Alec Newman, the actor portraying Cliff in Crimson Desert, shared his challenging and unpredictable experience working on Pearl Abyss’s upcoming title. He characterized the five-year journey of bringing Cliff to life as “a true rollercoaster” due to frequent alterations in the game’s plot and overall structure.
In an interview with the Friends Per Second podcast, Newman revealed that the voice recording process proceeded with fluctuating intensity, alternating between long pauses and periods of high workload. For the initial eighteen months, the actor was completely unaware of the project’s actual scale, believing he was merely contributing to a demo version. Full-scale recording only began almost two years after the work commenced.
Newman emphasized that such confidentiality is standard practice in the gaming industry; however, this prolonged period of plot ambiguity is highly unusual. He noted that the game’s script underwent multiple significant revisions, and the entire development process resembled shooting a TV series where “the focus constantly shifts.”
The character, eventually known as Cliff, was initially named McDuff, and the story’s structure evolved throughout the development process. The actor also admitted to repeatedly advocating for more thorough development of the character and storyline, stressing that “the script dictates everything – be it in games, film, or theater.”