Arkane Lyon’s Dinga Bakaba says Crimson Desert works because it saves its magic for later

Slow burn, by design

Crimson Desert has been getting plenty of praise from critics and players, but one complaint keeps coming up from people who actually sink time into it: it takes a while to get going. Arkane Lyon studio director Dinga Bakaba thinks that pacing is not a bug, but the feature doing the heavy lifting.

Bakaba, who previously oversaw Dishonored 2 and Deathloop, posted his thoughts on the game’s current wave of attention on Twitter. In his view, Crimson Desert is almost the opposite of most open-world games, which usually rush to impress early and then hope the rest of the experience keeps up.

The point where it clicks

Bakaba compared the game’s structure to a board game, where the rules are there from the start, but the real appeal does not arrive until the player has settled into it.

"It's almost like the specific type of immersion of a board game where at first all you see is the board/rules but then you enter the magic circle properly and the real fun begins," he said. "And where it excels is at this point the game hasn't thrown everything it has in store at you."

He said the game keeps layering in new systems and making them matter more as you play, rather than dumping every trick on the table immediately.

"It keeps on introducing new things, giving more significance to systems and making them interact with each other. It doesn't hurt that most of them are 'meaty' and realized diegetically, and that there is also some tonal liberties with some (smartly engineered) stupid fun."

Bakaba said that all of this "coalesces in an singular player journey from game to magic to discovery that might be why so many find investing time in it rewarding and 'personal,'" and added that "In a time of fast consumption, a game that is sticky because it has friction, and not because it's smiley feels amazing."

Divisive, but hard to ignore

There is a real argument for games that make players work before handing over the good stuff. The reward, when it lands, can be combat depth, stronger storytelling, or systems that finally start colliding in interesting ways. That said, Crimson Desert is still splitting opinion rather neatly.

For some, including Palworld publishing lead John Buckley, it is an open-world standout on the level of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. For others, it mostly acts as a very elaborate prompt to go play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild instead.

That slow-burn reputation is not just theory, either. Nearly two weeks after launch, reports were still surfacing of players spending huge chunks of time in the first region, including one post from someone who said they were "136 hours in the game so far and STILL haven't left Hernand."

So yes, Crimson Desert appears to be one of those games that asks for patience before it starts handing out the good stuff. In 2026, apparently, that still counts as a bold artistic choice.