Crimson Desert Screenshot
Image: Pearl Abyss

As part of last night's Gamescom opening announcements, Pearl Abyss' hugely successful (if rough-edged) sandbox RPG Crimson Desert made a second debut. Despite only launching five months ago, anyone who bought the game previously will find the game now listed as 'Crimson Desert Enhanced' in their Steam library. What, exactly, has been enhanced? Well, a lot since launch thanks to the game's extensive post-release patches, but specifically, the v2.0 update addresses the largest complaint from a lot of players: the frequently incoherent main story.

For those who played the original version, Crimson Desert makes a baffling first impression that doesn't really improve much after that. After a cinematic and bloody prologue sequence in which gruff protagonist Kliff loses a battle and is separated from his mercenary warband, the Greymanes, he spends most of the next 10-15 hours just doing random things arbitrarily. His quest-markers - almost devoid of narrative - lead him to getting picked up by a pair of cosmic wizards (one of which he finds at random in a sewer) and told that he's the only one who can avert the apocalypse. Something which he doesn't mention to anyone else for a very long time.

Credit where due, that does seem to be improved somewhat in this new version. After Kliff's early defeat, he receives what seems to be a prophetic vision, before the game skips forward to where the main game properly began. This time, Kliff has some internal monologue, questioning what's going on and explaining why he's doing the things he does. It's not going to change this into the next Witcher game, but the story thusfar seems to make a bit more sense. I've yet to dig further than that (this game is absurdly enormous), but it's a good start.

There's also some additional conversation with bosses, plus more unlockable post-fight lore to help fill in their backstories. The quest log UI has been overhauled to be more easily navigated and sorted through, and - probably most notably - a new 'Abyss link' system has been introduced making sure that all three of the playable characters gets a roughly-equivalent number of skill points, meaning that if you play through most of the game as Kliff then switch to one of the other two protagonists, they'll have more skills to play with.

Speaking of skills, early in the game, Kliff gets gifted the double-jump upgrade, and there are eight new skills to learn, including the ability to sprint across the surface of water, making navigating rivers and lakes a much speedier prospect. There's a bit more to it (including full dubbing into several more languages), and you can see the slightly more comprehensive patch notes here. This is all on top of the existing significant updates made to the game since launch, which you can see some of in the re-launch trailer below.

Crimson Desert 'Enhanced' is currently 20% discounted, taking a nice chunk out of its £55/$60 price tag until September 9th. It's also worth noting that the game does have an AI disclosure note on the store page, detailing that they used it for placeholders, some of which sneaked into the game's initial release. While they've since been patched out, the studio hardly seems contrite. Not a dealbreaker for me personally, but your mileage may vary.