The Witcher 3 Director Says Crimson Desert Is 'Not a Copy of Other AAA Games, but Delivering Something Quite Fresh'

Crimson Desert has a high-profile fan: the director of The Witcher 3. Both games are single-player fantasy adventures, and while The Witcher 3 leans more heavily on story, character, and traditional RPG elements, Pearl Abyss and CD Projekt’s vast open worlds are often compared. Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the director of The Witcher 3 and former Cd Projekt executive, told The Game Business that Crimson Desert, alongside Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, are “different.” “The problem in this industry sometimes is that people opening companies are thinking [too much] about how to make money,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “This is a really cold approach for the games. You cannot create art like this.” Tomaszkiewicz, who left CD Projekt to start his own studio, The Blood of Dawnwalker developer Rebel Wolves, said both Crimson Desert and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 rekindled memories of the nineties, when “every game was some unknown.” The approach, he said, of “adding some risky stuff” to triple-A RPGs so they’re not simply the same as what has come before, was the whole point of setting up Rebel Wolves. “I think that this [idea] is growing these days, because when you look at Clair