In a sea of middling reviews and angry player feedback about some of Crimson Desert’s various aspects, Red Dead Redemption 2’s water artist, David O’Reilly, has praised the open-world action adventure game for its attention to detail in how it portrays its bodies of water. In a first impressions video, O’Reilly made a special note of the water, saying that it “is amazing,” while also praising other aspects.
“This water is amazing,” he said in his video, which you can check out below. “There are all sorts of interesting things about how they’re handling the water in this game. They’re using, effectively, a live particle simulation.” O’Reilly went as far as to exclaim “Finally, a game’s come along that does better rivers than [Red Dead Redemption 2].”
“I say that as someone who helped to make those rivers,” he explained. “I couldn’t be more pleased to see this, we’ve made some progress. They really know their rivers here, and this tech is really helping them to just push these rivers. They’re absolutely fantastic.”
O’Reilly’s praise doesn’t come lightly, since properly showing water tends to be one of the more challenging aspects of game development. While we’ve seen many titles getting it both right and wrong over the years, few games tend to feature bodies of water that deserve too much praise. Along with Red Dead Redemption 2, games like Sea of Thieves have also seen praise from critics and players alike in this regard.
While a single body of water might still be achievable for many studios, rivers tend to offer their own extra levels of challenge, since designers then have to work around its flow, its source, and its mouth, where the river essentially comes to an end.
Interestingly, O’Reilly isn’t simply “all praises” for Crimson Desert. While he hasn’t revealed too many details yet, he noted that he found one noteworthy flaw with the game. “There’s one, and I’m not sure whether it’s a bug or an efficiency thing,” he said. More information, however, will arrive in a later video.
Since its PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S release on March 19th, Crimson Desert has proven to be an incredibly popular title. The studio recently confirmed that it had sold 3 million copies of the game in the first five days of its release. When it comes to critical reception, however, things could be better. The title currently sits at an aggregate score of 78 out of 100 on Metacritic, with 93 critic reviews ranging from loving the game, to finding several flaws.
Player reception has also been mixed. While many have been enjoying the title and everything it has to offer, others have criticised some of the game design decisions that were made during its development. One of these has been the severe limits placed on dragon riding, which is only available for 15 minutes a time before going on a 50 minute cooldown.
“The dragon was shown in almost every trailer, for it to then end up being such a limited-use thing is really disappointing,” one player said. “That’s really surprising to read, showing off the dragon like that certainly did imply that it’s a fixed mount for late game and not just a temporary summon.”
For more details, take a look at our review. Also check out our thoughts about why millions might love the game despite a divided response.
