- Crimson Desert actor Alec Newman says Pearl Abyss continued to change the game’s story throughout development
- Newman says he continued to emphasize “as much as possible on the story and the characters.”
- He suggests the studio “kept changing the goalpost” and even changed Cliff’s name
Alec Newman, the voice behind Crimson Desert‘s protagonist, Kliff, revealed that he had to continue to push Pearl Abyss to clarify the game’s story and character over the many years of development.
Speaking in an interview on the Friends Per Second podcast, Newman discussed the game at length and said he worked on it “on and off” for five years while “recording various iterations of this character at different stages of development.”
“Almost two years after we started recording, they kind of said, ‘Well, we’re going to start recording in earnest now.’ And I was like, “What do you mean?” We’ve been doing this for ages!'” Newman exclaimed.
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Newman is an experienced actor in the industry and is also known for his role as Adam Smasher in Cyberpunk 2077but he said Crimson Desert was very different because Pearl Abyss was continually changing things throughout development.
“I don’t want to say they kept changing the goalposts, but we started by recording with maps of the different parts of Pywel,” Newman said. “You know, different characters and he’s from this faction and he’s from this faction. And I kept saying, ‘Yeah, but what’s going on?'”
The actor also revealed that Kliff was originally called Macduff during much of his recording process, but when Pearl Abyss changed his character’s name, Newman felt the need to push for clarity.
“When Kliff stopped being Macduff, which took a long time after recording, once they cast Kliff, I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing the story and the character as much as I could,” he said.
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Newman also spoke about the game’s open world and gameplay aspects that attracted players, adding that there were stages in the game’s writing process where Pearl Abyss continued to “shake things up.”
“I have to be honest, I felt the pressure of a certain type of developer with a certain type of game,” he continued. “I’m glad I fought for this stuff because you can tell when you read the reviews of the game that came out. You can tell when you talk to people. I talked to some people today who are playing it and loving it. And even if they like some of the voice acting and characterization, the advantage of this game is clearly the size of the open world. And the fact that you can pick up a cat.
“That’s due, in my opinion, to the preferences of the developers and the people who wrote the scripts for these games, which were constantly changing. So at different stages it was very much like making a TV series where they kept shifting the focus. And actually, that’s no secret. If you look at the way Crimson Desert came about, they kept things moving.”
Crimson Desert‘s story has also been criticized since its release, because while the action and open-world splendor kept players engaged for hours and hours, the story-driven adventure lacks the depth some expected. Pearly Abyss CEO Heo Jin-young even agreed that the game’s story could have been better.
The Greymanes and “the idea of family and trying to bring something together” were also not defined early in development, and there was a “transition point”, two and a half years later, when Pearl Abyss wanted that aspect of the story to really resonate.
“After a while, you know, you can only go so far with him. [Kliff] “I’m kind of… not flat, but kind of stoic,” Newman said. “Now I know that as a Scot myself, I know what that means. But it’s very, very hard to play 150 hours with someone who never gives up. So what’s been rewarding is that over the course of 100 hours of play, people have found bits of Cliff that sometimes speak to something more emotional.
“The whole Greymanes thing, after about two and a half years, they decided they really wanted that to resonate. That idea of family and trying to bring something together. I think that’s the main strand of the game’s story, or the only strand of the game’s story when you start it.
“And so that was the starting point. I don’t want to say they started to panic, but they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we really want that. We really want Cliff to care about his classmates.’ And I said, “Well, he does, but you didn’t write that monologue.” So we introduced it gradually and wherever we could, we took care of it. Whenever we were offered something that could be slightly humorous, we tried to make it stand out.
“But I’ll be honest, those moments were fewer than they could have been.”
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