The 82-kilometer map is selling freedom, yet Crimson Desert still blocks one thing players expected to be standard. Fans are joking that Pearl Abyss‘s open world won’t let you do one of the most basic actions in the genre: dive underwater.

With less than a month left before release, Crimson Desert remains one of 2026’s biggest game launches, and it is also a high-stakes move for Pearl Abyss, a studio previously known for staying inside the MMO lane. This time, though, the team is not shipping a massively multiplayer title or a game built around online systems, but a large-scale open-world action adventure that leans heavily into spectacle and exploration. My colleague Rubén Márquez counted 52 mechanics in Crimson Desert, yet players have already identified one thing that apparently won’t be on the list for either you or me: diving.

To push the game ahead of launch, the South Korean developer has been saturating social media with promotional material and longer gameplay showcases that spell out what players can expect from Crimson Desert‘s world. Pearl Abyss has highlighted everything from detailed NPC behavior routines to climbing and fishing systems, and that steady stream of demonstrations is expected to continue until March 19.

No underwater exploration in Crimson Desert, and the community is having fun with it

As part of the same marketing push, multiple Asian creators received access to early builds of the game. One of them, JTXMAN, uploaded several “raw” gameplay clips – in other words, unedited footage – and a viewer noticed an odd pattern: the character swims, hunts, jumps, and climbs, but never goes underwater. That led to a direct question for the creator about whether underwater exploration exists, and the reply was straightforward: “You can swim, but you can’t dive.”

The community response arrived fast, but the mood was mostly playful rather than angry. Comments like VoltageKid56’s “We did it, guys! We’ve finally found something you can’t do in this game” and “So it doesn’t have everything. Literally unplayable” rose among the most upvoted posts on Reddit, reinforcing the idea that many players see Crimson Desert as an enormous systems-heavy sandbox where almost anything seems possible.

That reaction also makes sense in historical context, because there was a period when big-budget AAA open-world games treated both the land map and underwater spaces as meaningful parts of exploration – Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, with its rich sea life, remains one of the obvious examples. Against that backdrop, it is notable that Crimson Desert appears not to include even a lighter version of that approach. It is not necessarily a flaw by itself, but the jokes are understandable: in a game where you can pilot a mech, ride a dragon, control a robotic dragon, and even steal chickens, there is still one simple thing the game will not let you do.

Pearl Abyss has not officially stated whether this restriction is guaranteed to remain in the final release build. Still, with so many mechanics and gameplay options already shown, the absence of diving is unlikely to be a deal-breaker for most players.

Source: 3DJuegos