A Red Dead 2 river artist ranks Crimson Desert’s water higher

An environment artist who helped build the rivers in Red Dead Redemption 2, and who posts on YouTube as David, looked at the water in Crimson Desert after the first hours. The rivers, he says, are the first he has seen that look better than in that game. In the files the system is called Shallow Water Feature: live particles in real time, the flow goes around stones and reacts to the bank and the character, rather than only playing a texture.

He promises a separate breakdown of how it works. The criticism next to it: grass color at dawn and dusk goes to an unnatural yellow-poison green, depth disappears and the frame looks flat. The trees, he says, are fine. Until a patch, he suggests PC players temporarily correct the grade with Reshade.

He praises displacement maps separately: brick and stones look solid without heavy geometry. Despite the grass color, he asks people not to write the game off because of the first wave of complaints, and to give the studio time.