It looks like it might be a good while yet before gamers can get their hands on The Witcher 4 or The Elder Scroll VI, but there’s a new open world RPG coming in March that looks like it might well just fill that void.

Crimson Desert is the latest project from Pearl Abyss, the Korean developer behind the hugely popular MMO Black Desert Online. Set on the fantastical content of Pywel, it looks to feature an absolutely massive open world for players to explore and complete quests in.

As for just how big, the studio has actually compared it to the likes of Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption 2 in a recent interview.

Speaking to Luke Stephens and Luality on the Gaming Interviews YouTube channel, Will Powers from Pearl Abyss said: “I don’t think numbers really do it justice because how big is that in terms of scope and scale? But what we can say is that the world is at least twice as big as the open world playable area of Skyrim. It’s larger than the map of Red Dead Redemption 2.”

That’s likely music to the ears of open world gamers looking for their next big fantasy hit. Powers went on to explain that it’s not just about the sheer size of the map in Crimson Desert, though – the development team has thought about how densely it needs to be packed, too.

“The area that you’re playing in – the continent of Pywel – is absolutely massive, but size doesn’t really matter if there’s nothing to do,” he says. “Open world games are about doing things, having activities, and having distractions. So we wanted to create a world that’s not only massive but is also incredibly interactive.”

In terms of what that looks like, Pywel will have plenty of dungeons to explore and side quests to complete. An IGN First preview for the game also shows that the game will have several fortress assaults to take part in, which sees the player lead a group of soldiers in an attack on key points of interest around the map.

While the playable space of Crimson Desert looks to be huge, it doesn’t seem like players will need to spend hours traversing it to see everything. Mounts are present in the game, including huge flying dragons that look like they’ll shave plenty of time off the usual traversal journey.

However, while Crimson Desert is being pitched as an open world RPG, it might not have all the same elements as some of the most popular titles in the genre before it. For one, Powers clarifies that the game won’t have multiple endings, nor will the actions of the player have an impact on the direction the story takes.

“This is not that type of game in terms of RPG elements and decision making, choice and consequence in terms of your character. What it is, though, is you choose the type of character that you want to play in terms of your progression within the systems in the game. And then through ‘head canon’, you’re having this very different experience from other players because of the scope and scale of the game.”

On paper, this sounds like players will simply have the choice of playing the same content in a different order. However, there does seem to be a fairly deep skill system that can let players spec into different play styles to suit their preference.

Crimson Desert is set to release on March 19, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.