Crimson Desert-skuespiller avslører hvordan spillets historie ble endret under utviklingen

The storyline of Crimson Desert, the latest installment from Pearl Abyss, remains one of the main weaknesses of the game. It’s been confirmed by some anonymous developers that the story of Crimson Desert has undergone significant changes during its development. And now we have more details about the game’s plot from someone who has been involved in this directly.

Alec Newman, the voice actor of Kliff, protagonist of Crimson Desert, has recently appeared on Skill Up’s Friends Per Second Podcast, where he revealed a lot of details about how the game’s story and the story of his character were changed during its development. As we know, initially Crimson Desert was a prequel to the MMO title Black Desert before Pearl Abyss decided to make it a standalone single-player title in 2019. Since then, the game has been postponed multiple times before it finally launched on March 19.

During the interview, Newman revealed that he worked on a Kliff’s character for five years by recording different versions of him “at various stages of development.” For the first year and a half, Crimson Desert was just a demo version of an upcoming title, and only in two years was he told the studio was starting to work seriously. He also stated his character originally was named Macduff, and when Pearl Abyss decided to go on with Kliff, they started to work on a story—which changed multiple times because scriptwriters changed as well. You can check out more words from Alex Newman below:

“With this project it was interesting because they kind of… I don't want to say they kept changing the goalpost, but we started off recording with cards of the different parts of Pywel. You know, various characters and, he's from this faction and he's from that faction. And I kept just saying, ‘Yes, but what is happening?’.

When Kliff stopped being Macduff, which was a considerable amount of time into the recording of this, once they settled on Kliff, I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing about story and character as much as I could.

I have to be honest; I felt the pressure of a certain type of developer with a certain type of game. I'm glad I fought for that stuff because, you can tell when you read the reviews for the game that's come out. You can tell when you speak to people. I spoke to some people today actually who are playing it and loving it. And whilst they love some of the voice acting and the characterization, the boon of this game is clearly the size of the open world. And the fact that you can pick up a cat.

That is to do with, I feel, the preferences of the developers and the people who wrote the scripts for these games, which kept changing. So, at various stages it felt very much like making a TV series where they kept moving the focus. And in fact, it's not a secret. If you look at the way that Crimson Desert came into being, they did move things around.

After a while, you know, there's only so far you can go with him kind of being… not flat, but kind of stoic. Now, I know that as a Scotsman myself, I know what that means. But it's very very hard to play 150 hours with somebody who doesn't give anything away ever. So, what's been rewarding is that as people have played through over 100 hours, they've found bits of Kliff that do speak of something more emotional sometimes.

The whole Greymanes thing, after about two and a half years, they decided they really wanted that to resonate. This idea of family and trying to bring something back together. I think that's the main story strand of the game, or the only story strand of the game when you begin it.

And so that was the bridge point. I don't want to say they started panicking, but they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we really want this. We really want Kliff to care about his comrades.’ And I said, ‘Well, he does, but you haven't written that monologue.’ So, we brought it in gradually and wherever we could, we attended to it. Wherever we were given something that could be slightly humorous, we tried to bring that out.

But I'll be honest, those moments were fewer than they could have been.

And my hope for the game is — it seems to be happening — as people spend more time with Kliff and they spend more time in the game and in the world, they kind of live in that level of his existence”

Alec Newman confirms the latest statement from Pearl Abyss CEO, Heo Jin-young, who recently admitted the weak story of Crimson Desert and the studio’s desire to focus on the gameplay side. Despite this, the game is having some financial success, as it has already sold more than 3 million copies. Plus, after the release of Patch Notes Version 1.01.00 a few days ago, Crimson Desert has broken another record of all-time peak players on Steam, with reviews that are now Mostly Positive.

You can also read Crimson Desert Beginner Guide, where you will find tips that make your game experience easier from the beginning of your walkthrough.

What do you think of Alec Newman’s comments on Crimson Desert story development? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Crimson Desert is available now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Mac, and Xbox ROG Ally.