Crimson Desert on PlayStation 5 Pro - The Digital Foundry Deep Dive

When you attempt to explain a game like Crimson Desert to a colleague, it almost sounds like a fake game that you might have tried to pass off to your classmates back in the day. Like I drifted my horse around the fields before stumbling into a giant circus performance, after which I made my way to the hills of the great bug wars between giant metallic insects and gun toading soldiers before visiting the fortress of the giant robots. After which I took a stroll along the beach before stumbling into a large city where I became a wanted criminal only to escape by jumping off the castle's wall to then find myself lost in a rainforest during a storm at night before eventually emerging out into the crimson desert itself and climbing to its highest point to see the world that I had just traversed. Oh, and there's dragons you can fly around on and giant bosses like Shadow of the Colossus and you can swing like Spider-Man and the combat makes you feel like a medieval John Wick. Like seriously, I'm not one to normally get excited about open world games, as followers of DF might know, but Crimson Desert is crazy and ambitious in a way that I quickly became enamored with. I just wanted to see what was over the next hill. It really brought back that thrill of exploration. But all this ambition does not come for free. And nearly all of the promotional footage leading up to launch has focused on the PC version, which looks obscenely good, leaving people to wonder, did they hide the console version? Is it actually any good? Well, DF friends, wonder no more. Everything you've been seeing here today, thus far, has been captured from the console version of the game, and today we'll be exploring that experience. For this initial video, however, there is a word of caution. and we've only had access to the PlayStation 5 Pro version thus far, but fear not, the other consoles are incoming soon, and we'll tackle them in due time. For now, though, let's dive in. Looking for a new high-quality gaming display? MSI has a range of excellent options for all budgets across its white monitor range with selected models at sale prices. On the top end QD OLED side, there's the MPG 321 URXW 4K 32 in 240 Hz with adaptive sync OLED care burn-in protection and that's backed by a three-year warranty. Also check out more attractively priced screens including the 4K miniLEDD MPG274URDFW16M. And for the budget conscious gamer looking for the ultrawide 1440p experience, consider the modern MD 342 CQPWVA display. Spring deals are now on. Check the video description below for more details and more deals. Crimson Desert is a rare and exciting moment for us at Digital Foundry. In a landscape where Unreal Engine has become the default and where its strengths and weaknesses are now largely predictable, Pearl Abyss has arrived with something genuinely new to explore. Their black space engine delivers results that are nothing short of remarkable. Yeah, there's some jank to contend with, of course, and we'll get to that. But the overall impression it leaves is striking. From performance to crowd behavior, animation, freedom, foliage, lighting, everything. It is a stunning game. And on PS5 Pro here, you actually don't lose that much. For starters, the game's rayracing features are fully present and accounted for on the Pro. The rayraced diffuse global illumination we highlighted in our PC preview. The per pixel solution. Yeah, it's enabled here. This gives the game a fully dynamic rayraced driven lighting system. Sunlight pouring into a room naturally bounces across surfaces creating dramatic believable scenes. And it's all done fully dynamically. The same is true of local lights which produce equally impressive results. You have a lantern in your inventory, for instance, which you can pull out at any time. And the light from your lantern produces ultra dramatic scenes, especially at night where light is scarce. Scenes like this are particularly impressive. This battle here has lights being generated by the enemies that you're fighting, and all of it is fully real time with shadows and lights dancing realistically across the terrain. It makes the battle feel so dynamic. The lighting has a distinctive quality that makes the world feel more convincing than most current gen games. The bright blue skies stand out immediately, and the environment around your character shows clear atmospheric light scattering. The real-time time of day system also pays off. Days and nights last longer than you usually see in games, and nighttime is genuinely dark, closer to something like say Dragon's Dogma, but with stronger, more consistent ray trace lighting. Ray tracing is enabled across all three modes, by the way. Yes, there are three modes. So, the overall lighting quality remains intact and consistent regardless of how you play. The only drawback here is that the dinoiser occasionally struggles in more extreme cases. It's not as speckly as Resident Evil Reququum, but it's definitely still noticeable. In particular, I noticed streaking and noise in areas of high contrast. Even so, lighting is a major pillar of the game's visual identity and works beautifully overall. I'll be curious to see how the game looks without ray tracing, though, because it seems like the Xbox Series S version does not have this feature. Beyond that, I noticed some really great visual touches that I wanted to highlight. For instance, particle shadows. Smoke plumes cast real dynamic shadows that you can observe as you move around. You can see that here. If we look at this smoke stack and then turn the camera around, you actually see the shadows from the emanating smoke. It's very cool. And attacks from above actually do the same. It's a subtle feature, not something I've often thought about, but it really adds a surprising amount of depth when it hits. Ray traced reflections are also something I noticed. With so much water and other reflective surfaces, it's impressive that every mode on PS5 Pro actually includes them. The system manages to blend ray trace reflections with SSR and sign distance fields for distant geometry. This is one area where I noticed a little bit of a difference in the performance mode, though. The BVH tightens up around the camera, reducing the overall reflection radius. The results still look excellent, but it relies more heavily on the fallback solutions. But honestly, even still, it looks excellent. And the water itself is kind of a standout. Now, I discussed this with Alex in our initial PC preview, but the way the wave system works is super cool. Waves break and split around rocks, for instance. They wash up on shore and proceed naturally. Wet surfaces pick up a specular sheen, and characters themselves even generate ripples that interact convincingly with the environment and other ripples. When you climb into the mountains, you'll see water sort of streaming down the mountain side, right? And the way they've handled all the directionality of the water itself is extremely impressive. But crucially, the water also looks great at scale. When standing on a mountain looking out across the ocean, for instance, it's still convincing and beautiful. I also love how they simulate the penetration of light through the surface of the water, like standing in deep water here with your lantern. But the water in general is just beautiful throughout this game and a real visual highlight. The way they're able to scale from nearby ripples to a full ocean is very impressive. And this idea of scale is kind of what surprised me the most. The developers have managed to deliver this combination of ridiculous near field detail at a huge scale that you can appreciate at a distance. Just stop and look around, right? Every scene is packed with this fine grain detail. There's an absurd amount of foliage variety, for instance. And all that foliage is affected by weather conditions blowing realistically in the wind. When a storm starts to wind up, the trees whip around violently around you. But beyond that, they also react directly to the player and NPC movement as well. Yet, it's perhaps the distant rendering of the trees that impressed me the most. You see, this is an area where games typically struggle. Yet, here, trees far off in the distance are actually properly lit and shadowed while still giving the perception of detail. Shadowing distant trees has such a positive impact on the overall visual design. And it's something that most other games either skip completely or do in a very blobby simple fashion. And this sort of insane detail can also be said of the surfaces and textures throughout the game. These guys went wild with displacement mapping. It's not a new technique obviously, but it's everywhere. What do I mean? Well, essentially just look at the ground here. This allows the developers to simulate depth within a texture, lending that surface increased perceived detail without leveraging more geometry. As a result, every stone, every brick, and just about any other surface in the game is just exploding with visual detail like this. There are virtually no flat surfaces in Crimson Desert. I've never seen this technique executed at scale quite like this, and I do think it adds a lot to the presentation. But there is one downside. It can produce some visual bugs at times. Something I noticed especially in that first town. Stuff like this for instance. Right. The larger issue can be seen when you look at areas where the texture sort of protrudes from the geometry like this on edges. There's sometimes flicker and pixelation along these surfaces. You'll notice it on rock walls, trees, and various other edges just like that. It's worth mentioning though that this bothered me more when I first started the game, but after you start to make progress, it you just kind of forget about it. The overall majesty of the visuals kind of takes over. Either way, it's cool to see such a great technique return here. There's more to discuss in the visual side, but honestly, for now, I feel like it might be a good time to talk about the specifics around the PS5 Pro version of the game. After all, a lot of people are wondering just how it runs. And while you might have a good idea by now, there is more to discuss. So, as the spec sheet released by Pearl Abyss notes, there are three modes on most consoles, including PS5 Pro. Optimal, which is the performance mode, balanced, and quality. This translates to internal resolutions of 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, respectively. And our counts confirm this to be the case. Where it differs from the user experience you might have, however, is that the current build we had access to is running with the original PSSR as opposed to what we affectionately call PSSR2. Thus, image quality wasn't great. Apparently, PSSR2 is planned for launch, but in its current state, I can't really judge image quality yet. Aside to say that the usual PSSR artifacts are indeed visible with smearing around foliage and some ray tracing noise being the most obvious, it'll be very interesting to see how this changes with the upgraded PSSR. But the real reason to use the various performance modes actually stems from performance. And Crimson Desert offers some impressive flexibility here. Essentially, by default, each mode corresponds to a different frame rate target. 60 FPS for performance, 40 for balanced, and 30 for quality. The balance mode, of course, requires a 120 Hz output to function correctly. The performance mode, though, puts up a good fight. I poured a solid 20 hours or so into the game, and most of that was spent in performance mode. By and large, that 60fps target is maintained. I was surprised by how good it is overall, but it was also enlightening playing this way without any sort of VR as it did help me identify specific areas where it can and does drop. Most of the time that involves larger crowds. Anything involving tons of NPCs or enemies can drop the frame rate. That's not to say there aren't occasional dips in quieter spots like this, but overall, most of the drops will happen when it's busy. The most significant of which occurred during the Battle for Bug Hill, as I like to call it. Here, war is waging and casualties include the frame rate, which drops significantly, making it far and away the worst spot I found in the game so far. It starts out okay, sometimes hitting 60, sometimes dropping into the 50s, as you do. But once you actually reach the top of Bug Hill, the specific encampment here, we start to see some major drops. And I think this is actually made worse by kiting enemies around because I came here before my character was ready and would die instantly if hit. So I have a ton of insects chasing me around. And as a result, we actually see the frame rate slip all the way into the 30s. I believe this section is very specifically CPU limited as it deals with so many active enemies at once. It makes sense. You can trigger similar results in some of the game's large cities, especially when causing a ruckus like this. Once the crowd starts to panic and the guards rush the player character, the frame rate definitely takes a hit as well. Crucially, it is not the norm at all. So, don't take that away from it, but it does show you that certain situations can bring the performance to its knees. In comparison, the 30 and 40 FPS modes are largely more stable overall, holding their targets reasonably well. Like here, I visited Bug Hill in quality mode, and we're rendering four times the number of pixels here. It's 4K mode, right? Plus, the graphics quality is increased even. Yet, despite dipping into the 30s in performance mode, we're actually hitting a stable 30 FPS here in that quality mode, which is pretty great. Weirdly enough, the balance mode actually manages to hit a pretty stable 40 FPS in this area, too. All of this can be influenced by dynamic elements, of course, like this run here in the 40 Hz mode. The reason it looks kind of fuzzy is that it started raining. So, I'm running through this area in the rain. And yeah, we still see some dips here, but overall it's pretty good. Alas, this is a surprisingly heavy game. And I don't mean in terms of performance. I mean the way it feels to play. It seems intentional, but at 30fps, the camera and the character movement feel less responsive than I'd have normally liked. Thus, I do recommend the 40 or 60 FPS modes, which help a bit. The thing is, the game feels similarly heavy on PC, even at higher frame rates. So, I think it's a design choice. Now, if not for capturing, I think I'd have probably stuck with the 40fps mode since I feel like it finds a nice balance between image quality and performance. But once we factor in the new PSSR, it might actually make sense just to stick with performance the entire time. The thing is though, if you drop into the options menu, you might notice something else. There's a VSSync toggle. Let me start by saying that if you're not using a VRR display, do not turn on this option. It is horrifically bad and clearly not intended for use without VRR. I mean, just look at this. The results are extremely awful. Don't use it. Trust me. But it does become useful when combined with VRR. But mainly just in performance mode. You see, despite the 120 Hz container, the VRR in this game does not seem to support low frame rate compensation like some other major firstp party titles. So when it dips out of the VRR range, screen tearing reappears. This makes the setting unsuitable for quality and even balanced mode because tearing does appear. When coupled with performance mode, however, it's legitimately cool and allows frame rates that go above 60fps. It's honestly the most responsive and smooth feeling mode in the game and as you can see, manages to keep frame rates under control. I did a full walk from one area to the other and it gives a good idea of what you can expect. Using this mode, you won't really detect frame rate dips at all outside of perhaps places like Bug Hill. Honestly though, when it comes to overall performance, I do think the results here are pretty good. When you consider the scope of the game and the reasonably high resolution targets, more than we see with any other UE5 games, that's for sure. The results are pretty impressive. Reflecting on all the various big open world games this gen, Crimson Desert is one of the better performance overall. It's not perfect by any means, and I do have some issues with certain image quality things, but still, I think it's fair to say the console version, at least on PS5 Pro, is very 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 marveled at the realistic sky rendering, the atmospheric light scattering. It felt so realistic and impressive. I appreciated the sheer density of the environment around me, the grass blade 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 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. Then suddenly from offscreen, a giant guard leaped into action and eliminated him immediately. Whoa. With that though, I decided to continue forward looking for anything interesting. And it's here that I noticed the somewhat noisy rayraced 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. But 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. Turns out these guards can climb as well. And they quickly tried 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 circus. 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? But then I stumbled back outside and figured I'd mess with the AI again. So, I tried to attack NPCs. 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 scene to take me out. which recalls something cool about fighting because you see similar behavior with enemies as well. 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, airships, 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, 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 it was time to continue. And as nightfell, 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. 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. 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. You have a stamina meter and can climb most surfaces. It's actually influenced by heat and cold as well, which makes it harder to climb such surfaces. 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 a beautiful fashion as the area around your character is battered by 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 of variety on 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 character's 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 visual 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 gameplay, so it's not a huge deal. Even with all that though, this is fantastic on PS5 Pro. They actually did it. Which brings us to the end of our first contact with the game. There's still so much more to explore here. Like, I feel like I've just gotten started. And again, this is not a game that was super high on my hype list. It just kind of came out of nowhere. And yet, what I've played here just felt unbelievable at times, even on the console. So, I'll be curious, of course, how it plays on other machines. And that's something we'll report on very soon. That's going to do it for this video, however. So, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

Thanks to MSI for sponsoring this video. Check out MSI's UK deals on its white display range: MSI Spring Deals: https://msi.gm/DF_Spring MPG 321URXW QD-OLED - https://msi.gm/S1BD8EB0 MPG 274URDFW E16M - https://msi.gm/S10123DE Modern MD342CQPW - https://msi.gm/S992A38B MAG 274QRFW X32 - https://msi.gm/S97F43FE MAG 272QPW QD-OLED X28 - https://msi.gm/S9C577CC One of the most eagerly awaited videos we've ever made - the expectation level surrounding Crimson Desert is huge. We've seen how good the game looks on a mid to high-end PC, but what about consoles? Developer Pearl Abyss gave us access to the PlayStation 5 Pro version with no limitations - and this is what we think of it. More console and PC coverage coming soon, of course. Visit The DF Website: https://digitalfoundry.net Go here to check out DF merch! https://store.digitalfoundry.net Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: http://bit.ly/DFSubscribe 00:00 - Introduction 02:27 - Sponsored by MSI 03:19 - A Massive World 06:20 - Smoke Casts Shadows?! 07:27 - Nice Water 11:14 - But How Does It Run? 18:01 - A Tale of My Travels 27:04 - Ending