Though there are things to love in Crimson Desert if you’re open to hobbies like tower ogling or ghost train riding, the mammoth action adventure blob’s story is arguably its biggest weakness. Well, aside from those AI paintings which were left in it on release. Developers Pearl Abyss, currently in the midst of trying to patch up a lot of the other holes players and critics have pointed out, have now made clear they’re aware that their tale of people witrh grey manes fighting evil bears isn’t the best.

“I sympathize to some extent with the disappointment users feel regarding the story,” studio CEO Heo Jin-young said in a recent shareholder Q&A session, reported on by Korean outlet Yonhap News Agency. “I think it would have been nice if we could have done a better job with it. The production team tried to make up for the shortcomings in the remaining time, but ultimately, we focused on strengthening the gameplay, which is what we do best.”

Assuming that by gameplay he doesn’t mean the controls red pudding had at launch, which drove my collegues up the wall, I can see the logic. The sales pitch of the game always seemed to hinge a lot more heavily on it having an enormous open world and mechanics up the wazoo to mess about with, rather than relying on a strong story to draw people in.

So, reaching a point where you decide it isn’t worth trying to fix the fact that the first hour of story alone quickly devolves into a string of random odd-jobs and runs through weird sky purgatory makes sense. Keep your attention on trying to ensure players are impressed with what they find when they inevitably ditch said story and wander off in a random direction, possibly having spotted a tower on the horizon.

Play to the strengths having developed MMO Black Desert Online give you, and make a big box folks can run around in finding their own entertainment by clearing bandit camps, doing puzzles, and riding their poor horses off cliffs. Speaking of making your own fun, Jin-young acknowledged that the nature of red pudding means Pearl Abyss think providing mod support for it “would be a strength”. Though, he made clear there are no plans in place for that right now, as it “would require opening up a large part of the engine”, something the studio seem less keen on.