Crimson Desert, a game about simulating a large Scottish man and his friends and sometimes their adventures in space, is pretty weird. Depending on which precise member of the PC Gamer editorial staff you ask, that's either high praise or venomous criticism (I'm neutral—the game runs terribly on my machine, so I've not played much of it).
Dinga Bakaba, studio director at Arkane Lyon whose name is on all three Dishonored games (including the first game's Dunwall City Trials DLC, against which I bear a personal blood grudge), is firmly in the former camp. He's all about Pearl Abyss' wacky wonderful world. In a post on X, Bakaba donned his analytical hat and pointed out that "Crimson Desert functions opposite to most games of this type."
In other words: it's backwards. "Generally the beginning is magical and after a while you start to see the strings," says Bakaba, but Crimson Desert somehow inverts that. "You start with the gameyness front loaded: the inspirations...
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