Crimson Desert‘s controls are needlessly awkward, and the game’s convoluted systems and poorly conceived physics somehow manage to make those controls even worse. Until I got used to them — a process that took several hours — I found myself doing all sorts of things I didn’t intend to. Some of them were benign. Most of them were terrible and landed me in all kinds of trouble. Look upon my sins, and tremble!
13
Failed to save my game
The button to accept or confirm in every other scenario is not the button that saves your game in Crimson Desert. It loads. The game’s autosave function meant I only lost about 15 minutes of progress, but that 15 minutes included annoying traversal and some good loot, too.
12
Jump-kicked a beggar in the face
The ironic thing about this atrocity is that I had wanted to give him money. Crimson Desert‘s conversation prompts are highly sensitive to positioning, though. Since I turned the camera right before holding the talk button, the option to speak disappeared, and I jumped instead. Into the beggar’s face.
11
Busted Farmer John’s fence
I’ll be honest: I have no idea how it happened. (And the farmer’s name wasn’t John, as peasants have no names in this game.) Crimson Desert has an odd relationship with fences. You can autojump them on foot and on horseback; on other occasions, you will need to press the jump button to leap over them. The guiding principle determining which type of fence-jumping you get is, I think, related to the angle from which you approach and your movement speed, though the whims of the universe also seem to play a role. On some occasions, the fence breaks when you leap over it; on others, it doesn’t. As a further little wrinkle, there’s a chance that breaking the fence will get you accused of vandalism. Which is what happened in this particular instance, or would have, had I not reloaded my save and pretended no crime took place. Sorry, if I’m going to jail, it’s going to be for something way cooler than breaking a fence.
