While I don't regret the 100-plus hours I've sunk into Crimson Desert, I can't deny an insidious thought has crept into my head a few times: "I wish I were playing Breath of the Wild".
Pearl Abyss' new open-world epic takes liberal inspiration from The Legend of Zelda and Dragon's Dogma, and while the game generally does its exploration shtick quite well, it's also made my respect for Nintendo's take on the genre grow even more. Crimson Desert is obsessed with being the ultimate open-world game; it's specifically tuned to the very idea of what it means to be an open-world game. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, uses the tenets of open-world design to explore its own ethos and further Zelda's formula. That distinction is important because it colors each game respectively.
