When Pearl Abyss announced it was releasing a new major content update, complete with a new zone and story back in December at the Calpheon Ball, I was pretty excited to see what the team had in mind.
I’m not sure I would have predicted what the team showcased, however.
Black Desert is an MMORPG steeped in a design that evokes medieval European fantasy, complete with European-style cities, castles, weapon and armor types, and much more.
And that’s not a bad thing - Pearl Abyss has taken that design language and put its own unique spin on it, creating a world that feels familiar, yet is also very much unique in its own right. Dotting the landscape are monsters of all varieties, from the ever-growing goblin hordes to the millions of Centaurs culled in 2022.
Last year’s expansion content, the Mountain of Eternal Winter, had some elements that weren’t quite inspired by the European setting roots of BDO, but it didn’t feel like such a departure that it was unfamiliar. However, the upcoming Land of Morning Light does feel this way because, at its core, it is a fundamental departure from the design language that has defined the world of Black Desert, instead opting for something closer to home for its Korean developers.
Crafting Something Closer To Home
Throughout the years that Black Desert has been in operation, the MMO has slowly started to lean into non-European settings. Classes like the Hashashin come to mind, and my personal favorite, the Lahn, doesn’t share any of the design language of a medieval knight. It’s been refreshing to see, slowly but surely, Pearl Abyss’ designers ebb and flow across the range of real-world influences they have to play with.
This is something the Pearl Abyss team talked to us about during the Calpheon Ball, with executive producer Jaehee Kim touching on the idea that the team could start to add Korean influences into the game after focusing on servicing the global community since its launch.
For many of us here in the West, when we think of Asian influence on culture, our minds more often than not go to Japan or China. Anime, JPop, and more have been in the cultural zeitgeist for decades, while Chinese action movies have dominated and influenced Hollywood for decades as well. Yet Korean culture and its influence have steadily grown in the last few years here in the West, with more and more KPop and K-Dramas taking center stage, especially thanks to platforms like YouTube and Netflix putting them in front of mainstream audiences.
In the MMORPG world, Korean-developed games have dominated as well, from Lineage to the most recently released Lost Ark here in the West. Pearl Abyss’ Black Desert is one of the most played MMORPG franchises across PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and mobile devices.
Yet - as much as these influences have started to find a home here in the States specifically, Pearl Abyss North America CEO Jeonghee Jin (also known as JJ) told me at DICE 2023 last week that even as recently as a few years ago she wouldn’t have thought the team would bring a more Korean-focused update globally.
“Even like three years ago, I probably wouldn’t have imagined we were going to try something like this,” JJ told me during a busy morning at the Resorts World in Las Vegas last week. JJ went on to explain that while she can’t speak for the individual developers themselves, there is a feeling that this rise in global popularity has helped bolster the idea that they could bring some of the culture of Korea to the game to create something truly unique in Black Desert.
Risky Business
One area many have critiqued Black Desert has been its localization. Even with its Western themes, often times the localization of dialogue and more can be a bit confusing. It’s been made better throughout the years compared to when Black Desert Online first launched in the West seven years ago, but it’s still a struggle sometimes.
This was felt even in the last major content expansion, the Mountain of Eternal Winter. While it was at the best it has ever been, there were still some areas where it felt as though the localization could have been better, especially on the dialogue front.
It’s a risk then to take something such as Korean folklore and mythology and have it shine through in the content, especially as it showcases its own unique localization challenges. As Pearl Abyss explained to me at DICE and even at the Calpheon Ball, there are just some ideas and words that just don’t have English counterparts. Expressing those ideas in a way that makes sense to a Western audience is tricky and will require some real ingenuity on the part of the localization team.
However, this is a battle that Pearl Abyss knows it is fighting. Setting out from the beginning with this mindset will only, in my opinion, make those efforts better, and as a result, I really hope we’ll see something of a true treasure in the MMO space.
JJ alluded to this as well when describing one of the denizens of the Land of the Morning Light we’ll see, a Dokkaebi, which is something that might translate to “Goblin” in English, but doesn’t fit the traditional Western idea of the word. However, it’s something that anyone in Korea would instinctively understand and recognize. (It’s also the namesake of an upcoming Pearl Abyss game, DokeV).
This creature appears in a lot of Korean folktales and its something everyone in Korea would know inherently, much like culture touchstones for us here in the West like Bald Eagles or Hamburgers. How do you translate such an inherently known concept into something that is easily understood globally, while also retaining what makes it unique and special to the culture? It’s going to be an interesting balancing act on the part of Black Desert’s localization team, but it’s one I’m sure are up for the challenge.
Enriching Black Desert
From the first moments that The Land of the Morning Light was revealed and Pearl Abyss pulls back some of the veil on the content during December’s Calpheon Ball, I’ve been interested. As someone who grew up in a home that had a lot of Korean influences thanks to my father spending a year there on a tour of duty while in the military, I’m eager to dive into the folklore hidden in every nook and cranny of Black Desert’s upcoming content expansion.
It’s exciting to see something so new come to the game. While classes in Black Desert have been varied over time, ranging from the standard sword-and-board to the pendulum-swinging Lahn, to even the child-like Shai, this feels unique not just to Black Desert, but MMOs in general. The snippets we’ve seen of the zone look familiar, yet also new, with the setting enhanced by tying it to the two new unique classes Black Desert launched in the past few months: the Maegu and Woosa.
While we still need to see how everything shakes out - we can’t review or fully pass judgment on something that we’ve not tested thoroughly, I’m pretty excited to check it out. As I said before, I’m eager to pour over the various stories and folklore present in the content, as well as learn more about Korean culture along the way. It feels like it has the potential to enrich Black Desert’s world - adding yet another layer to the fabric of the world that can sit alongside Calpheon, Balenos, the Kingdom of Haso, and more.
I’m eager to explore the various castles and temples that seemingly dot the landscape from the concept art the team has shared. The sweeping cliffs, one of which looks to be in the form of a giant roaring tiger (presumably the lair of Sangoon, the greatest of tigers and a character in the upcoming content), are begging to be explored, and the cities themselves look to be plucked right out of the pages of Joseon history books.
The concept art has shown beautiful fields, temples, and buildings tucked away on high clifftops, and more. The art and more transports my memories back to when I was in Korea for GStar 2017 and was blown away by its natural beauty. I stayed in Busan near the coast, but about a good ten minute drive away was a beautiful Buddhist temple situated among small farms that extended out towards the Sea of Japan. The skyscrapers and glittering hotels of Busan’s city center were blocked by the shadow of giant sweeping cliff faces that rose in the distance, and despite being near one of the biggest tourist traps in Busan, I felt transported to a different world.
While the rest of Black Desert is beautiful, especially the towns and cities that already dot the landscape, from Heidel to Calpheon itself, I’m especially eager for this same change in scenery in the game. I can’t wait to jump in and explore, not just the world itself, but the story and the lore behind it all.
Prime Positioning
One thing that my mind keeps coming back to when thinking about the new and upcoming content is that it feels like a risk. With all of the localization efforts that will be needed to literally make sure this translates well, both with dialogue but also concept, as well as the fact that for many this might be their first interaction with something so singularly focused on Korean culture, Pearl Abyss is taking a chance.
But I feel like the last seven or so years have built them up to where they can take this chance. Being able to stretch those creative muscles and put something out that feels so unique to the space has got to be refreshing for the developers there. Black Desert is one of those franchises where it feels it can take the creative risk as well, more so than others. Because it’s slowly been building up the world and branching out beyond its Western medieval roots - something Pearl Abyss in both of my chats with them since Land of the Morning light was announced aren’t abandoning either - this feels like a natural evolution of the world instead of a massive departure and left turn into something completely different.
Establishing the Woosa and Maegu in the world before the content drops was smart too - it introduces players to this new region and slowly builds up that familiarity just based on the characters that hail from it first while more firmly grounding everything in the world of Black Desert. It adds weight and a sense of belonging through these new characters that might not have existed if it wasn’t established through these new dynamic classes.
As a result, it feels like Pearl Abyss is poised to be able to take the risk - if it truly turns out to be one. Being able to experiment creatively must feel liberating to the developers, and I’m genuinely curious how things will turn out when the Land of the Morning Light drops into Black Desert this year.
