Yesterday introduced us the inaugural New Recreation+ Showcase, during which a number of content material creators determined to chop out the Kojima-glazing intermediary and simply showcase a crapload of video games. Whereas the occasion ended up getting ridiculed quite a bit for feeling extra like a podcast than a showcase, it did embrace fascinating new glimpses of quite a few upcoming video games, together with what claims to to be one of many largest open-world RPGs of 2026.
Crimson Desert, the sprawling action-adventure with the racecar-like horses from Black Desert On-line builders Pearl Abyss, is about to launch on March 19. PR rep Will Powers was requested throughout New Recreation+ in regards to the precise measurement of the sport world, after a few of the preliminary previews seemed that the sport’s fairly large vistas had been “only a tiny nook of the map.” Powers then gave an eye-popping reply:
Twice the playable space of Skyrim. It’s bigger than the map of Pink Useless Redemption 2. The realm that you just’re enjoying in, the continent of Pywel is totally large.
In equity to Pearl Abyss, that’s not a really out-of-pocket factor for a developer largely identified for an enormously fashionable freemium MMORPG to say, particularly given how a lot of Crimson Desert seems to be like an MMORPG that ultimately had a single-player motion sport grafted into it (which is what truly occurred). However nonetheless, that’s numerous sport. Or at the very least numerous sport map.
Crimson Desert claims to have twice the playable space as Skyrim and a map bigger than Pink Useless Redemption 2 pic.twitter.com/iCtLZ7IWU4
— Jake Fortunate (@JakeSucky) January 9, 2026
The footage shared up to now in trailers and previews does present a reasonably world and a few stable fight, and look, I’ll at all times give brownie factors to any sport that allows you to trip a dragon. However what in regards to the chance that it is going to be numerous house with no actual objective? Powers himself tries to chop off that concern on the cross. “Measurement doesn’t actually matter if there’s nothing to do,” he mentioned “Open-world video games are about doing issues, having actions, having distractions, so we wished to create a world that’s not solely large however extremely interactive.”
To her credit score, streamer Luality chimed in pretty typically in the course of the interview attempting to press Powers on what sorts of interactions the participant can look ahead to on this big world, asking in the event you can struggle dragons or romance NPCs. The very best Powers got here up with in response was emphasizing “all kinds of deep crafting programs.”
Therein lies the true difficulty with making guarantees about map measurement within the 12 months of our Lord 2026: it’s lengthy since turn into a ineffective metric. Having a sport world the dimensions of Australia is all effectively and good, you’ll be able to even have it’s stuffed with empty house to traverse. However it’s important to do extra with empty house than simply fill it with crafting provides. That’s a legit motive to reward video games that truly make their terrain significant, like Kojima’s Loss of life Stranding 2, and a motive to place in your skeptic glasses each time anybody begins hyping up the dimensions of their map reasonably than what’s in it.
