Despite having seen multiple trailers, I’ve had a difficult time making heads or tails of what Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 even is. Until I heard the developers speak about their game in the recent Xbox Developer Direct, Clair Obscur seemed like a collection of ill-fitting parts.
After listening to the devs, I see the vision. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 looks like a bold RPG, combining a modern graphical presentation, Persona-style flourishes, and classic RPG systems. I’m just worried it might be too bold for its own good.
Shoot For The Moon
Clair Obscur is a big swing. It has a fantastic hook and if it can deliver on its premise, I’ll be its staunchest defender. The game takes place in a fantasy version of France where, every year, a magical Paintress appears to write a number on an obelisk. Anyone whose age is that number dies and, each year, the number ticks down, lower and lower.
So, expedition after expedition has set out to kill the Paintress and end her age-based genocide. The titular Expedition 33 is the one you’ll follow as they set out on their journey. It’s a great idea for a game, so vivid and unique that it embarasses every RPG that has ever dusted off an old chestnut like ‘the monsters are getting more aggressive’ or ‘blight is infecting the land’.
But I’m wondering if it’s too big of a swing. Sandfall Interactive seems to be a small team — with just 32 developers (and one dog) listed on the website — but the game is going for a hyper-real aesthetic. That would be difficult enough on its own, but the art style merges those realistic-looking human characters with a colorful, painterly world and cartoonish creatures.
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When we see stylized menus and damage numbers popping off the screen in a game like Metaphor: ReFantazio, it feels aesthetically coherent because the graphics are similarly stylized. Given Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s photoreal character designs, its incorporation of these same elements feels like a bit of a mismatch. I’ll need to play the final game to decide for sure, but it’s one of the choices that has made me feel like something was off about the game while watching previous trailers.
Clair Obscur Violently Collides The Old And The New
Some of the uncanniness I feel watching gameplay of Clair Obscur comes from its collision of new and old. In the Developer Direct, Sandfall devs made clear that this game is heavily inspired by old-school JRPGs. To that end, it has a party system, turn-based combat, and even a world map.
But seeing those extremely game-y mechanics in a title that is aiming for a modern triple-A aesthetic — the kind you would see in third-person narrative adventures like God of War – makes for an odd pairing. There are multiple shots of characters walking down the kind of linear corridors you would see in Ragnarok, and then the party hops on their hot air balloon-inspired creature friend and fly all around the world map like this is classic Final Fantasy 7.
In the end, much of my hesitation may come from the fact that I’ve never seen anything quite like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It has turn-based combat with timed button prompts, a la Paper Mario or Sea of Stars, but it looks nothing like any game I’ve ever seen use that approach. It feels like an evolution of classic JRPG design, but from an alternate universe where the genre didn’t, by and large, abandon turn-based combat in its most high profile games. If Final Fantasy hadn’t switched over to action combat years ago, would the series look something like Clair Obscur today?
I don’t know, and I don’t know if the collision of such varied tones and mechanics will work. But after watching that Direct, I’m excited about what Sandfall Interactive is building. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 seems like it will either be a huge success or a massive mistake. I don’t see much room for an in-between.
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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Could Be An Imperfect Game At The Perfect Time
I really want to want Clair Obscur, but something is holding me back from commitment.