Crimson Desert having an unsatisfying story isn’t any great secret these days, with even developer Pearl Abyss’ CEO having acknowledged the fact. In a Q&A on Reddit, the performance capture artist and reference model for protagonist Kliff, Trevor McEwan, has noted that, despite the weak story, there are plenty of other aspects where Crimson Desert does well.
When asked by a Reddit user how he felt about the game’s story, noting that many players find it to be “barebones,” McEwan responded by saying that, “Yeah, I get that, but I think what it lacks in narrative it more than makes up for in other aspects.” He went on to praise Crimson Desert‘s worldbuilding and lore by saying that “There’s lore hidden across the world as well, if players don’t mind a bit of reading.”
Interestingly, Kliff’s voice actor, Alec Newman, has also discussed the turbulent development of Crimson Desert and spoke about how he had pushed for the studio to include the protagonist’s backstory.
“In fact, for the first year and a half or so, it was just a demo as far as I knew,” he said. “They sort of said, ‘Well, we’re going to start recording in earnest now.’ And I went, ‘What the hell do you mean? We’ve been doing this for ages! Newman spent five years on the project, describing it as having “various periods of low and then very high intensity.”
Pearl Abyss was noted as caring about wanting the protagonist to “resonate” with players around 2 and half years into development, which led to the writing changing to reflect the fact that Kliff cares about his comrades.
“So we brought it in gradually, and wherever we could, we attended to it,” he explained. “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.” In the end, he wanted a protagonist that wasn’t stoic, noting that “it’s very, very hard to play 150 hours with somebody who doesn’t give anything away ever.”
“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,’” he said. “And I kept just saying, ‘Yes, but what is happening?’”
The weak story also hasn’t done much to slow down Crimson Desert‘s sales momentum. Just last week, Pearl Abyss took to social media to celebrate the fact that it had sold 5 million copies of the open-world action adventure game across all platforms.
“Crimson Desert has sold through over 5 million copies worldwide,” wrote the studio. “Thank you to every Greymane who has joined us on this journey, experienced the world of Pywel, and supported the game. Reaching this milestone would not have been possible without your support, and we are truly grateful.”
Crimson Desert is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Studio CEO Heo Jin-young has also confirmed that the development team has been investigating a potential Nintendo Switch 2 port as well.
