Hands On Preview: Black Desert's Land Of the Morning Light Expansion Feels Like A Love Letter To Korea
One of my favorite moments in my Land of the Morning Light preview gameplay was when my NPC companion, Dolswe, struggled to pronounce the names of places across the sea. Names like Magnus and Balenos were as foreign to him as the Yeongam of the East or Dokkaebi is to me. It was a fantastic in-game nod to one of the central concerns the Black Desert team had when approaching localization of this very Korean-centric region.
The Land of the Morning Light is the latest expansion coming to Black Desert Online . Releasing on June 14th, the upcoming expansion takes place in the titular Land of the Morning Light, an island off the coast of the main landmass of Black Desert’s world. Heavily inspired by Korea’s Joseon Dynasty era of history, the Land of the Morning Light is a very different place in Black Desert’s world.
Everywhere I turned felt like an intricate love letter to Korean culture and folklore. From the landscape and towns inspired by real locations in Korea right down to the depiction of the food NPCs ate, Joseon-era Korea is beautifully portrayed.
Wandering Port Nampo, I felt like a foreigner in a distant land. Indeed, that juxtaposition is everywhere, as Land of the Morning Light is a marked departure from the Eurocentric Medieval Fantasy of the rest of Black Desert . Talking with villagers only heightened this feeling, with their patterns of speech reminiscent of how older Koreans spoke as Pearl Abyss CEO Jeonghee Jin, or JJ, told me during a preview event last week.
“How the NPCs speak is different than regular NPCs in other regions,” JJ told me during a preview event at Pearl Abyss America’s Manhattan Beach office last week. “Because [Pearl Abyss Korea] really wanted to make it very close to
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