Crimson Desert's First Update Is Here, Here Are the Most Important Changes
Pearl Abyss has released the first major update for Crimson Desert on PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam, addressing graphics issues, bugs, UI improvements, and gameplay mechanics that players have been complaining about since launch.
Love it or hate it, Crimson Desert has been delivering long hours of enjoyment for a certain segment of players over the past few days, alongside quite a few players who are enjoying the experience a bit less. The issues include poor textures and shaky graphics on PlayStation 5 (with a clear emphasis on the base model of the console) and a host of various problems and bugs, ranging from uncomfortable controls for some players to crashes and various other issues. Now, developer Pearl Abyss has launched a new update that officially went live for PlayStation 5 and PC via the Steam store, aiming to fix most of the problems players have been complaining about. The update for other platforms (Epic Games Store, Xbox, and Mac App Store) will be available at a later stage.
The main updates we've received here include a new "Private Inventory" system that will allow you to store items you're carrying in dedicated boxes (what's often called a "Stash" in many games), alongside several critical changes (at least in my opinion) regarding the game's actual operation. Changes were also made to button mapping when playing with a controller as well as when playing with mouse and keyboard (you can finally open the Inventory by pressing the I key on the keyboard, for example).
Additionally, several changes were made to the game's UI (which experienced a lot of criticism for its lack of comfort and accessibility), alongside changes to the functionality of various elements in the game itself, such as the fact that healing items and food will now restore more health to the player, and the addition of more Fast Travel points. Changes and bug fixes were also made to a fairly wide range of missions and various content segments—in some cases, these are changes to the functionality of various NPC characters throughout the game, and in certain parts to the technical functionality of the missions themselves, with the aim of eliminating various bugs that came up in the first period after the game's launch.
On the console side specifically, several fixes were also made, including the addition of an option to play at 120 frames per second, a fix for save functionality (some players reported that their saves were deleted for no reason, sometimes more than once), as well as graphical fixes that aim to improve the game's appearance on PlayStation 5, after many players experienced significant graphical issues while playing on the base model of the console.
Crimson Desert sold over 2 million copies at launch, in what appears to be one of the most talked-about game launches we've seen in recent years, and opinions about it online are quite divided—many critics claimed the game suffers when it comes to the game's story and some of the various elements that build its world, alongside a fairly respectable percentage of critics who praised the game for the freedom of choice it offers thanks to its fairly large and open world of content. As of this writing, the game stands at a score of 78 based on 93 critic reviews on Metacritic, alongside a score of 7.8 based on 3,345 user reviews.