Yesterday introduced us the inaugural New Recreation+ Showcase, wherein a number of content material creators determined to chop out the Kojima-glazing intermediary and simply exhibit a crapload of video games. Whereas the occasion ended up getting ridiculed so much for feeling extra like a podcast than a showcase, it did embody attention-grabbing new glimpses of numerous 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 ready to launch on March 19. PR rep Will Powers was requested throughout New Game+ in regards to the precise measurement of the sport world, after a number of the preliminary previews appeared that the sport’s fairly large vistas had been “just a tiny corner of the map.” Powers then gave an eye-popping reply:
Twice the playable space of Skyrim. It’s bigger than the map of Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2. The world that you simply’re enjoying in, the continent of Pywel is completely large.
In equity to Pearl Abyss, that’s not a very out-of-pocket factor for a developer largely identified for an enormously popular freemium MMORPG to say, particularly given how a lot of Crimson Desert seems like an MMORPG that finally had a single-player motion recreation grafted into it (which is what actually happened). However nonetheless, that’s loads of recreation. Or a minimum of loads of recreation map.
Crimson Desert claims to have twice the playable space as Skyrim and a map bigger than Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2 pic.twitter.com/iCtLZ7IWU4
— Jake Fortunate (@JakeSucky) January 9, 2026
The footage shared so far in trailers and previews does present a reasonably world and a few strong fight, and look, I’ll at all times give brownie factors to any recreation that permits you to journey a dragon. However what in regards to the risk that will probably be loads of area with no actual function? Powers himself tries to chop off that concern on the move. “Size doesn’t really matter if there’s nothing to do,” he stated “Open-world games are about doing things, having activities, having distractions, so we wanted to create a world that’s not only massive but incredibly interactive.”
To her credit score, streamer Luality chimed in pretty usually through the interview attempting to press Powers on what sorts of interactions the participant can look ahead to on this big world, asking if you happen to can struggle dragons or romance NPCs. One of the best Powers got here up with in response was emphasizing “all sorts of deep crafting systems.”
Therein lies the actual concern with making guarantees about map measurement within the 12 months of our Lord 2026: it’s lengthy since change into a ineffective metric. Having a recreation world the dimensions of Australia is all nicely and good, you possibly can even have or not it’s stuffed with empty space to traverse. However it’s important to do extra with empty area than simply fill it with crafting provides. That’s a authentic purpose to reward video games that truly make their terrain significant, like Kojima’s Dying Stranding 2, and a purpose to place in your skeptic glasses each time anybody begins hyping up the dimensions of their map fairly than what’s in it.
