Daniel (@dungeondive) takes the long road south from his expanded Greymane camp, now with a fish pond, to Sunset Valley at the bottom tip of Hernand, chasing a rumour of a village of the sick. No main quest and no walkthrough, just a horseback travelogue with a running commentary on the game.
The commentary is mostly a retraction. Last time he called Kliff, the protagonist, a nothing of a character; here he revises that. Kliff is stoic, but he is kind-hearted, and the opening hours of chimney-cleaning and lost-sheep chores that felt like a chore game turn out to be establishing exactly that. The reunions with fellow Greymanes and the way people respond to kindness land better once the story opens up. He is warmer on the game as a whole too, with the eastern witches boss fight and the political intrigue in Demenis winning him round, though he still thinks Crimson Desert front-loads its boredom with far too many hours of tutorial.
Along the way: sealed abyss challenges that pay out skill points, a wrestling-move brawl with bandits, a trader explaining the wagon economy, and a sick woman who begs for help and leads him straight into an ambush. He resolves to stay kind regardless. The village itself is quiet and sad, pot-helmed patients and coughing children under a windmill, plus one bounty who turns out to be faking illness. He is on a low-end PC and apologises for the rain.
Do you seek out the mundane corners of open-world games like this, or is a village with three turnips for sale a detour you would skip?