Crimson Desert has been on my radar since I first took a look at the game at CES, but having talked more about the game and its technology with developer Pearl Abyss, I think we're looking at something genuinely exciting. It's a large-scale, single-player open world RPG, built on the proprietary BlackSpace Engine, targeting high-end rendering features alongside strong performance. It's ambitious, but based on the latest footage, Pearl Abyss may well have done it.

It's worth watching the video embedded on this page to get an idea of how the game is shaping up. It's captured on an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D 12-core processor paired with an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 32GB of RAM. For the purposes of the presentation, we're running at native 4K resolution with FSR native AA with v-sync enabled. Settings are set to the ultra setting (not the fully tapped out "cinematic") but this is still very much towards the top end of the engine's capabilities.

The RX 7900 XTX is a capable card to be sure, but this is still a work-in-progress build on last generation AMD GPU hardware. No upscaling is in use and performance is impressive - quite unlike the typical experience you'd expect from, say, an Unreal Engine 5-based title at equivalent settings and pixel count.

What really impresses me is the visual cohesion in the presentation. The mediaeval aesthetic combines wide-open landscapes, varied environmental types ("biomes" if you like) along with dense towns and cities, with substantial indoor spaces. Think Dragon's Dogma 2 in terms of world structure, but broader in scope and heavier in systemic design. You could also say there are hints of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in how the game world and its systems interact. There are time-of-day cycles, dynamic weather conditions and a lived-in world that complements an excellent lighting system.

Ray-traced global illumination is key here, used across the board in both indoor and exterior environments. Crucially, this appears to be a per-pixel solution rather than a probe-only or probe-driven hybrid system, delivering convincing bounce lighting and nuanced indirect global illumination, with believable contrast.

Our video shows how well time-lapses work using this technology, dramatically showing how exterior weather and lighting conditions affect internal spaces. This extends across the game, so torches and local light sources at night contribute fully to the global illumination.

There are RT-based reflections too, especially evident in standing bodies of water, likely combined with screen-space reflections, depending on distance and on-screen content. Indoor scenes with marble floors also look great - both diffuse RTGI and RT reflections producing impressively realistic effects. A lot of games with this kind of setting may opt for RTGI, but not so much RT reflections due to what you might call a mismatch between the setting and the presence of shiny surfaces - but Crimson Desert pulls it off. I'd say the effect definitely rivals and in some way exceeds Lumen GI on UE5, the difference being that the 7900 XTX is delivering this at native 4K with a 60fps target.

Water rendering also looks impressive. It's not relying on standard 2D textures, particles and height-only displacement - the effect looks more volumetric with a physically consistent wave and shoreline presentation. It's not just about the sea, looking good on streams and rivers too, enabling nature-looking flowing and falling water. Typically, these effects are faked or manually authored, but here they seem to be a result of a unified simulation system. There's environmental destruction here too, reminding me of the more physics-driven "mid-2000s" games like Crysis and Far Cry 2. Crimson Desert has spectacle - but it's systemic, rather than manually authored.

Long-range distance rendering also looks really good, to the point where even far-field trees and foliage look convincingly three-dimensional and well-shaded, with consistent lighting. It's a far cry from the more sprite-driven "imposter" systems we tend to see. Environmental animation stretches into the far distance too - not often seen as it's a common performance saving to restrict it to more near-field environmental components. Combine all of this with volumetric clouds and lighting, correctly lit particles and the result is highly impressive.

Even though what we have here on display in the footage is native resolution rendering with no frame generation, the game does support the relevant upscalers and frame-gen technologies and it's already been confirmed that Crimson Desert will be using FSR Redstone, including ray regeneration.

It seems reasonable to expect similar technology from Nvidia in the mix too, though details are yet to be confirmed. Not every user has 7900 XTX-level technology, so incorporating these features just makes sense - especially for playing on a high refresh rate display.

I've been chasing to see more of this game since CES and I'm looking forward to the review period where I can really get to grips with the game. Pearl Abyss is embracing the PC platform and I love that, but of course, we'll be covering the console versions too in due course.