it's going to have problems. But, um, there is one part of this that I stopped at, and I'm like, I got to watch this in the video. I haven't seen this part yet. I watched the first part. I haven't seen this part yet. But as soon as he started talking like this, I'm like, "Okay, we need to watch this together."
So >> good. So with the performance situation firmly established on PS5 Pro, we await the other consoles to see how it stacks up there. But regardless, there are a few other cool things I wanted to talk about that caught my eye while playing this game. And to do that, I want to take you on a small journey. You see, early on, I made the decision to test the open world, not knowing what was in store for me, nor how large the game world really was. So, I set a waypoint just out in the middle of nowhere to sort of guide me in the proper direction, and I just went. It started smoothly enough, riding across these gorgeous fields on my horse. I >> Do you see why I stopped this? Do you see why I stopped this? >> Marveled at the realistic sky rendering, the atmospheric light scattering. It felt so realistic and impressive. I appreciated the sheer density, the environment around me, the grass blades swaying in the wind, the trees, the foliage, the interactions with the horse, the way every hoof matches the terrain. Yeah, there's definitely some visible LOD popping along the way, which I don't love, but given the scale and the performance, it's understandable. Eventually, I reached this lengthy wall running across the terrain and decided to ride full speed towards this scaffolding and was surprised at how seamlessly you could leap off your horse and grab onto the structure. Very cool stuff. Of course, it was seemingly for nothing as my horse was able to just walk right through here on the bottom when I called him. Oh well. So, I continued, and my next idea was to sort of wreak havoc in a nearby field to test the game's physics and performance. That's where I discovered horse drifting, where you can essentially sharply spin the horse around in circles in a way that feels awesome. Impressively, most smaller objects in the environment can be knocked down or destroyed by simply ramming into them, making this a lot of fun. There is a do you see what I'm saying about like how everything like it just looks so good, man? >> A small delay when destroying physics-based items, but still it feels really great. I then rode towards a small nearby village and attempted to knock down these things as well, only to mistakenly reveal an enemy that was just hiding in the middle. God. >> Then suddenly, from offscreen, a giant guard leaped into action and eliminated him immediately. Whoa. With that though, >> so it's this is what makes an open world game good is when like a thing like that, you're riding through a field, you get to take these things, it breaks, enemy revealed. You don't fight the enemy. The city guard comes over and kicks the crap. It's a Remember how I said the storytelling of a world is often better than the storytelling of the actual game. That is such a good example. I I didn't watch that far, so I didn't plan that, but perfect example. >> I decided to continue forward looking for anything interesting. And it's here that I noticed the somewhat noisy ray traced lighting visible along the foliage here. And that reminded me that we're looking at the original PSSR. We'll be very curious to see how this looks with the upgraded PSSR at launch. >> Oh yeah, that's the other thing. Is this is on PlayStation or not PC? Moving forward, I decided it was time to play around with some guards just to sort of test the AI, right? The results I thought were interesting. So, after angering them, I ran away and decided to climb up on the roof of this house just to see what would happen. Okay, I don't know what is going to happen here, but in the new Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Shadows, the enemies don't climb on roofs. They always have an Assassin's Creed, but not Shadows. Turns out these guards can climb as well, and they quickly try to overwhelm me. While the shields clipping through the roof looks a bit awkward, the result of fighting them on the roof was really interesting. I was trying to kick them off, knock them down the slope, etc., and was doing okay, but eventually they overwhelmed me. So, I tried to run again, and this time they killed me, causing me to respawn nearby. And it's from this respawn point that I randomly stumbled upon this. So that's another question that I have about this game, especially with people saying that the quality of life elements aren't the best. Sometimes games don't do checkpoints very well and it can literally like ruin a playthrough at times. I'm maybe a little aggressive explaining it that way, but I'm very curious to see how they work here. It doesn't really fully explain it. >> And honestly, this one really surprised me as well because it felt strangely lively. There was no story reason to be here. at least not yet. But wow, look at this. The frame rate of course was a little unstable here, but I was surprised to see that there was an actual circus performance happening inside this tent. >> All lit with real-time ray tracing. Very, very cool, right? >> Dude, this is a persistent world, which means even if you're in the middle of the black desert, this is going on on the map. That's insane. But then I stumbled back outside and figured I'd mess with the AI again. So I tried to attack NPCs. >> Did I say black desert? I meant Crimson Desert. >> This revealed that when you first swipe at NPCs, they actually just fall back and avoid your blade. But if you keep doing this, eventually the circle of pain draws around your character and everything within this circle that is say a guard or an enemy will suddenly come for you. What impressed me though is the way in which the crowds dispersed. Not just randomly in all directions. Rather, they actually made their way as a group towards the exit in a panic as the guards then entered the city. >> How did they do this? >> Which recalls something cool about fighting because you see similar behaviors come and attack you. If say, you're fighting some bandits and you kill most of them, there's a point where some remaining enemies might actually freak out and just attempt to run away from you. You can of course take them out with an arrow if you're a good shot. Mind you, it's a neat touch that adds a tinge of realism to the encounters. I really like the AI behavior in this game. From there though, I kept moving forward and eventually that's where I found Bug Hill, as I mentioned earlier. And this was quite a shock when I first found it. You see, up until this point, everything had this sort of grounded medieval flavor, but suddenly we had mechanical insects, airship, balloons, orcs, >> all fighting on the side of the mountain, and it looked super cool. This is when I did some of my performance testing. >> Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait till we get like the video that I have to show you after this is insane, >> of course. But eventually, I survived Bug Hill and found this amazing orc city built upon a mountain, which looked wholly unlike anything else I'd seen in the game yet. The sheer level of detail, the pipes, and the ornate structures really impressed. But, >> okay, the video that I was going to show you might actually be in this video. We'll see. >> It's time to continue. And as night fell, I noticed a city in the distance. And that city seemed to be illuminated by electric lights. Sure enough, it was. This sort of farmland was just spread out across the terrain. At first, we thought it was Nazka lines, but >> it's actually an electric farm of some sorts. Very strange. Very different mood as well. The HDR in this scene, by the way, was very impactful. I loved both the lights with the strong highlight as well as the beautiful night sky with its gorgeous voluometric cloud system. So I continued climbing the mountain in the darkness with just my torch fumbling around. Night is really dark in this game and it makes navigation more treacherous. He has the light on him. >> I ended up exploring the cliffs engaging a few foes before eventually finding this view which is just awesome. Rather than diving in though, I decided to take a left turn of sorts and make my way down to the shore to check out the water and take in the view. The water was beautiful. Of course, I was ready to capture the scene. It really feels like you're standing at the edge of the world, but of course, you're not. So, I kept moving the world, this time, walking down the beach, eventually reaching this sort of rocky terrain. That was where I decided to test the climbing system again. And yeah, it works similarly to Breath of the Wild and can climb most surfaces. It's actually influenced by heat and cold as well, which makes it harder to climb such surfaces. >> Unbelievable. >> What I really like about it, though, is the way the animation system successfully matches your character's hands to logical positions as you climb the surface. It feels very gratifying as a result. Eventually, I made it to the top and waiting for me up here turned out to be a rainforest and the mood shifted greatly because it's not just a rainforest. It actually started to rain. Your local torch lights up the droplets around you in beautiful fashion as the area around your character is battered by it. >> So, can I just say not enough people play video games like this like to me watching this is so cool. He's like, I set a waypoint and I just went. And he's telling the story. I might have to do this. This just looks fun. >> The storm. Other lighting effects like this random blue glow from something produces dramatic results as well. What I loved about this sequence in the jungle is that the fog and rain combined with the thickness of the trees really limits your view. It really feels isolated, as if you were actually exploring a deep jungle. Along the way, I navigated rapids, appreciating that awesome water system, dealt with a few more enemies in their encampments, walked along some cliffsides, including making some leaps of faith before eventually reaching the edge of the forest itself. And that's when the rain started to let up, which highlighted another cool detail. Rain actually leaves behind puddles that persist for hours of game world time. It's not just a binary thing where it's rainy or not. It actually comes and goes realistically, leaving its mark. Something that really adds to the realism. By this point though, I managed to climb up the side of this steep cliff and found myself staring out across the crimson desert itself. From the opening village to the top of this mountain here, >> it took me roughly 4 hours of traversal and exploration. So yeah, I think you get it by now. The amount >> so just that region was 4 hours >> of variety and display here is outstanding. And what I've shown you is just a small taste, a tiny path through the game world. A simple walk from one part of the map to another that became a memorable adventure. And this is before exploring the characters abilities or allowing the story to get started. I haven't felt this need to explore since games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or perhaps Breath of the Wild. This is without a doubt one of the most impressive openw world experiences I've ever had. I genuinely found myself asking the question, how the heck did they do this over and over again? It really is that cool. And all of it worked great on PlayStation 5 Pro, even in this pre-release state. Of course, it's not perfect. As noted, performance can dip at times. There are some bugs with the displacement mapping in RT and in some cases actual bugs like here in the desert where I found myself swimming above the water at one point. Plus the loading sequence when loading a save is weirdly lengthy with this animation and music that sort of plays out before you're dropped into the world which thankfully respawning on death is very quick and there's no other loading times during actual game. I'm fine with loading up a game for the first time taking a bit >> play. So, it's not a huge deal. Even with all that though, this is fantastic on PS5 Pro. They actually did it. >> They actually did it. They did actually do it.
Um, now this is the last video. So, this is um tech areas remind me of Star Wars. So, this might have been from that video, but just it doesn't even need sound. I don't even need to talk. Just freaking look at this. Like, it it just doesn't it it just the game looks spectacular. And uh man, it's going to be a good couple weeks, months, maybe months, maybe months. I don't know. I I hope you guys are looking forward to this game as much as me. We're going to be covering it a lot this.