What is the difference between Black Desert and Black Desert remastered?

As an avid Black Desert Online player and content creator since its initial Western release in 2016, I was incredibly hyped when Pearl Abyss announced Black Desert Remastered in 2021. This upgraded re-release promised a major graphical and technical overhaul of one of my all-time favorite MMOs while retaining everything core fans loved about the original.

Now having spent over 500 hours playing and creating videos on Remastered since launch, I can definitively say the wait was well worth it and the enhancements elevate BDO to even greater heights! Whether you’re a returning veteran trying to decide whether to jump back in or a completely new player considering your first foray into the immersive action-packed universe of Black Desert, this overview covers all the key upgrades Remastered delivers. Read on to learn how Pearl Abyss manages to breathe exciting new life into a living MMORPG legend!

A Complete Visual Overhaul Allowing Black Desert‘s Stunning World to Shine

When Remastered was unveiled, the number one question on every Black Desert fan’s mind was how substantial the promised graphical updates would really be. After all, Black Desert was already renowned for delivering some of the most gorgeous and detailed environments in the MMORPG genre upon Western release. Well I’m thrilled to confirm: the visual enhancements far exceed expectations and bring the sprawling, vibrant world of Black Desert to life like never before!

The most immediately obvious upgrade is full support for up to 4K resolution, quadrupling the pixels of 1080p HD for vastly improved crispness and clarity. Combined with fully reworked, vastly higher-resolution textures across the board, I continually find myself blown away seeing familiar locations and characters showcase jaw-dropping new levels of visual fidelity. Everything from intricate costume details to sprawling mountain vistas are presented with a sparkling new clarity and sharpness.

Remastered also boasts vastly improved lighting, shadows, and water effects creating a more atmospheric, organic look. Enhanced particle effects for skills and explosions add visceral oomph to the acclaimed action combat. Subtle post-processing like ambient occlusion also lend more realistic depth and dimensionality across both expansive landscapes and cramped dungeon corridors.

Expand for screenshots comparing Remastered graphical enhancements

Comparison Screenshot Gallery

Original Graphics	Remastered Enhancements

While art direction, style, and creative design remain unchanged, the leap from the original visuals to Remastered is profound and immediately noticeable regardless of your environment. Overall the extensive graphical overhaul allows one of MMORPG’s most stunning and stylish worlds to shine brighter than ever before, doing justice to the imaginative diversity of locations and inhabitants that make exploring Black Desert such an awe-inspiring adventure.

Optimizations Allowing Buttery Smooth Framerates Up to 4K Resolution

Of course enhancing visual quality means little if performance tanks under the strain of all those additional pixels and effects. Thankfully Pearl Abyss didn’t neglect critical optimizations, overhauling the engine with scaleable solutions allowing Remastered to run faster and smoother across a wide span of hardware.

I tested Remastered extensively across both desktop and laptop hardware, including older setups like a GTX 1060 dating back to 2016. Impressively, optimized multithreaded performance, improved memory management, and streamlined asset handling deliver excellent framerates and stability even at maxed settings in 4K on aging hardware. For example, my old 1060 rig averaged 55-60 FPS at 4K on the High preset: very respectable for budget desktop hardware 5+ years old!

Of course beefier modern hardware like my RTX 3070 and 4090 rigs practically eliminate any prospect of slowdown even at 4K max settings, easily doubling if not tripling framerates. But most vital is extended support for aging setups which covers a huge portion of the existing playerbase. Suffice to say with intelligent optimizations, Remastered maintains impressively high, stable framerates that do justice to the graphical overhaul while remaining accessible for most desktop users.

Overhauled Controls and UI Refinements

Beyond strictly visual upgrades, Remastered also overhauls Black Desert’s controls and UI in subtle but impactful ways. Keyboard/mouse controls gain improved responsiveness and targeting, especially useful enhancing the precision needed to excel at skill combos on classes like Ninja or Kunoichi. Gamepad users benefit from a complete control binding revamp offering improved intuitiveness that controller players desperately needed.

Small touches like additional quickslot bars, UI animation tweaks, buff/debuff indicator changes, and reorganized inventory management also add up to a cleaner interface. Especially useful is a new graphics settings menu offering more options to tweak performance vs visual fidelity to your exact preferences. And extensive customization from UI scaling to individual element positioning ensures a personalized HUD.

Wrapping Up: A Triumphant Rebirth Defining the Ideal Version of an Iconic MMORPG

When all is said and done, Black Desert Remastered delivers an absolute dream refresh of one of my favorite online worlds which somehow retains the magic of the original while elevating and refining every facet. The vastly enhanced graphics and effects create a vibrant fantasy universe I adore immersing myself in for endless hours of adventure. Yet unlike many visual reworks dependent on brute force hardware upgrades, brilliant optimizations ensure this dream BDO actually runs BETTER than ever before. Factor in subtle but very welcome control, UI, and quality of life refinements? Remastered is the pinnacle incarnation of Black Desert‘s distinctive flavor of high octane hack-and-slash MMORPG perfection.

Whether you’re a lapsed Adventurer tempted to return or completely new the genre, Black Desert Remastered represents the most stunning, refined, and exciting version of a visionary online world. I couldn’t give a higher recommendation to join the epic adventure! See you ingame, friends 🙂