Done With #14: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Prologue:

“For Those Who Comes After”

I feel like there's not a lot of games out there that can be captured in one simple yet underlying quote said by a character. But what's even more surprising to me is the fact that this game is written by a Redditor looking for a job in the VA market that was found by a bored Ubisoft software developer turned director Guillaume Broche. And the soundtrack to this game that accompanies its depressing story is essentially led by a composer on SoundCloud with little to no following. Sandfall Interactive is seriously some kind of Suicide Squad, filled with multiple junior developers with no experience but big dreams to make up the 30 main team. With the assistance of roughly 500 people around the globe, the incredible ambitious Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is born. And it's one hell of a love letter to the JRPG genre.

And it being a love letter is why I see this game as the derivative of all JRPGs in a sense. You can see and feel the influences on the sleeves and take quite a good guess on what Sandfall developers grew up playing. As someone who has played and finished multiple JRPGs, it's pretty fun to deduce which bit of Expedition 33 is from which game. There's a bit of the grand narrative with complex twists from Chrono Triggers and Dragon Quest VIII and XI. The gameplay has rhythm-like mechanics to it like Stick of Truth, Lost Odyssey and the classic Paper Mario mixed with dodging and parrying to add even more dynamic. Or the awesome Pictos mechanic that draws huge inspiration and builds upon the Ability system of FFIX mixed with Junction from VIII. And with all this, Expedition 33 becomes its own game with its own identity built by all the predecessors, making the “For Those Who Comes After” motto resonates with its design too.

Act 1: Story & Characters

This is what really carries this game for me. Expedition 33’s story is probably one of the coolest narratives in gaming in the past 10 years, matching the energy of modern classics such as Nier: Automata. And all this from some random Redditor lady? Make it make sense.

Overall, the story of Expedition 33 follows a group of expedition team from Lumiere. A cruel world where the remaining inhabitants must venture yearly to stop The Paintres, an entity of sort that shortens the populace lifespan by a year everytime she paints a new number on The Monolith in an event called the Gommage (which literally translates to “complete erasure”). As the name suggests, this is the expedition for people 32 as people at the age of 33 have been wiped out.

On this adventure, we follow:

• Gustave: a hot headed but kind engineer with a hell of a mustache
• Maelle: Gustave’s 16 years old foster sister who’s accompanying him to look for something more substantial in life
• Lune: a scholar and a mage whose family line is made up of researchers
• Sciel: a warrior who uses the power of Sun and Moon Arcane to fight (and a real badass)

During this adventure, the party and the player will be introduced to Verso and Renoir, two mysterious men who would change the party’s fate and the game’s story permanently. There’s a lot of surprises, twists and turns that are incredibly fun to predict along with each story beats, keeping me as a player on edge all the time.

The peeps at Sandfall seriously did an amazing job conveying us the theme of depression and loss through smartly utilising each characters’ personalities to explore how different people grieve. Some grieve with anger and others with acceptance, the game does not really subscribe to the five stages but rather allow each person to really go through what they have to to deal with it all. But it’s not all about losing someone or dealing with a loss, but also dealing with one’s own death and the legacy that one will be passing on to the next generation. After all, death can be sudden and there’s no time to prepare for when it happens.

Another impressive thing about this game is its incredibly flowing dialogues. I can’t think of many games where characters talk over each others without it being an error on the game’s audio queuing, but actually was done on purpose to emulate people speaking. From arguing to agreeing with each other, allowing the amazing voice actors to really showcase their skills by letting them bounce off of each other as if they’re really speaking was a great choice and really adds to how “real” these conversations feel.

And these characters are very well written, despite a couple not really taking the center stage of the story. On top of amazing voice casting, the Belle Epoque inspired designs really give these characters such a strong flair to their outfit. Personality wise, each character get to showcase both their lighthearted side, and a more selfish (not so sinister) side, making them rather grey in general (fitting for the Clair Obscur title which means light and dark). While I don’t agree with all the decisions these characters make, I still can sympathise with all of them and the credit really does go through the writing team that make them so believable.

But that’s not all, the way they Sandfall coordinated with the motion capture team on the eye and facial expression. From Act 2 onward, the team utilises a lot of these subtle expressions and characters’ eyes to tell us what they really feel deep inside. Be it giving us hints of secrecy, their sadness or even to express how happy they’re feeling, I think this game really pushed this boundary. The focus on putting resources into character models seriously pay off while utilising post processing to cover up the smudgeness of the textures elsewhere.

I won’t pretend that I know a lot of French culture because… I simply don’t. However, I’ve heard a lot of nice things from YouTube and Twitter regarding a lot of naming and references in this game to French culture and media that also add to the narrative. Check them out at your own discretion as they may contain spoilers.

Act 2: Gameplay & System

Unlike many reviewers and people who are glossing over this game, I seriously don’t think this game’s combat is anything that special. But for context, I have finished multiple JRPG throughout the past ten years and I have seen a lot of innovation in the genre. I don’t think that the “traditional” gameplay loop of JRPG is boring at all, as I think some of the most fun I’ve had is to react to what the enemies inflict the team with. One great recent example is last year’s Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, where you seriously needs to adapt to the situation depending on how wrong it is going as one mistake or one miss can derail the entire gameplan.

And while the dodge and parry system is something very refreshing as the last time there’s something like this that’s mainstream was Stick of Truth from a decade ago, I can’t help but get bored with roughly 15 hours into the game as it becomes a bit tedious to perform. I end up trying to end the fight as soon as I can so I don’t have to engage with this system, especially when the dodging and parrying window don’t match the multiple delayed animations of this game. It sorta becomes a rhythm game a bit later as you really start relying on the sound cue instead of visual queue. It’s also a misopportunity for many in-game spells as in theory you don’t need a handful of them if you’re going to dodge everything.

One could argue that there are builds that you want to get hit my the monsters on purpose, and a lot of funny builds really rely on low HP gimmick, but a lot of these builds really come online at 70-90+ or in NG+, which doesn’t really impress me because I’d need to spend another 10-15 hours grinding this out.

But what really made the combat still pretty interesting is its Pictos and Weapons Abilities system. It allows the player to experiment and find the style that really fits them.

The Weapons Abilities seriously solves one of the biggest RPG issues of needing to change weapons simply because it has higher attack numbers. In Expedition 33, Sandfall really thought it through by attaching special abilities that change how a character behaves in combat to the weapon. You may have a weapon that starts one of your characters off in a certain stance, or one that allows you to get more Action Points for everytime you cast something. This means that, depending on how you want to play, you may keep some of the earliest weapons in the game if you really wish to.

As for Pictos, it’s FFIX’s Ability system and FFVIII’s junction on crack. These Pictos act as your characters’ armour, boosting their stats and giving them some spicy gameplay modifier to use such as 25% increased crit chance on burning enemy or regaining AP on a perfect dodge. As you get further into the game, some of these become even crazier, giving a huge advantage to the player. Heck, there’s even one Picto called “Cheater” literally.

Act 3: Everything Else

The game is graphically impressive. Sandfall utilises a lot of post processing to really cover up the muddy textures on the background and on the floor to not waste too much resources. This computing power then goes to the character's model, allowing them to fully convey their emotion through the animation and facial expression. It’s quite a genius idea really.

The game is also hilarious for what it is. For instance, the game has a tribe called Gestalts which are literally Minions warriors. No one knows how they are still alive as they’re incredibly… stupid. However, they are a great way to not make the story too heavy at points and are utilised well to give players a nice little break emotionally.

Furthermore, there’s a ton to do in the post-game from challenge bosses and a whole tower dungeon with 33 challenges for you to complete. If you love the gameplay, it’s definitely something to try out, but as for me I gotta say bye as I’m horrible at dodging. XD

The game’s World Map is designed really well, even though it’s on the smaller side. Really gives me an idea on how the FFIX remake would look like (Square Enix PLEASE). As for the dungeon zones, the game uses subtle hints with lanterns and light sources to guide us in the right direction. However, you never get “lost” in this game as your exploration really gives you some nice rewards like cool Pictos and upgrade resources for you to play around with.

Collectibles are also scattered throughout the game’s world, with music records and Expedition Logs that I highly recommend you try to collect for additional lore. Some of these are very plot relevant and will give you hints on where the story is heading, whereas others are straight up hilarious jokey Logs. Truly, “For Those Who Comes After”.

Epilogue: The Final Thoughts

While I don’t think this is the most innovative turn-based RPG game people claim it to be, it's probably one of the bravest with its insane narrative and one of the most ambitious when it comes to storytelling. I still do think that a refined combat system would go a long way, be it fixing enemies animation or actually forcing the players to react to getting statuses or getting “hit” with unavoidable damages. And even though this game is going to be rather polarising as more players finish it, I really appreciate it for what it is.

Such a shame people are using this love letter to trash the genre. It’s beyond stupid in my opinion, as the devs are repeatedly shouting out some niche JRPGs left and right for people to check out. Don’t use something you love to put down things you dislike, it’s just not cool.

If you have Xbox Game Pass, this is a must play, but with its rather friendly price on Steam it also wouldn’t hurt to directly support the developers too.