The acclaimed Korean indie game developer know by the nickname 'byulbram' Interview with the Pearl Abyss Game Design Strategy Director, Gwangsam Kim

Greetings, Adventurers!

This is The MMORPG, Black Desert.

Black Spirit’s Main Quest Renewal and its remastered stories were updated on 12/12/2018 (Wed) to lead our Adventurers down an even more fantastic journey.

We will be presenting the interview with Gwangsam Kim, the Game Design Strategy Director!

Let’s dive in and learn about the stories in the world of Black Desert that was re-created with even more depth.

Q. Why did you decide to renew the story?

Black Desert Online is a game with awesome combat and a great degree of freedom in a graphically stunning open world. And over the years, we kept up with the fast paced updates, continuously fixing issues that needed to be addressed, which made it difficult to lay out a big plan to create a major story.

The world of Black Desert is vast and interesting, but its depiction became old fashioned. The plots began to conflict as we released more updates.

Therefore, we started this endeavor to reorganize the plotlines and decided early this year to renew the story overall. You can say the newly updated main story leading up to Calpheon is just the beginning of this project.

In other words, we plan on updating the story beyond Serendia-Calpheon continuously so that adventurers can enjoy the massive world of Black Desert as it becomes even more defined.

Q. What is the most crucial change you’ve made in the first half of the remastering process?

In Serendia-Calpheon, we focused on solidifying the world. We wanted to answer the basic questions our adventurers had since the beginning.

For example, questions like: What do the Shadow Knights do exactly? Are all the Elionian priests crazy? Why are they trying to summon Kzarka? How did Kzarka end up in Serendia Shrine instead of Kzarka(Calpheon) Shrine?

We haven’t provided all the answers to every side of the story because we need to save some for the twists and turns. But we gave enough so that people can pick up on the general direction of the story, while leaving out material to present in stories and side quests that will be added.

Additionally, we tried to structure the plots so the users can feel like they are the a part of the story as they encounter NPCs and communicate with them.

We tried to maintain as much of the old world as possible, while trying to share the world in more depth as well as addressing various unanswered questions. This was to structure the stories leading up to Mediah, Valencia, and etc. but also to preserve the memories and experiences in the original world of Black Desert.

If there’s something particular in this renewal, it is that users can choose different paths in certain parts of the story.

You won’t gain or lose out on any special items because of your choices here. This was done so that it will feel different whenever someone levels a new character.

(One of the paths follows the old storyline, but the other paths are different).

Each path takes a look at the world from the perspective of different NPCs and events. It will most definitely be enjoyable for adventurers that like detailed settings and stories.

Q. Will there be changes made to the previous stances of main characters? If there are new characters, please give us a simple introduction.

Secret Guards with Orwen and Edan, and main characters including Jordan were the ones taking the lead in a huge part of the storyline from Serendia-Calpheon.

However, their importance may rise or fall drastically depending on the path you take. It is not like the personalities of the different characters or the basic premise changed, but they will feel much different from before. For example, the way Orwen looks at you might be a bit different from before, believe it or not.

Also, we added details to the characters and incidents that were only briefly mentioned before, to make them more dramatic.

For example, the tragedy that happened in Keplan.

We will go deeper into the story of Oze, that we briefly looked at in the previous story. Questions such as, what happened to Oze? What happened when the Petrifying Disease struck Keplan? Why did the lord and handmaid lose their minds? Where is Oze now?

Not to mention, Illezra, the destroyer of Mediah, has finally appeared.

What business does Illezra have in Calpheon?

I don’t want to spoil the story so please try playing through them!

Q. What will happen to users who were on the previous main quests?

Those who were already on the previous main quests can continue with those quests.

However, they cannot do the previous quests again from the start.

Meaning, characters created afterwards can only do the renewed quests. While characters that already started with the previous quests will continue on.

Try playing our new class Archer as he is released at the same time as the storyline renewal. Please don’t skip the dialogues we worked so hard on (laughs).

Q. Do you plan on remastering the later part of the story? If so, how are you scheduling them? (Black Spirit’s identity, details about the Valencia vs Calpheon, etc.)

The story renewal is still a work in progress.

Next, will be Mediah.

Mediah will also have multiple paths, and we working to create a concrete view. For example, who is Neruda Shen and what does he want? How about the prince of misfortune, Bareeds III? What is the Bautt Lithograph? Also, what in the world happened during the 3 Days of Darkness? All these will be revealed in the next part of the story, Mediah.

We are creating a long and dramatic story by completing each of the stories in Valencia, Kamasylvia, Drieghan, etc in order.

Of course, this will lead to the revelation of what the Black Spirit and Ancient Ruins are and other mysteries.

Q. Last but no least. Please say a word for the adventurers who are enjoying Black Desert Online.

The renewal of the stories in Black Desert will continue. We hope you will be able to enjoy and take another step deeper into the world of Black Desert. Please enjoy it twice. No, three times! Since there are three paths. Also, the second part of the renewed story, Mediah, is scheduled to be revealed early 2019. We hope you will look forward to it as well!

We hope you dive deeper into the world of Black Desert with the renewed story.

If you would like to find out more about the new Black Spirit Main Quest Renewal, you can check it out [HERE]!

We are always grateful for all your support for Black Desert.

Thank you.