It’s disappointing to admit it, but Crimson Desert’s story isn’t the strongest element in an otherwise enthralling experience. It’s a sentiment that’s been echoed by players and critics alike in the days since the game’s launch, and even credence by a couple of its voice actors, one of whom is Alex Newman, the man who brought Kliff to life in the game.
None of them says that the story was bad, but a common undercurrent is that it could have been better, which is especially true when it’s measured against the rest of the experience that the developer has brought to the table. That includes its side content, with the faction-related missions being a particular highlight that we found very compelling. The main story felt less focused than these quests, often jumping between the Greymanes and The Abyss without enough cohesion between the two distinct narrative threads.
But does that mean it’s a bad story? Well, it does have its moments, some of them being quite memorable. Newman’s comments on a project that kept shifting its goalposts are perhaps the best explanation for a narrative that seems as disjointed as it is. Why is that so? Let’s break things down together and look at why an open world that’s as compelling as Pywel didn’t manage to give us the emotional weight to Kliff’s adventures that it should have had.
Back To The Beginning
Let’s start with what Crimson Desert was originally intended to be, as it’s an important part of the ever-changing goalposts that Newman mentioned when discussing its weak story. It began as a project that quickly snowballed into the idea of an open-world action adventure centred on Macduff, a mercenary leader struggling to find his place in the world as he grappled with a tragic past.
But that evolved into the more recent framing around Kliff, the Greymanes, and their ill-fated conflict with the Black Bears that led to the effort to rebuild the company to its former glory. It’s easy to see how things changed as the game’s concept began to evolve. Kliff is still the de facto leader of the Greymanes, although the reasons for the respect they show him remain somewhat blurry. It’s a showcase of how Macduff became Kliff, a sort of evolution that unfortunately left his story feeling like it was bearing the weight of older priorities instead of taking the character in a direction that was altogether his own.
We do feel like that’s kind of a wasted opportunity in Crimson Desert. Let’s take a look at why that’s the case.
The Dark Side of Ambition
We’ve made no secret of the fact that Crimson Desert is a very ambitious title, but that has seemingly come at a hefty price. While its open world has oodles of space for all of its ideas to be executed with abandon, the story’s premise doesn’t afford the same kind of luxury. Its opening moments are strong enough to be fair. Kliff and the Greymanes are set upon by the Black Bears in an ambush that leaves them scattered across Pywel, while Kliff is mercilessly killed by Myurdin.
And while we do see the need to introduce The Abyss as the reason for Kliff’s miraculous resurrection, it didn’t feel as organic as it should have been. That’s further compounded by a long quest chain that thrusts him deep into the mysteries of Pywel’s mythology, while factional conflicts plaguing Hernand also compete for his attention even as he attempts to track down more of his former comrades.
We’re never shown why Kliff, a character whose backstory we didn’t fully get to see, would care about The Abyss and the interplay between the various houses of Hernand. Kliff is certainly a strong focal point for the story, but that potential gets diffused when his attention is pulled in one direction after another in the pursuit of a broader destiny that we had no reason to get invested in at such an early point in the narrative.
That’s rather disappointing, especially when we think about what a lovely time we’ve had with Hernand’s houses, and the amazing stories that they sent us towards.
Time Flies When You’re Having Fun
Let’s start with one of the early requests Kliff agrees to look into for one of Hernand’s noble houses. A quarry under occupation by the Bleed Bandits, one of the game’s umpteen factions, needs liberation, and Kliff is the man for the job. Getting things done would mean a safe haven for the Greymanes he is yet to locate, which is a solid narrative framing for the action that follows.
The mission becomes an incredible fight against a literal army of Bleed Bandits, ending with a fight against an enemy that we’re not going to spoil if you’re yet to tackle that particular piece of the pie. It also serves as a great way to link The Abyss to Pywel’s daily life in a way that feels natural. Further requests from the same house work in tandem with ones from other houses to take Kliff all around Hernand in a way that not only helps the game sell its open-world trappings, but is a clear showcase of how the writers of Crimson Desert could tell solid stories when they weren’t trying to cram too many ideas into a single quest chain.
The factions knew exactly what they wanted, and it showed. Kliff, by extension, also had clear goals in mind as a result. The conflicts that he got into as a result then felt authored rather than assembled, each mission feeding into the next in a way that had us very curious to find out what happens next, a facet made even better by the fact that it was leading us to an entirely new area of the map. The side quests in Crimson Desert benefit greatly from a focused approach that blends well with its scale and scope.
But even the side content has its weak points, and Kliff’s fellow protagonists are a great showcase of that.
The Fleeing Swordswoman And The Loyal Warrior
Damiane and Oongka are perhaps the best examples of how Crimson Desert’s approach to its narrative was too disjointed for it to land effectively. Beginning with Damiane, we see her in the game’s early hours, and are quickly given access to her as a playable character when Kliff secures Howling Hill for the Greymanes. We’re told that she’s on the run from Demeniss, with the reasons why being withheld for the moment.
Her abilities were immediately engaging as a more elegant contrast to Kliff’s own moves, and she quickly became a character we kept switching to GTA-style. That was even before we discovered that we could summon her to help out in battles where our foes had the numerical advantage. But as we progressed through the story, she suddenly vanished, and our efforts to switch to her were met with a message that she was off on an important mission. It also didn’t help that many quests forced us to play as Kliff.
Why couldn’t we play through her missions? Why not give us more of a character whose potential to be as engaging as Kliff was quite obvious? Your guess is as good as ours, and Damiane feels like there was more to her presence in Pywel than what the writers allowed us to see. Her diminished role feels like a structural problem, and the same goes for Oongka.
He was possibly the first character many of you spoke to in the game, before he was neatly tucked away behind story progression that required you to get to Calphade before reuniting with him. As a close confidante of Kliff’s, we expected to see more of him in the story itself, but he was relegated to being an interesting side character whose presence in cutscenes involving him only made us eager to finally get to playing as him.
But by then, our Abyss Artifacts were limited, and we didn’t have too many to spare on unlocking his unique skills – a problem that he shared with Damiane. That seriously limited both characters’ playability, and we were left to default to Kliff for a major part of the mid-game, as it simply made more sense to control him over his equally engaging cast mates. Crimson Desert could have woven its storylines into a series of quests just like it did with Hernand’s nobility.
Instead, Damiane and Oongka felt like afterthoughts tacked on to present the illusion of a protagonist trio but without the narrative consistency to justify their inclusion. Once again, it felt like the game’s ambition to be everything it could be came at the cost of its story. It had the makings of a great ensemble of characters, but its narrative never fully earned it in our book.
Why not have one customisable protagonist instead of an effort to bring back fond memories of GTA 5, or perhaps include more fleshed-out content to make a trio of protagonists actually feel like they were working together as allies, and potentially friends? That second part is still doable via patches, but it’s going to be an uphill climb. Once again, we’re baffled at how Crimson Desert took a direction that even its own studio has since lamented.
That brings us to what Newman and the developer had to say about the story.
Learning Through Hindsight
The developer’s assertion that they could have done better with the story showcases how they have kept track of things in the aftermath of the game’s launch. And while it has been able to act with blinding speed and some admirable intensity to address other issues, the narrative isn’t on its list of priorities. That makes sense, as gameplay is easier to speedily fix than the process of trying to piece together more narrative content, which would require significantly more effort.
Newman’s thoughts on the story’s confused direction come into play here, and we’re especially focused on the fact that he spent two years recording lines before he was told that recording would “begin in earnest” along with his assertion that Kliff didn’t feel like he had enough scenes that lent him the emotional heft needed to make his character feel rooted in the narrative and relatable to boot.
The rather strange lack of cohesion makes sense when looked at from this perspective. The game changed too many times, and the constantly shifting goalposts that served as the basis for its ambition put too much weight on the story, leaving it unable to take a direction that brought Kliff, Damiane, and Oongka along for the ride in a manner that made sense. What we were then left with is what we now see in the game, a story that flits between disparate threads that’s still interesting, but never comes together well enough to make it memorable.
There is narrative strength in Crimson Desert. It’s just sadly a part of its side content instead of its main story. The game’s focus shifted one too many times for its main narrative to keep up, and the inclusion of two other playable protagonists is probably the best way to showcase that it was never fully locked into place right up until the final phase of the game’s development.
It’s a pity that an open world this interesting cannot give us the highs and lows that the characters we play as are clearly capable of. It’s still enjoyable, no doubt about that, but that only makes us think wistfully of the fact that it could have been so much more. And that’s a facet of our time in Pywel that we continue to feel a tad melancholy about, even as we continue to travel to every corner of the fascinating world it has given us.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
