Crimson Desert is, in many ways, exactly the type of game I’ve been waiting for.

It’s got the enormous, sprawling setting of, say, an Assassin’s Creed title, minus the laundry list of quests that often cause me to burn out on Ubisoft’s massive open-world games. It encourages freedom and experimentation much in the same way as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but with a more consistent narrative drip-feed that keeps me coming back for more. Sure, it starts off a bit slow, but so far, it’s largely been a fun ride. In fact, Crimson Desert is probably the best game I’ve played so far in 2026. Or it would be, if it weren’t for the little twinge of doubt in the back of my mind that tingles every time I load up the game and leaves me wondering, “Is this AI?”

A large part of the discourse surrounding Crimson Desert has been a fairly black-and-white discussion about whether the game is “good.” If all gaming discourse took place in a vacuum, I’d say it’s a pretty solid 7/10 RPG. But we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in a world where studios are increasingly outsourcing their work to generative AI and refusing to disclose it. Developer Pearl Abyss did just that with Crimson Desert, releasing the game on March 19, despite the fact that it was unpolished and featured a frustrating storage system, a bizarre control setup, and blurry graphics on PlayStation 5. Oh, and a load of AI-generated “placeholder” art that was “unintentionally” left in the game.

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