These are showpiece events, each offering something to
impress on a technical level (the sand pit is particularly brilliant, at one point looking exactly like the Great Pit of Carkoon from Star Wars) and acting as a milestone in your mission.
It's not just artistically the game does well, mind you,
on a
technical level the game also
impresses with plenty of detail packed into character models and vast draw distances lending the world a sense of scale via some impressive vistas, even though you are kept to a fairly linear path, a path which happens to also feature warning messages should you stray a bit too far and invisible walls that you can bang your noggin off of, somewhat ruining the nice illusion of wandering through the wilderness.