Just Cause studio once had its own Crimson Desert in the works

Crimson Desert has been dominating gaming discussions for the past week or so, with players sinking hundreds of hours into exploring the game. As it turns out, Avalanche, the studio behind Just Cause, had a similar game in the works, but publishers were unwilling to take a chance on it. 

Crimson Desert is a massive open world game, but it is more in line with Zelda Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom rather than something like Assassin's Creed. The game offers a huge open-world sandbox, where exploration, discovery and problem solving are centre to the experience, rather than mindlessly checking off items on a never-ending list of activities.

In a recent interview with PCGamer, Avalanche co-founder, Christofer Sundberg, explained that his former studio had a very similar idea for a game of their own, titled AvionGuard, more than a decade ago. He says that everything he has seen from Crimson Desert was in their plans for that title.

However, the game lost its publishing deal. Avalanche tried to save the project by announcing the game, but no other publisher was willing to sign the game to a deal and it was ultimately cancelled. Eventually, Avalanche ended up sticking with Just Cause and branched out with 2015's Mad Max game.

KitGuru Says: On paper, Crimson Desert doesn't sound like a hit. There is little handholding through the experience, the controls are a little complicated and storytelling takes a pretty clear backseat to gameplay and immersion. However, I have found it to be one of the most gripping and fun-to-play open-world games in years. It would be interesting to see more studios take on this style of RPG and I'm surprised that Crimson Desert is really the only major game to attempt it after the success of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. 

 

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