This article contains major spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. We sincere✅ly recomme𓆉nd you bookmark this page and come back when you've completed the game.
In the weeks following its release last month, Sandfall Interactive’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 garnered widespread 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:critical and commercial acclaim. The JRPG love letter has been praised for its evolution of the turn-based battle formula, its stunning world building, and the part that I fell most in ไlove with, its narrative.
Somebody Is Really Determined To Turn Clair Obscur: Exp𝐆edition 33 Into A Digimon Game
For those that Digivolve after.
As the dust slowly begins to settle on what has been a whirlwind launch, I sat down with narrative lead Jennifer Svedberg-Yen to talk about the inception of Clair Obscur, that pivotal moment in Act 1, and what it was like to work so closely with Hollywo🌄od actors Charlie Cox and Anඣdy Serkis.
How Do You Even Conceptualise Something Like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?
If you’ve played the game already, you’ll know Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 goes to some wild places. It’s a story that feels unlike anything else in video games right now. It’s equal parts hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. But once upon a time, it w🌄as almost entirely different.
“Guillaume Broche [game director] and I had 🦩actually previously started working on a different game concept, and that's how we met. He was loo♍king for voice actors for a script he was working on, but then I joined, we started talking, and he invited me to help,” Svedberg-Yen tells me.
“This game was very different. The gameplay would have been similar, but the story was completely d🐈ifferent. It was set in a steampunk Victorian England with zombies, aliens, and various things.”
Guillaume called me, and he's just like, ‘Alright, reboot. We're ꦅstarting from scratch,’
Svedberg-Yen says that after six months of work on this alternate version of Clair Obscur, things changed. “We spoke to some potential investors who said, ‘You know, you can think bigger, don't hold yourself back just because you're worried about funding. If you could do what you wanted to do, what would you write?’ So, Guillaume called me, and he's just like, ‘Al🌳right, reboot. ꧑We're starting from scratch,’” and Expedition 33 was born.
While some gameplay ideas ♓and the names of characters like Maelle, Verso, and Lune remained, the new vision for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 evolved from a painting that Broche liked and a short story Svedberg-Yen was working on. The story revolved around an art๊ist entering her own canvases.
Although they had ideas and themes ready to explore, the fuel for the narrative events that underpin Clair Obscur came from an unlikely source.. “Around the same time, Guillaume's mom actually helped us,” she says. “He asked her, ‘What is the worst thing that could happen to you?’ And she said🐬, ‘to lose you’ or to lose any of her children. And so that became our catalyst.”
Svedberg-Yen likens writing for a large-scale game like Clair Obscur to taking part in a real-life RPG. “During the act of writing, you are actually role-playing as every single character, imagining how they would react in certain situations and then coming up with the outlines which become detailed dives of lore building and character building. 🃏That then informed a lot of the plot.”
The Inception Of Act 1’s Biggest Moment
Arguably, the most significant talking point in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s first ten hours is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the death of Gustave. Until that point, ♛Gustave, for all intents and purposes, was the main protagonist, and it seemed like that was going to be the case throughout, until it wasn’t.
That moment, written perfec♋tly within the context of the game, was planned by Svedberg-Yen and Broche long in advance. “We knew that from the beginning,” she says. “In general, with a lot of these plot points, it's about what makes sense in the story and what makes sense in terms of the evolution of the characters. It's about thinking about what will push the characters further along in their emotional journey and what will really make sense within the broader theme of what we're trying to achieve.”
This is all just part of Svedberg-Yen’s writing style. “It’s a pet peeve of mine w🐓hen people write stuff and they don't know where they're going with it, and then they try to figure it out as they go♊. It’s like the TV shows Alias or Lost. I need to have the answers to the questions.”
Following Gustave’s death, the expedition runs into myriad antagonistic forces, but from the outset, the game was designe༺d with no major antagonist in mind. Instead, these big bads were left open to interpretation, with the audience deciding for themselve🔯s who the real enemy was.
We don't want the story to be cut and dry in terms of this is righ𓄧t, this is wrong, this is what you should be doing.
“O🍌ne of the philosophies that Guillaume and I both have𒆙 about storytelling is we don't want the story to be cut and dry in terms of this is right, this is wrong, this is what you should be doing,” Svedberg-Yen says.
“We raise questions, and we want the player to engage with those questions, and we want the player to be part of that decision-making. Everything really needs to 📖work with the player, the player's own life experiences, and the journey they went through with these characters.
“In terms of antagonist, that's also something that I think depends on the perspective of the player and how you think about the world and what you value. Another philosophical point that Guillaume and I sort of set early on was that this is not about good versus evil. This is about a world where people genuinely care about each other and conflicts arise because they ha💟ve different perspectives on what needs to be done.”
Bringing The Story To Life With A Star-Studded Cast
༒As the first game from a new studio, developed by a relatively small team compared to other triple-A titles, Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive managed to secure an ensemble cast. Svedberg-Yen believes this truly propelled Clair Obscur’s narrative to the next level.
“I love getting all the compliments about the story,” she jokes, “but I have to give credit to the motion capture artists, the voice actors, the music, the cinematics team. It's really a team effort to bring ﷽the storytelling to where it is right. The voice actors did such a good job of bringing all the layers of emotion, and that was something I was worried about.”
Svedberg-Yen, who wrote her script Hollywood style, said it was littered with parentheticals and subtexts, something she feels the cast nailed. “The way that they all delivered every single line really captured the essence of the characters,” she says. “Every🌳one expects that from Jen [Jennifer English] and Ben [Ben Starr], I mean, they're fantastic, and this was their best work yet, but the rest of the cast, Kirstie Rider balanced vulnerability and intensity perfectly, Rich Keeble, Shala Nyx, they’re all fantastic.
“Shout out to our French cast, too. The whole game was scripted, but tha💟t moment where Verso recruits Monoco was the one scene that was improved between two of our French cast.”
I had such fears when I found oꩵut that we were working with Andy and Charlie.
While English an🦹d Starr are now household names in the gaming landscape, the pair don’t quite boast the resumes of Andy Serkis and Charlie Cox, both of whom have starring roles in Clair Obscur as Renꦆoir and Gustav.
“I had such fears when I found out that we were working with Andy and Charlie because I'm also the voice producer, so going through that process, I was thinking, ‘Are these words worthy of Andy Serkis? Is he gonna be like what is this drivel you're mak😼ing me say?’ So yeah, I had an existential panic,” Svedberg-Yen reminisces.
“In the end, it was great, it was a very surreal feeling. Listening to these amazing actors bring the lines to life, and being like, ‘tho🧸se are words I wrote’. I had chills.”
The Future Of Clair Obscur
While thꦍe ending of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is pretty cut and dry in its delivery, albeit open to interpretation, its world has endless possibilities for expansion. Sandfall could explore previous expeditions, the main roster of painters, other painters across the world, and the mysterio🎶us, rarely-mentioned writers. For now, though, that’s not the team’s focus.
“We're actually really focused on bug smashing,” Svedberg-Yen says. “We were not expecting such a strong reception, and we want to keep the momentum going, so we're very focused on user experience right now.” But that doesn’t mean content won’t be coming in the future, with the narrative lead teasing, “When the dust settles, we will start 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:thinking about DLC, but it's probably not going to be for a while.”
We have a detailed history of Lumiere, all the expeditions, the soꦡcial upheavals, the soft coups.
Despite no concrete plans, I asked Svedberg-Yen what areas she’d still like to explore. “It's hard to pinpoint one because I want to explore all of them,” she tells me. "I love world-building. I could do this🌊 all day. I could go in all directions, the past, the future, sideways🤡, the adventures of Esquie and Francois, it could go in all sorts of different directions.”
Evidently, there is a lot t💫he Clair Obscur team still wants to touch on, and based on Svedberg-Yen’s groundwork, things should be a lot easier.
“We have a full, detailed histo✃ry of Lumiere, for all the expeditions, the social upheavals, the soft coups,” she tells me. We use it as material to feed into different elements to make the world feel lived in and to make the characters feel like they have a real past. For Gustav, I wrote four generations of family history for him 🌸and how that ties into the fact that his family is one of the founding families of Lumiere. So to me, there's a lot of stuff that we've actually already done, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions.”
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Top Critic Avg: 92/100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- April 24, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // Blood and G🐟ore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Viole🎃nce
- Developer(s)
- ꦜ Sandfall Interactive ⛦
- Publisher(s)
- 🌠 Kepler Interacti♉ve
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
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