History is clearly on the mind of Black Desert developer Pearl Abyss, which given the game is celebrating its 10th anniversary in an 800 year-old French castle, isn't that surprising. Nonetheless, as Pearl Abyss reels off a list of planned new features for its MMO, I'm struck by how much Black Desert's future dwells upon ideas of the past. Not only is the game currently wrapping up an expansion heavily inspired by Korean traditions and folklore, its more distant plans will see players explore the history of Black Desert itself, by travelling back in time thousands of years.
It's an interesting direction for a studio that has, according to Executive Producer Jaehee Kim, spent most of the last decade thinking as far ahead as possible. "[We] wanted to make a game that would be fun in the very far future," Kim says during a roundtable interview, when I ask him how Black Desert has navigated the often volatile waters of the MMO genre. "The genre was more like a framework for [us]."
