Crimson Desert players claim devs 'redid the entire main story' as huge 33GB update lands

Crimson Desert surprised us all at yesterday’s Gamescom Opening Night Live with the reveal of Crimson Desert: Enhanced Edition.

It wasn’t the only remaster to drop, with CD Projekt RED also stopping by to confirm a free upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt amid its unveiling of the game’s Songs of the Past expansion.

The key difference here is that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is over a decade old and Crimson Desert launched around six months ago.

If anything, we were expecting Pearl Abyss to unveil the DLC expansion they keep teasing for the title but instead, the Enhanced Edition upgrade was both revealed and shadowdropped.

The Enhanced Edition upgrade is free for all existing Crimson Desert owners and will display on your console or PC as Version 2.00.00.

During Opening Night Live, devs teased that it would enhance certain story moments, but now that the update is in the hands of players, we’ve got a much better idea of precisely what that looks like.

Crimson Desert’s free Enhanced upgrade is larger than many full games

I hope you’ve got some storage free, because Crimson Desert’s free upgrade is a whopping 33.5GB - at least on PC - which is quite something when the base game takes up 135GB.

That puts the upgrade at around 25% the size of the full release.

Alongside enhancing the game’s story, the update also seeks to expand voiceover and language support.

French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese are now included, as are Arabic subtitles and interfaces.

But what of those narrative changes? Well, Pearl Abyss downplayed the whole affair, simply suggesting we might get a few extra cutscenes and dialogue lines, but the changes seem to be far more comprehensive than that.

Crimson Desert’s opening is unrecognisable following the update

“They redid the entire main story and narrative. This is insane,” began Reddit user marine899, who’s 400 hours into the title.

“Decided to start a separate new game to see the difference, and WOW THEY REDID the entire beginning part so far. It feels like a different game, definitely more holding the hand [...] I have to finish my original playthrough and do New Game Plus. This is crazy!”

“Kliff feels like a completely different character. I am not used to him talking so much, but I love it. Some actual characterization, thank Christ,” added Dream__Daeng.

“The other Greymanes are more fleshed out [too],” said uplink42. “Even minor quest NPCs have more dialogue and seem to react to world events.”

READ MORE: Crimson Desert finally sets DLC launch window as Pywel set to expand

What fans are now having to decide is whether to miss out on the new content, or whether to embark on a new playthrough - and as you can imagine, there’s a hung jury.

“I’m restarting the game after 60 hours. I was on chapter five,” announced Great_Bed_6334, while Hackingrad commented, “I’m not starting another playthrough. The seemingly endless battle in the stone camp, various quests, and puzzles are keeping me from going through it again.”

I do, however, think this upgrade could draw players back in who strayed away from Crimson Desert due to its clunky, overwhelming nature.

And it’s very likely that a bunch of existing players will just bite the bullet and give it a go; I can’t say, however, that I’ve ever seen a release encouraging players to restart their journey this soon after launch.

For those who are yet to leave Hernand - if you know, you know - I guess we’re never leaving.

Does the Enhanced Edition improve Crimson Desert’s shot at nabbing GOTY? Or is it simply to keep us occupied with that aforementioned expansion being a long way off?

Either way, we’ll take it. Sigh. Back to the beginning we go.