Pearl Abyss Boss Sympathizes With ‘Disappointment’ Over Crimson Desert’s Story: ‘It Would Have Been Nice if We Could Have Done a Better Job With It’

Crimson Desert’s story has become the subject of criticism ever since Pearl Abyss’ sprawling open world action adventure launched last week. While some players are perfectly happy treating Crimson Desert as more of a sandbox game than a story-driven adventure, most agree that the actual plot, storyline, and characters leave a lot to be desired.

It turns out, Pearl Abyss CEO Heo Jin-young agrees that Crimson Desert’s story could have been better. South Korean media have reported on a Q&A session following Pearl Abyss’ regular general shareholders’ meeting held at the company’s headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province on March 27, and there Heo Jin-young answered shareholder’s criticism that Crimson Desert lacks a storyline.

“I sympathize to some extent with the disappointment users feel regarding the story,” Heo Jin-young said, as reported by Yonhap News Agency. “I think it would have been nice if we could have done a better job with it. The production team tried to make up for the shortcomings in the remaining time, but ultimately, we focused on strengthening the gameplay, which is what we do best.”

Part of the discussion around Crimson Desert’s storyline revolves around main character Kliff, who has all the personality of an empty vase. From IGN’s Crimson Desert review:

While the world you’ll explore is full of fun stuff to do, the stories you’ll find in it are consistently bad. From the moment you’re introduced to the first of its three playable characters – Kliff, a viking-coded warrior who is on a low stakes revenge quest against another group of barbarians – there’s very little to become invested in, and it only gets worse from there. The story is aimless, the characters are forgettable across the board, the dialogue is often pretty hard to listen to, and there’s an entire multi-chapter arc in the main questline that’s centered on a character who dies offscreen before the story even begins – they continually try to make you care about this person through multiple funeral scenes separated by hours and hours of game time. It’s odd because, with long sequences of talking to your companions and a lot of time spent watching cutscenes as part of the main story, it does seem like Pearl Abyss wanted people to care about this stuff, but almost none of it is really worth paying attention to and much of it is actively cringe worthy. That said, there are also a lot of cutscenes full of cool, anime-style fights – those are pretty sick.

Based on Heo Jin-young’s comments, Pearl Abyss was at the least aware that Crimson Desert’s story wasn’t at the level of the rest of the game, but ran out of time to do anything meaningful about it. Still, with 3 million copies sold in less than a week, Crimson Desert is on its way to hitting 5 million sales, Heo Jin-young said. That would surely solidify the game as a hit. According to the Korean business press, Pearl Abyss reportedly spent seven years making Crimson Desert, with development costs coming in at 200 billion won (approx. $133 million).

You’d expect DLC of some kind, then. But according to Heo Jin-young, nothing has been decided yet, and the focus is on improving the base game via patches.

“While it is good to see sales driven by expansion packs, I believe there are games that generate revenue by increasing sales of the base game as content expands,” he said. “I want to make strategic decisions that ensure the base game of Crimson Desert sells well.”

Speaking of which, Heo Jin-young answered a question on the entry barrier caused by Crimson Desert’s high difficulty (this is how the question was phrased). He replied: “I understand that user convenience is being prioritized. Various streamers and influencers will be active to solidify the community and bridge the entry barrier for new users.”

If you’re jumping into Crimson Desert’s huge open world, we recommend you take a look at our guide to Things to Do First in Crimson Desert, plus Things Crimson Desert Doesn’t Tell You (we’ve got 28 and counting!). We’ve also got a guide to the Best Early Weapons we recommend picking up, the Best Skills to Get First (including a handy explainer of the skills system), and 34 Essential Tips and Tricks to help you succeed in Pywel.

Meanwhile, there are “no concrete plans” for official mod support because it “would require opening up a large part of the engine.” There is talk of a Nintendo Switch 2 version, though, however improbable that sounds. “Since the Switch still has lower specifications compared to other console devices, there are parts we have to give up on, but internally we have taken an interest and started research and development (R&D),” Heo Jin-young said.

Regarding support for mods (mod files that modify game content), he explained, “Since the mod community is active and our game has a sandbox structure, we believe that supporting it would be a strength,” but added, “On the other hand, supporting mods would require opening up a large part of the engine, so while the development team views it positively, there are no concrete plans.”

There’s other interesting stuff in the Q&A. Apparently Pearl Abyss tried to add multiplayer to Crimson Desert, but it proved too difficult because of the impact on the graphics (I assume the meaning here is the performance of the game, specifically).

While you wait for the next Crimson Desert patch, we’ve got plenty more on the game to check out, including an article on how Crimson Desert players are building a cat army — and some are even honoring the memory of their IRL cats who passed away.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.