Developer Pearl Abyss has released several patches for Crimson Desert on PS5 already, as players find workarounds for the blurry visuals.
Crimson Desert was officially released on Thursday night and despite all the buzz ahead of its launch, it’s landed some disappointing reviews.
The open world action adventure is the first console game from South Korean developer Pearl Abyss, who are previously known for Black Desert Online. Prior to launch, the team only provided reviewers access to the PC version, and only showed footage from the PS5 Pro.
This naturally raised suspicions around the state of the base PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions, and now the game is in the wild players are reporting crashes and some very blurry visuals.
The good news is that this doesn’t appear to be a Cyberpunk 2077 style situation. However, multiple players have reported crashes on PlayStation 5 when navigating the map. A video captured by X user CountryKratos shows the game freezing on the map, before an error message pops up.
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Additionally, many have highlighted the blurry visuals when it’s running in performance mode. However, some believe this might be related to the PlayStation 5’s 120Hz mode, with players stating they’ve fixed the issue by going into the console’s settings, and in Video Output, turning off the ‘enable 120Hz Output’ toggle.
The PR and marketing director for Pearl Abyss has also recommended this change, although according to Digital Foundry’s John Linneman, it appears to only be an issue if your TV does not ‘properly’ support 4K resolution at 120Hz. ‘This is a problem specific to displays that support 120Hz input but only at lower resolutions,’ he added.
Pearl Abyss has released several patches for the PlayStation 5 version already. Patch 1.00.01 was rolled out last night which fixed bugs with the user interface, localisation errors, and ‘improved usability for certain systems and content’, along with other adjustments.
A second patch, released today (March 20), targeted more specific issues. Now, you no longer need to replay a puzzle section prior to a boss fight in Chapter 4 after dying, while the recently viewed cut scenes can now be fast forwarded more quickly. You can find the full patch notes here.
While these updates have been rushed out for the PlayStation 5 version, Pearl Abyss states these patches will be released ‘at a later time’ on Xbox Series X/S, Epic Games Store, and the Mac App Store.
As such, if you’re interested in Crimson Desert on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S, you might be better off waiting a few weeks until these kinks are ironed out.
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