Yesterday introduced us the inaugural New Recreation+ Showcase, by which 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 embrace attention-grabbing new glimpses of quite a lot of 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 number of the preliminary previews seemed that the sport’s fairly large vistas have 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 Crimson Useless Redemption 2. The realm that you simply’re taking part in 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 recognized for an enormously widespread freemium MMORPG to say, particularly given how a lot of Crimson Desert appears to be like like an MMORPG that ultimately had a single-player motion recreation grafted into it (which is what really occurred). However nonetheless, that’s a whole lot of recreation. Or at the least a whole lot of recreation map.
Crimson Desert claims to have twice the playable space as Skyrim and a map bigger than Crimson Useless Redemption 2 pic.twitter.com/iCtLZ7IWU4
— Jake Fortunate (@JakeSucky) January 9, 2026
The footage shared to date 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 recreation that allows you to trip a dragon. However what in regards to the chance that will probably be a whole lot of house with no actual goal? Powers himself tries to chop off that concern on the move. “Dimension doesn’t actually matter if there’s nothing to do,” he stated “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 usually throughout the interview attempting to press Powers on what sorts of interactions the participant can look ahead to on this big world, asking should you can struggle dragons or romance NPCs. The very best Powers got here up with in response was emphasizing “all types of deep crafting programs.”
Therein lies the true challenge with making guarantees about map measurement within the yr of our Lord 2026: it’s lengthy since turn into a ineffective metric. Having a recreation world the scale of Australia is all effectively and good, you’ll be able to even have it’s filled 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 professional motive to reward video games that truly make their terrain significant, like Kojima’s Dying Stranding 2, and a motive to place in your skeptic glasses every time anybody begins hyping up the scale of their map relatively than what’s in it.