The voice actor for Kliff, who’s the protagonist of the recently released Crimson Desert, has shared important insights regarding the the game’s story which had changed significantly and maybe a bit unexpectedly during it’s development. In a recent interview with Skill Up’s Friends Per Second Podcast, (via twiv), the voice actor who previously played Cameron “Caz” McLeary in Still Wakes the Deep and Adam Smasher in Cyberpunk 2077, has revealed that he had pushed for more intricate character work and meaningful narrative beats in Crimson Desert.
“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,” Newman continued. “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,” he stated.
From the interview, it clearly seems that the narrative of Crimson Desert could’ve been much worse if it wasn’t for Newman’s influence:
“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.”
The full interview is definitely worth reading for anyone who’s enjoying Crimson Desert so if you’re one of them, make sure to read it in it’s entirety.
