Crimson Desert’s open world is only beginning to show its size and scope, a feat made easier with some timely patches and updates from its developers that have made covering more ground easier for players. But some of that ground is hard-won, and we aren’t even talking about fighting off literal armies until you stand alone on the battlefield. We’re referring to the Abyss, and it’s often obscure approach to hiding away its secrets.
The ancient civilization that existed before Pywel, or perhaps parallel to it, seems to have been a society that challenged the intellect of its members to extreme degrees. Some of the game’s puzzles are consequently so convoluted that it feels like each one brings a different idea or concept to the table, and it’s up to us to adapt on the fly as the best Greymanes often do. That can feel like a refreshing departure from traditional open-world fare that’s largely more accessible, but it’s a double-edged sword thanks to the friction it causes. You’re never told what you need to do, and that showcases a bold approach in which the game assumes its players are smart enough to figure it out.
But has it been considered if they’re patient enough? The Greymanes are a volatile bunch, after all, and as the ones helping them along, so are we. Join us as we take a look at how this one’s puzzles challenge existing traditions, and its players as a result.
Trembling With Frustration
Let’s begin with an example of how Crimson Desert can have you staring at your screen blankly until you realize the solution was right in front of you all along. Exploring a set of ancient ruins in the Trembling Woods led us to a puzzle in which three rotating pillars controlled sections of a mural on the wall. We managed to get two sections in place fairly quickly, but the third pillar was missing its handle. We looked high and low for it, a tedious process that took the better part of an hour, only to find that shining our lantern on the pillar itself showed us that we needed to stab the pillar with our sword and move it along.
That’s just one example of the game giving you the tools you need to finish the job, but stoutly refusing to nudge you along to a solution it knows you’re going to stumble upon eventually. Does it add to the immersion of it all? Hell yeah. But does it tack on a layer of difficulty for players who might not have the luxury of time to ponder on potential courses of action? Unfortunately, yes again. Many of the game’s puzzles are hard, not because they involve thinking out of the box, but because they actually encourage shaking off assumptions that other games have trained in us in over the years. Allow us to explain.
Missing Pieces
We have another instance of hilarity at our expense for you. We came across a certain Sanctum, an important-looking place that housed a ton of very hostile members of a cult who lined up to die at our hands (we did position ourselves pretty well in that fight, though). With the sanctum now liberated, we explored it with elation, finding a remnant of the Abyss that sure looked like it was meant to power something up. We carefully maneuvered it through the ruins, a tedious process that we didn’t know we could avoid at the time. We found the device it was meant to slot into, but nothing would force it to stay in place. We’re quite annoyed that we’d forgotten about the Force Palm ability at that point.
But then, we found that we hadn’t even met the person we were supposed to do this for, a certain Witch who would reveal herself to us only in Chapter 3. We were yet to get there, and that was another hour that was a lot of fun, but ultimately pointless. While the ruins in the woods had us thinking we were missing an important piece, this one had us thinking that we had everything we needed until the rug was pulled out from under us by the revelation that we were missing a whole chunk of content.
Another puzzle, another revelation that the game’s puzzles were not just challenging, but needed to be considered within the context of the faction that sent us their way. But then the game goes and gives you everything you need in other instances before making you realize that you’re the problem, and we mean that literally this time.
Demanding Attention
Our next stop is the Scholastone Institute, a place that immediately grabbed our attention when we visited it in the story, complete with our very own uniform. Of course, we were quite enthusiastic to be humble students and dutifully took on a quest to help find out who stole a forbidden book from our fellow scholars. Well, long story short, we lost another chunk of time since we weren’t paying attention to the second mission of a side chain, only to come up short when our teachers questioned us about what we’d just learned.
We quickly found that the whodunit we were investigating stopped being a puzzle and more of an attention test, as the previous quest had us interrogating potential suspects, a process whose lines of dialogue we unfortunately didn’t pay attention to fully as we were marveling at the beauty of the institute’s elaborate architecture. If you haven’t been there, know that it can get quite tempting to let your mind wander, but do pay attention in Crimson Desert class!
While the institute’s brightest minds were also gracious enough to afford us another chance to get things right, this one was such a surprise, as it challenged an entirely different set of skills than the other puzzles we’ve talked about. This one didn’t have us figuring out complex machinery, choosing an objective that you might even consider trivial. But it turned out to be a test that forced us to adopt an entirely different way of thinking. We’ve been keeping our phones away when we play Crimson Desert thanks to it.
Perhaps that was the point? Well, we’re diving into why that’s the case next.
Ambition Versus Accessibility
Were we frustrated at discovering the different ways that each of these puzzles, along with so many more, pulled the wool over our eyes? Definitely. But do we think that it’s a refreshing change of pace from other open worlds in which puzzles generally devolve into missions where you just recover a missing item or two, or perhaps turn a few knobs to get past them? Also yes.
The fact that these puzzles are linked so closely to the Abyss, whose artifacts you need to use if you’re going to get your skill set and gear ramped up enough to deal with the incredible bosses and battles you face, makes them all the more risky, but in a good way. They aren’t obstacles to your progress but are rather stepping stones to getting better with the many systems, skills, and mechanics that the game hides away in order to give you the pleasure of finding them for the first time. And let’s not forget that they also often reward us with a fast-travel point and maybe even some cool loot!
The game’s ambitions blend well with its unpredictability to craft experiences that stay with you even as you move on to umpteen other distractions as you make your way through Pywel. It gives its players a world that’s layered beyond sticking things with the pointy end of your preferred weapon. But that strength can also be a weakness.
Don’t get us wrong, we love a good puzzle. But there is a certain awkwardness to interacting with important items, with the game’s controls often refusing to cooperate with us as we try to piece together a solution that it hides away so darn well. That many complaints about the game’s movements come from the way they interfere with puzzle solving is a showcase of how players might be willing to flex their mental muscles, but come away with their patience tested instead. That isn’t a great combo in our book.
The lack of communication with its players as far as its puzzles are concerned is another sore spot. Yes, it makes solving tough puzzles all the more satisfying, but the price of that satisfaction is a lot of frustration and wondering if you’re even prepared to solve this one or if you should return to the main campaign for a while. Or perhaps move on to building up the Greymane camp, only to return to the puzzle a long time after that, if you come back at all. There are other ways of picking up Abyss Artifacts, after all.
But has Crimson Desert managed to strike a balance that can be quite, er, puzzling, to achieve?
Trains Of Thought
The answer is more nuanced than you might imagine. Crimson Desert’s puzzles aren’t rocket science for the most part, and the fact that we’ve been managing just fine on our own as we enjoy them all is a testament to that. But that has come with a learning curve involving slowing down and paying attention to even the tiniest details. It’s involved accepting that sometimes, what seems to be obvious is another cleverly hidden red herring meant to throw you off the scent of the solution that’s right there for the taking.
It’s honestly a pleasure to get past all of that and actually come up with creative solutions, but the process is maddening enough to tempt us to reach for our phones and just look up solutions. But is that really a bad thing? We pieced together all of the steps for Elden Ring’s Goldmask ending after all, and that one was straight up insane on a first playthrough. Think about it that way, and it’s easy to see that Crimson Desert has dared to go against the grain.
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