In Crimson Desert, the voice actor of Kliff talked about working on the open-world adventure and also revealed why the story has its weaknesses. According to him, the script has been completely changed.
Who is it about? The voice actor Alec Newman is the voice behind Crimson Desert’s protagonist Kliff. He even spent five years voicing the main character and has experienced a lot.
In a new interview with the “Friends per Second” podcast (via YouTube), he talked about the work and also revealed why Kliff and the story surrounding him are as difficult as fans experience while playing.
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Changes upon changes
What was it like working on Crimson Desert? The actor reveals in the interview that the story and the character Kliff have changed significantly over the years. A defining moment was, for instance:
“Actually, as far as I know, for the first one and a half years it was just a demo. […] They said something like: ‘Well, now we’re really starting the recordings.’ And I thought: ‘What the hell do you mean by that? We’ve been doing this forever!'”
For Newman, the work was a constant up and down, as he explains in the podcast. At the beginning, he was supposed to only voice descriptions of characters, but always wondered what the people he was speaking about were doing.
When did the story change? The developers of Crimson Desert were supposed to have integrated Kliff’s story about 2.5 years after the start of the recordings. Newman explains that the developers wanted to make the clan around Kliff into something the protagonist truly values.
“I believe that’s the main storyline or the only storyline of the game at the start. I don’t want to say they panicked, 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 this monologue yet.'”
He himself then tried to collaborate with the developers to bring some emotion into Kliff. They made changes wherever it was possible or added a joke. However, the actor doesn’t seem satisfied: “But I want to be honest: There were fewer such moments than there could have been.”
For Newman, it is clear: “It is very, very hard to play with someone for 150 hours who never lets you see their cards.” That’s why he did his best to make Kliff appear less “stoic.”
Giving a character a voice is only half the job for voice actors. Every character also needs emotions, and those need to be hearable. The fact that the developers didn’t think enough about Kliff’s feelings while writing is also noticeable in the game, as the story is one of the points of criticism from players. After all, the developers are now addressing other points of criticism: Creators of Crimson Desert promise free updates, but a desired feature will likely never come
