Role-playing video games (RPGs) are often known to start like many classic Dungeons & Dragons campaigns: a group of bright-eyed youths set off in search of adventure. After a slow start, their exploits gradually escalate into a world-saving, god-killing epic.
There is no such easing into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the debut game from French studio Sandfall Interactive. The opening hour immediately sets the impossibly dire stakes by grabbing your heartstrings and never letting go.
We begin in Lumière, a city that looks an awful lot like Paris, and meet a reflective young woman named Sophie. Like all 33-year-olds on this day, Sophie is about to die.
Across the sea, a gigantic stone monolith is emblazoned with the number 34. Every year, a godlike being called The Paintress — think the creepy girl from The Ring if she were as tall as the CN Tower — wakes and repaints the number, lowering it by one.
Anyone the number’s age evaporates into dust and rose petals in an event now called gommage (a morbid take on the French word for erasure, often associated with skincare). This has been happening for 67 years; Lumiere’s population is slowly dying, younger and younger.
WATCH | Expedition 33 trailer:
As The Paintress paints her latest number, Sophie and everyone else her age fade into dust. Her now grieving partner Gustave (Charlie Cox, best known as Marvel’s Daredevil) sets sail as part of the latest doomed expedition in hopes of killing The Paintress and breaking the spell.
It’s a wildly absurd premise but one that the game’s writers and actors correctly approach — with a straight face. This is a population counting the minutes to extinction; even one Marvel-esque “Well, that happened,” quip would shatter the mood Sandfall has meticulously wrought.
Cox’s Gustave wavers between sombre and playful; he and the rest of the main cast sell the paradox of people who have been raised knowing how long they’ll live — down to the day — and are forced to make the most of it.
Cox and Andy Serkis are probably the most recognizable names to most (the latter plays Renoir, a man who appears to have impossibly survived past middle age). But gamers will also appreciate voice-acting regulars like Jennifer English from Baldur’s Gate 3, and Ben Starr from Final Fantasy 16.
Clair Obscur does dabble in some unfortunate tropes; the main cast of heroes are all beautiful to a fault, while initially antagonistic characters bear scars or are otherwise hobbled. One woman wears a mask to hide her deformities, a stereotype that drew attention in 2017’s Wonder Woman film.
To its credit, Clair Obscur paints complicated characters that break out of archetypes common in the genre. It just takes a couple dozen hours to get there.
While the main plot can get stuck in morbidity, it’s peppered with playful moments and cameos. Take Esquie, a powerful and giant masked creature who looks like something you’d see in a Cirque du Soleil production, or the Gestrals, a race of mischievous marionettes.
Turn-based finesse and grace
The meat of Expedition 33‘s gameplay is its turn-based combat. Veterans of classic Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy or Persona should feel right at home: players take turns with the enemies (most of them are menacing marionette-like creatures called Nevrons) choosing attacks, spells and special abilities or using healing items to eventually wear down your enemies.
Each member of your doomed expedition plays slightly differently. Lune the mage can combine the elemental powers of her spells (ice, fire and so on) to burn or stun enemies. Maelle the fencer gains different benefits and drawbacks depending on her fighting stance. And the beast-like Morocco harkens to a classic Final Fantasy archetype, using enemies’ skills by briefly morphing into them.
There’s more to it than just punching in commands from the menu — you’re reacting to constant change. Nearly every attack brings up a button prompt on the screen; hitting the button at just the right time will reward you with more damage or some other positive effect.
Likewise, you’ll have to press buttons at the right time to dodge attacks from enemies. Evading damage is useful enough, but parries with even narrower timing windows can earn you additional bonuses like powerful counterattacks.
The idea isn’t new. I first encountered a version of this in 1996’s Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo. But Clair Obscur’s demanding system infuses every battle with a sense of risk and reward.
Foes will batter you with multi-hit combos with irregular and deceptive timing, forcing you to regularly adapt to new patterns, and button-mashing is actively punished when it comes to counters and critical hits.
But eventually you’ll learn to hit them like notes on a sheet of music, deflecting attacks and responding with a riposte, accompanied with clangs of steel and a crack of thunder. After more than 30 hours in the game, it’s still thrilling.
Sombre and beautiful
The world of Clair Obscur is as fantastical as The Paintress’s premise. French architecture, largely inspired by the pre-WW I Belle Epoque era, is scattered across a continent that’s otherwise filled with forests oversaturated with blue-green foliage or post-apocalyptic mountain ranges with bus-sized shrapnel suspended in the air.
Guillaume Broche, CEO of Sandfall, told me that while the game’s mechanics were heavily influenced by classic Japanese-made RPGs, it was important that it had its own French flair.
“We really wanted everything to feel very lean, very elegant and very beautiful. So even if the world is very dark and sombre, everything is beautiful,” he said.
Art director Nicholas Maxson-Francombe found inspiration in sources ranging from traditional French film and art to the gigantism of Elden Ring’s most terrifying monsters.
His research into ceramics resulted in the game’s flora and fauna having complex textures and colours — like The Paintress’s monolith looking like obsidian rock that’s been shattered and repaired with liquid gold in the practice of Japanese kintsugi.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a spectacularly alchemical mix of influences that you don’t often see in games — much less one promoted by major publishers like Sony and Microsoft. Sandfall Interactive has blended classic RPG elements with a flair all its own to create something that stands out among the crowded genre. It’s absolutely not one to miss.
