Crimson desert's story: a five-year odyssey of rewrites
Alec Newman, the actor breathing life into Kliff, the protagonist of Pearl Abyss’s sprawling action RPG Crimson Desert, has revealed a development saga as sprawling as the game’s open world itself: a protracted, iterative journey marked by shifting narratives and a character who spent a significant chunk of his recording time known as “Macduff.” The revelations, shared during an interview on Skill Up’s Friends Per Second Podcast (via twiv), offer a rare glimpse behind the curtain of a high-profile game’s turbulent evolution.
A demo for years: newman's unexpected commitment
Newman’s involvement stretched over five years, a period during which he recorded countless variations of Kliff across various developmental stages. “For the first year and a half, Crimson Desert was just a demo, as far as I knew,” he stated, highlighting the unusual length of time spent contributing to a project that hadn’t yet solidified its direction. The realization that his work would eventually contribute to a full-fledged game didn’t arrive until nearly two years into the recording process, a moment he described as a bewildered, “What the hell do you mean? We've been doing this for ages!”
From mmorpg prequel to single-player epic: a shifting vision
The story of Crimson Desert’s development is well-documented: it began as an MMORPG prequel to Pearl Abyss’s Black Desert Online before morphing into the single-player open-world action RPG it is today. This transformation, Newman suggests, manifested in constant script revisions and a fragmented narrative early on. “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,” he explained, referencing the game's setting. “Various characters, he's from this faction, he's from that faction. And I kept just saying, ‘Yes, but what is happening?’”
The kliff identity crisis: macduff and the push for story
The character of Kliff himself underwent a significant transformation. For a considerable period, Newman was portraying a character named Macduff. When the developers settled on Kliff, Newman actively campaigned for more narrative depth. “Once they settled on Kliff, I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing about story and character as much as I could,