Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a studio’s debut RPG that exceeds all expectations

Once I hit credit on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I used to be left with the sensation that it was a role-playing sport that’s like a variety of video games that got here earlier than it — your Elden Ring, Last Fantasy, and extra curiously, Nier Replicant — and but, not a variety of video games are fairly prefer it. Certain, it had an all-star voice forged, dynamic turn-based fight, a haunting rating, a particular artwork fashion, and creature design that felt like waltzing via the Louvre on mushrooms — all hallmarks of pantheon-worthy RPGs. However as somebody who lives for motifs, I discovered myself captivated by its mythic grandeur, the layered depth of its world-building, and its visceral themes. For me, video games ascend from entertaining romps to pantheon-worthy experiences after they craft narratives that linger on the perimeters of my daydreams. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had me reflexively lean ahead in my chair when it was first introduced on the Xbox Video games Showcase in June 2024, and it’s nonetheless bought me enthusiastic about it after finishing it.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the debut title from unbiased French studio Sandfall Interactive, paints an image of a chilling dystopia the place humanity’s destiny has been dictated by a ritual steeped in inevitability. Every year, a deity referred to as the Paintress approaches a towering monolith that dominates the horizon, inscribing a steadily descending quantity — a countdown now reaching 33. Seems this quantity corresponds to an individual’s age, and for individuals who have reached the marked age on the sequestered island of Lumière, a phenomenon referred to as “Gommage” — a poetic erasure the place they dissolve into smoke and flower petals — marks their finish.

As survivors navigate their bleak actuality, the Gommage has turn out to be greater than only a merciless inevitability — it’s handled like a bittersweet custom. Phrases like “We’re already useless, simply catching up” roll off tongues with the convenience of an off-the-cuff greeting. Some condemn those that refuse to convey youngsters right into a world marked by orphanhood and untimely loss. Others, going through the shadow of their looming expiration or clinging to the delicate thread of hope, undertake a rallying cry: “When one falls, we proceed.” Those that subscribe to this mindset select to enlist in a revolving door of oldsters referred to as expeditioners who embark on treacherous annual missions to confront the Paintress. None of those expeditions has but succeeded in defeating her, in fact.

Optimism is a tough commodity for the expeditioners to seek out. Most of them now not battle for victory; they’ve acquiesced to anticipating to die, uncovering as a lot data as they will concerning the Paintress to help the following technology in stopping their gradual culling. The story follows the thirty third expedition — a staff whose common age elicits little optimism from the townsfolk of Lumière. Already resigned to failure, the individuals place their hopes not in victory however within the expedition itself, with its aim to go away behind insights for individuals who will inevitably strive once more. But, the members of the thirty third expedition march onward, decided to finish humanity’s Sisyphean wrestle as soon as and for all.

Few video games have captivated my art-hoe eye fairly like Clair Obscur. By far, probably the most hanging factor about it’s its enrapturing mixture of Belle Époque character designs, artwork deco and excessive fantasy environmental design, and avant-garde creature designs, which Clair Obscur accentuates in a daring, modern third-person overworld traversal system the place its get together seems like Warhammer miniatures strolling via a dwelling, respiration diorama. On their option to the Paintress, they’ll run up in opposition to Nevrons, hostile eldritch creatures who’ve unceremoniously ended previous expeditions. Elsewhere, much less hostile creatures set in Clair Obscur’s dreamlike world are ambivalent to people’ wrestle. To them, you’re simply the newest in an annual path of expeditioners that come via. Nonetheless, I discovered myself taking the scenic path to the expedition’s in any other case time-sensitive quest, taking within the sights and making an attempt to parse how the nonhuman cultures work. The sport’s design additionally cleverly nudges you off the crushed path. For explorers like me who instinctively 180 away from areas that don’t seem like progress, even bumping into partitions as if a path will magically present itself on impression, taking an off-route method is richly and habitually rewarded. I not solely uncovered trinkets that boosted my staff’s fight stats, however I additionally found journals from previous expeditions that contained nuggets of recommendation for the trickiest areas and boss fights.

Even when most expeditions aren’t solely useful in sussing out options to enemy weaknesses, I discovered the sport’s emphasis on studying from those that got here earlier than and leaving a legacy for individuals who observe to be considered one of its most poignant parts. Their off-the-cuff diary-style journals resonate like haikus from Zen monks on the verge of loss of life. Whereas in observe, these moments functioned equally to codexes scattered throughout numerous different video games, their thematic resonance elevated them to one thing profoundly transferring.

These remaining phrases, accompanied by voice-over — normally additionally puppy-guarded by robust enemies towering over their statuesque corpses — shook me each time I ventured away from the non-story development paths in Clair Obscur’s picturesque dystopian world. A few of these final-hour confessionals got here from haughty big-game hunters who prioritized chasing their newest conquest over passing on data to the following technology earlier than assembly their literal deadline. Others had been resigned to their destiny as a analysis run aimed to assist the following technology overcome their previous failures, like a helicopter guardian scribbling each fleeting thought on a notepad on their youngster’s lunchbox. Nonetheless, the entire 60-plus journals littered about Clair Obscur’s avant-garde vistas fueled me to defy future by beefing Expedition 33’s stats to be robust sufficient to kill god twice over.

Like all self-respecting turn-based RPG, Clair Obscur comes kitted out with a sturdy fight system and an overabundance of abilities, attributes, and updates that flip its dynamic real-time dodge and parry mechanics right into a chess match with demigods as my items. Every fight encounter in Clair Obscur isn’t your bizarre turn-based trade of blows. As an alternative, it fuses real-time motion with conventional technique — you dodge and parry incoming strikes whereas unleashing highly effective QTEs to amp up your assaults. However the threat is actual. I realized that lesson shortly when a large “dangerous” fireball, meant to take down three foes, ended up exploding in my face and leaving me crumpled in a depressing heap.

The sheer number of powers earned from taking over difficult optionally available bosses loitering in arm’s attain of foremost quests™ had me feeling like I used to be orchestrating the beginning 5 of a basketball dynasty in Expedition 33. I by no means felt like I used to be restricted to at least one de facto fashion of enjoying and as an alternative felt inspired to push myself to defeat optionally available bosses, to not farm expertise factors however to see what sort of abilities they’d drop to make me return to the lab and concoct extra methods to play upon a brand new sport plus revisit.

Probably the most mesmerizing features of Clair Obscur’s synergy-centric turn-based fight was the numerous hours I spent tinkering within the menus, devising methods with the precision of a world-class chess grasp. By combining Pictos (the in-game title for character skills), distinctive attributes, and Luminas (passive Picto skills you possibly can equip on every other character, no matter who has the unique Pictos geared up), I felt like I used to be uncovering an equation that will make god meet a everlasting finish.

Round 20 hours into my 31-hour odyssey to the sport’s credit (with loads of facet content material and executives nonetheless left unexplored), I engineered my core trio: Sciel, the shredded, scythe-wielding Yu-Gi-Oh-esque duelist flinging stat-stacking playing cards; Lune, my Avatar-esque, barefoot-gliding, smartypants mage; and Monoco, the fuzzy, sensible, Chewbacca-esque brawler with power-stealing Naruto-style strikes. Their interlocking abilities and attributes meshed into an ouroboros loop, successfully turning them into my very personal Iron Curtain.

Even the way in which they’d saunter onto the battlefield, rolling their shoulders and cocking their heads to the facet, has the aura of Michael Jordan about to make a miracle occur in sport six of the 1998 NBA Finals. In the meantime, throughout my spontaneous retooling periods of the characters’ skills — each early and late within the sport — I discovered myself sifting via three towering columns of my eclectic mixture of Pictos and Luminas. It was practically overwhelming. Regardless of my victories, I felt like I used to be making an attempt to seize the complete spectrum and complicated particulars of a vibrant tapestry, armed solely with the restricted imaginative and prescient cones of a canine.

Clair Obscur’s participating fight and story outweighed the niggling points I had with the sport, however right here they’re nonetheless. As stunning as it’s, the sport doesn’t have a photograph mode, which means the pause menu all the time overtakes the center and sides of the display screen, masking up picturesque photograph ops like Lumiere’s twisted Eiffel Tower, which jogged my memory of French photographer Robert Doisneau’s Distorsion Optique. The occasional stints of platforming within the sport are additionally finicky as hell. Nevertheless, these had been minor gripes in my general nice expertise with Clair Obscur, which was firing on all cylinders with its kinetic fight and out-there story.

Regardless of Clair Obscur’s painfully French premise and themes, it doesn’t wallow within the existential dread and distress of its admittedly bleak journey, neither is it pretentiously navel-gazing. Throughout camp downtime, you possibly can simply sit back and chat together with your get together members — and even spark a romance with considered one of them. These characters aren’t your typical RPG archetypes; they really feel genuinely human, flawed, and filled with hope, with a appeal that makes you make investments each little bit of your considering energy into making certain they end their story with a contented ending. It’s clear that the forged, that includes skills like Daredevil’s Charlie Cox, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Jennifer English, and Last Fantasy 16’s Ben Starr, is solely of their factor. They ship an emotional gravitas that captures their characters’ vulnerabilities on perilous missions, all whereas exhibiting an infectious chemistry with each other. They swap jokes round campfires and even bicker throughout quests, infusing the sport with heat as these seemingly doomed heroes battle to beat the eccentricities of its lavish, nightmarish world.

Endings aren’t simply what follow individuals probably the most in RPGs; they’re additionally what could make or break them. Sadly, I felt like the sport had misplaced the plot solely in its preliminary march towards its finale. Clair Obscur’s remaining act got here throughout as considerably fragmented, as if a high-concept narrative from a completely totally different story had been stitched onto what was in any other case a robust premise. Regardless of its awkward and clunky nature, the late-stage twist did handle to seek out its footing via the participating introduction of a brand new, conflicting theme and a last-minute revelation that, whereas loosely related, echoed parts from the story’s earlier basis. In the end, a lot of the narrative’s weight was carried by the voice performing, which helped soften the inconsistencies of the sport’s remaining act. The twist felt like an extravagant writing flex — one which indulged in its ambition, making an attempt to have its cake and eat it too, leaving me completely misplaced within the sauce till the sport’s closing moments managed to tug issues again collectively.

Because the debut sport from Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is much from a fleeting expertise. It’s a sturdy reminder of what occurs when a inventive group of individuals take what was as soon as a solo ardour challenge and rework it into one thing extra — a sport by which modern fight meets a singular, authentic story that dares to problem and encourage, even when all hope appears misplaced.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 might be launched April 24 on PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X. The sport was reviewed on PlayStation 5 utilizing a prerelease obtain code supplied by Kepler Interactive. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You will discover extra details about epicgamejourney’s ethics coverage right here.