Black Desert is bringing its world-renowned character creator to Xbox One, that much has been known for a while. But yesterday we finally got a taste of the graphically demanding MMO on the console for the first time, and it definitely has some jank.
First off, I’m a Black Desert noob because my PC is basically a calculator, so this is my first hands-on experience with the character creator. They seem to have retained all the small tweaks and minutia of the PC version, with small pin-like nodes to yank and tug on to make your character look as awful as possible. While I have to admit, it’s better than just a generic slider, I have to wonder how much of this detail you’ll actually be able to see once you play the game. In the meantime, I have to give the game credit for probably having the best in-game cleavage I’ve seen to date.
The camera needs improvement, and seems glued to the back of the character while running, something that personally annoys the hell out of me. I’m not one of those people that is talented enough to run in a straight line, so I was constantly watching my viewpoint sway back and forth as my character meandered around bushes and rocks. I’m not prone to motion sickness, but every once in a while a game will hit all the right notes and trigger that queasiness in my stomach. This one is right on the line. Being able to unlock the camera from the character and allow him/her to zig-zag back and forth while keeping the aiming reticle in place will get rid of that problem easily. The character can already strafe left and right so it shouldn’t be much of a fix. On top of this, I do want to be able to zoom the camera in and out. I’m pretty sure this is something that will be in the final build.
Another thing I noticed right off the bat was that the game is bright. Even with the HDR settings adjusted and turned all the way down, the overall gamma is through the roof. From what I could tell, there was no way to adjust that. This needs to be addressed, as HDR is kinda useless if half the image is blown out already.
I tried both the HD 1080p setting and the 4K, and honestly I didn’t noticed much of a difference between them, except for a more stable frame rate at 1080p. It was pretty early in the morning though, so I could’ve just been half-asleep.
Combat seems okay. I mean, it’s an MMO so it’s only ever going to be so good, but with games like Warframe showing us that combat can be excellent and engaging even in an MMO, there’s not much excuse for it anymore.
One big gripe is that the classes seem limited to six at the moment, and there hasn’t been any word on whether or not the final build will limit us to these classes, or if we’ll get all of the classes that the PC is currently enjoying. I want to be a sword and shield melee character, but dudes just don’t do it for me. It doesn’t really bother me that character classes are gender-specific, as long as they give us the Valkyrie class in the final build. Witches or wizards, warriors or valkyries, it doesn’t make any difference to me as long as they have a similar skill set, I won’t feel like I’m missing out.
For the beta I chose a ranger, and it’s alright. Ranged classes have never really been my thing. Unfortunately, I’ll be out of town for the duration of the beta’s run time, so my initial impressions will apparently be the only thing I get, until the official launch. So we’ll just leave this here, and we’ll see what it looks like.
