Phwoar, look at that striking steeple on the horizon, I thought after arriving in Crimson Desert’s first town.

I was playing a man I was fairly sure I couldn’t give a toss about, embroiled in a conflict I also couldn’t give a toss about, but that tower. Man, it took my breath away. Who could dwell within it? Who first built it? Can I climb it? Where did they get all of that stone? These questions buzzed around my belfry-addled brain. ‘Hey, stay on track,’ argued another bit of my grey matter, ‘you’ve got a train to find’. ‘Train can wait,’ I replied, ‘must take in the visual majesty of this faraway tower and maybe visit it to see if there’s anything interesting to do there’.

Before I could do that last part, my eyes found another faraway tower nestled on the ridge behind the town. It wasn’t as big as the first one I’d spotted, but as they say in tower ogling circles, it’s not how tall or girthy the spire is, it’s how stately a figure it cuts as it juts skyward. As I’ve discovered in the few hours I’ve spent roaming the red pudding game’s map so far, its greatest strength is arguably in spoiling you for choice when it comes to distant towers to ponder from a vantage point. Whether you’ll actually encounter any of the sorts of intriguing quests or well fleshed-out dungeons you’d expect from the likes of The Witcher 3 or Skyrim on the way is another matter, but when it comes to well-stocked horizons, Crimson Desert’s got them covered.

Take a spot just to the east of a bandit gathering dubbed Rocca’s Beacon, for example. Look straight ahead, and you can see no less than four distant monoliths to muse about – possibly more if you count what look like the peaks of mountains or hills. Turn north and you’ll see a wooden spike of some kind perched atop the rocky cliffs. Turn south and you can make out that first spire I fell in love with, along with several wooden watchtowers. A veritable feast for the tower ogler’s eyes, no matter which way you slice it.

Abandoning this spot and venturing further east, I found yet more towers and steeples, daunting monoliths dotting a rural landscape strewn with castles whose white battlements and pointy cylindrical spires wouldn’t look out of place in one of Gerry from the River’s adventures in Toussaint. Pushing beyond these European fairytale-ish meadows, I then spotted some zeppelins floating on a smoky distant hill. In hindsight, maybe wandering absent-mindedly right into the middle of what appeared to be a war between orcs running some sort of Victorian factory – complete with chimney stacks belching smog – and an army of robots with laser-pointer sights, was a bit risky on my part.

Still, no one told me not to pose for photos on the tips of the factory’s steampunk howitzers. I even tried speaking to the orcs in the hopes of being clued in about the whole war thing, but none of them seemed to have much to say. So, I opted to get out of everyone’s hair and head north, to the crimson and deserty region of Crimson Desert called the Crimson Desert. Finally, here, I thought, I’ll learn the true nature of red pudding and maybe find some orange obelisks to gawk at. I was right on the former count. Wandering through a landscape not unlike real world Arizona’s expanse of sun-roasted mesas, featuring a few elephants (because why wouldn’t Crimson Desert have elephants), I found bandits hanging out around clusters of looming stone lookout towers.

I also stumbled across some wild west-style elevated train tracks. Following them to the arid wasteland equivalent of a rural English station that serves a village made up of three bungalows, a post office, and a statue of Harold the second, I waited for the loco I’d seen in a couple of social media clips.

The platforms were completely devoid of people, save me, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that when a steam train straight out of Lies of P or Bioshock rocked up, no one was driving it. All of the carriages also seemed to be empty rooms. A ghost train, then, looking in far too good nick to be abandoned, but puffing along a short loop that appeared to serve as transport for no one aside from me. Not something that feels inseparable from the fabric of the game’s world, as Red Dead Redemption’s bustling railroads do, but something that’s just there. Perfectly harmless and pretty cool to discover for the first time, but also feeling like it may just exist to tick a box.

Before I ended up thinking too hard about whether that might be a metaphor for something wider, I hopped off and decided to push back west. On the way, I spotted a weird bulbous tank that looked right out of a Studio Ghibli film. I approached this thing, which the game informed me was called Desert Marauder Rusten, to ask if it wanted to be my friend and see if someone would pop out of the bushes to tell me that was a bad idea. It responded by firing rockets at my face, as no one popped out of the bushes. Ah, maybe not then. Slashing and firing arrows at its drill-topped wheels seemed to do nothing, so I decided to leave it to its patrolling for now.

My wanderings took me to an admittedly breathtaking tower, built into some cliffs and dubbed the World’s Navel, then on to a frozen tower just outside of the deserty area. Taking a look at the map once these locations had been thoroughly ogled, I decided to walk to a nearby location called The Forgotten City. Perhaps there I’d find someone else to talk to about towers, rather than simply run from as a bar in the corner of the screen screams percentages of enemies remaining in a specific area or bandit camp at me.

At first, all seemed normal. Then, it was not. CANNOT ENTER THIS REGION, a booming voice bellowed at me when I reached a certain point on my journey to this most blotted out of burghs. A forgotten city so forgotten that the cartographers who inscribed it onto Crimson Desert’s map seemingly forgot to include a warning about this magical barrier. It began a countdown from ten and suddenly whipped up a storm all around me, like an embarrassed uni housemate attempting to maintain their modesty after emerging from the shower midway through someone’s parents visiting. TURN BACK OR YOU’LL DIE. No, I said. The man I was inhabiting quickly got very sandy, then fell over, dead as a doorknob.

I felt a bit guilty. This boring man had craved only to feast his eyes on prodigious pillars. He’d been a keen sightseer, a neutral observer in the world of red pudding. A diviner of joy from vistas made intoxicating by an undeniably impressive draw distance and objects which are cool to stumble on for the first time, if a bit disappointing when it becomes clear the game doesn’t plan to do much exciting stuff with them. He had found fun in Crimson Desert, if not a fun that seemed like it could last long once he’d trampled all over Pywel’s vast expanse.

I pictured him being buried at the foot of that first striking, sexy and strong steeple that’d captured his gaze. A coffin mounted vertically in a little stone tower of its own. A funeral procession of fundamentalist goblins, which I found to be the enemy faction who congregate around this particular landmark when I finally got around to visiting it. That which they’re fundamentally dedicated to – aside from the act of being goblins – totally unclear. An area clearing progress bar finally ticked down to 0%.

Another wanderer lost to the Pearl Abyss. Red ashes to red ashes, crimson dust to crimson dust.