Crimson Desert Playtime Confirmed, May Not Be As Long As You Expected

It seems like we’ve been waiting forever for Crimson Desert, the expansive open-world game from Black Desert Online developer Pearl Abyss. The ambitious single-player game has been notable while in development for its apparent breadth of content, but the potential Game of the Year competitor may not be quite as long as some are expecting.

Crimson Desert is expected to contain roughly 50 to 80 hours of content, depending on how much you decide to engage with its optional activities. 80 hours is nothing to sneeze at, but The Legend of Zelda and Red Dead Redemption 2 have been specifically named as inspiration, and those games quite easily exceed 100 hours. The information actually comes from a ResetEra post from user Neha in 2024, recently dug up by Insider Gaming. The post is a translation of a Korean business blogger’s summary of a presentation given by Pearl Abyss.

Crimson Desert May Not Be As Long As Some Expected

Pre-release promotion of Crimson Desert has been a long affair—it was first revealed in 2020 and suffered an extended delay—and a lot of the focus has been on its expansive world, a continent known as Pywel. Early looks had many assuming Crimson Desert was a full-fledged RPG; Pearl Abyss’s Black Desert Online is an MMORPG, after all. But Crimson Desert hews closer to the action-adventure genre, so even though its open world is huge, its story may not be as meandering as one would expect from an RPG.

50 to 80 hours is still quite a lot—and it’s a wide range. The lower estimate probably revolves almost entirely around main story content and the biggest side quests, while 80 represents more thorough players who are going to take their time to see everything Crimson Desert has to offer. It’s also possible that Pearl Abyss is grossly underestimating Crimson Desert‘s size—remember when FromSoftware said Elden Ring would take 30 hours to beat?

Still, It Looks Like There’s Plenty To Do

The Crimson Desert protagonist riding a horse through a field towards a castle in the distance.

Just because Crimson Desert seems to be a bit shorter than we expected, doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of gameplay. Even aside from Crimson Desert‘s excellent combat, there’s a wealth of open-world mini-games to keep you busy, including fishing (an ever-popular fan favorite) and hunting. It’s a game that seems to take a lot of inspiration from RPGs without miring itself in heavy systems. With Crimson Desert‘s emphasis on exploration-driven gameplay, Breath of the Wild may be a good comparison.

Crimson Desert will be an interesting game to keep an eye on. It’s Pearl Abyss’s first single-player game, and while it certainly looks impressive, prospective players are so far divided on it. Its playtime of 50 to 80 hours actually clears up a lot of what we can expect from Crimson Desert when it launches on March 19.