Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sure caught the attention of many eyes for its lush Unreal Engine 5 visuals paired with a turn-based battle system. But if you ask me, the big hook is something you’d least expect: it’s the worldbuilding.
Expedition 33 wears its JRPG influences up its sleeves, the whole premise and the adventuring vibe does feel a lot like a set up to a proper 30-60 hour epic you’d expect the talent folks at Square Enix or Bandai Namco (who happens to be the distributor of the physical release of the game), and many other studios of its ilk. And you’d thought you’ve seen in all. Yet here we have developer Sandfall Interactive present us a beautiful, albeit poignant, set-up for an RPG.
It’s only the prologue, I’m only a few hours in, and this moment had moved me like many other do.
A Slow, Brooding Beginning
The prologue starts with already impressive performance, a banter between Gustave and Maelle. If you’re going in blind, you’re not quite sure the relationship of the two fellows here, but it’s clear that the two had chemistry, some form of bond, as they are okay with ribbing each other and making dark jokes.
The dark joke, something going to wilt away if it’s left for a long time, is also some good foreshadowing if you know nothing about the game’s premise. But if you watched that Developer Direct showcase Xbox hosted early this January where the devs share the setup for the story like I did, that still hit. It’s a hint of the inevitable. The people here know what’s coming, but refuse to say it out loud candidly.
Like a certain, sombre event we have, or will eventually, be part of.
But look around the undisputable French city and you get the hints. The number 34 ominously glowing on the horizon, Maelle lamenting that it felt like it was only recently that Sophie, who the two has mentioned in passing, turned 33.
Not long after you meet this Sophie, dressed in white and red with a necklace made of flowers. But it’s no Hawaiian lei, the flowers on her garland are all white and red, and so is the town of Lumière , filled with bouquets of these, and even petals of them in the piles on the streets.
By just looking at how Gustave and Sophie meeting each other for the first time in a long while you immediately know what’s going on here. They used to be lovers, and you can tell there’s still flame in the candle yet by the subtle ways they react around each other. And I must say, it’s rare to see characters cross-talking in a video game cutscene. The pair just keep tripping up each other’s sentences, what a cute scene. It goes to show how powerful the performances you see in the cutscenes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. These are cutscenes you shouldn’t be looking away to scroll on your phone as they play out.
Show, Don’t Tell
And from there you spend the afternoon with Gustave and Sophie, spending quality time before the Gommage. A French word, that if you Google it before the game’s release, will give you links toward make-up and cosmetics sites. The pair, and the people of Lumière just mention this in passing.
And that’s another brilliant thing Expedition 33 did. It’s aware of how RPGs can be so much explaining, where you can just ask characters to go on a spiel explaining the lore to the player directly. This game says no to lore dumps and expositions, and assumes that players are smart enough to figure it out by context, and only spell it out if they really, really search for it.
This choice of worldbuilding gives the prologue this air of mystique, where you think you know what’s going to happen, but not exactly how it all will play out. It doesn’t help that the people here treats this Gommage as a festival, something you’d expect to happen every year.
And there is that feel of festiveness around here, people dancing, drinking, heck even fornicating (shoutout to the Life Enjoyers).
But ask around and explore and it’s hard not to spot the sadness in the air. Maele is off escorting kids to the orphanage. A painter and a journalist struggles with their daily grind. A father regretted that they got in an argument with his son yesterday, of all days. The way Sophie and Gustave says “see you” to the people the are conversing with. It’s all melancholic. It helps that the music really amps up that sadness feel of it all.
And the afternoon stroll across Lumière ends with another moving cutscene, witnessing the Gommage takes place. There’s a weight to the whole sequence that instantly evokes the FMV cutscenes I vividly remember from Final Fantasy X. Something grand is happening, all presented beautifully, it’s something the crowd expected to happen yet they’re in tears.
If you don’t know what a Gommage is, you know now. In make-up terms, it’s exfoliating, the act of shedding skin. In other words, erasure.
The Power Of A Moving Cutscene
Every year, the elusive Paintress paints a number counting down, and anyone above that age will get this world’s equivalent of a Thanos Snap. You must be under this age to continue living.
It’s a bleak curse, every year the elderly are getting younger and the children having less and less of a future due to the hard limit on how much time they have in the world. If you’re too old, like poor ol’ Sophie and the many 34-year-olds, they’ll fade away into red and white petals.
It’s such a constant in the lives of Lumerians that they’ve made a festival out of it. Every year they gather red and white flowers to “celebrate” the Gommage, people come to celebrate the passing of the elderly, and those that will call in time dress up for the occasion. It’s such a sad state of affairs, and these people, who dress all dapper like it’s in the 1870s, are actually technologically advanced in some aspects. Look at Gustave’s arm, kids made it for him! Yet they suffer from this curse for over 67 years.
The prologue continues in the evening as the Expeditioners also get their own party. Every year, Lumière sends a group of Expeditioners in an attempt to defeat the Paintress and break the cycle. Gustave and surprisingly Maelle have signed for this apparently futile effort. They prepped so much, have strategies planned out, trained in combat and for 67 years no one has returned from these Expeditions. If they didn’t die, they probably just gone from the Gommage.
So these folks of 32 year-olds (except Maelle, which makes her joining this a surprise) will likely die a year early if past trends tells us. And yet here they are, partying for likely the last time. It’s a bit low-key because budgets were cut for this year, but these folks in black and gold/purple accent uniforms will set sail for Expedition 33.
Shout out to the folks born in 1993 (and 1992 that haven’t reached their birthday yet), this game is about you lot (and me) as the oldest people in the world.
Still A Video Game At Heart
And through all the Prologue, you get to navigate the world freely in the third-person and it feels very… video-gamey. The way the characters run, not how they look but how they feel on the controls, feels just a bit jank and floaty. If this is a AAA big-budget production you’d come to expect a heavier, more realistic feel to the control (which make characters move like tanks) but no, Gustave can haul ass and jump around.
The level also don’t do a good job of having natural invisible walls, and you can stop sprinting if you hit a small object or don’t point straight up on the direction. And while he is all in his nice blue suit Gustave can do magical slingshots, climb up and down a magical pole and do combat. It’s so weird yet to have gameplay tutorials being smashed into this bit of pleasant world-building exploration, but at least it wastes no time to introduce you to its biggest appeal: the game’s take on turn-based combat.
And you also can see the delay between the game transitioning from gameplay into cutscenes with the higher-res models and cinematic filter (forced sub-30 FPS, cinematic black bars).
Some conversations have voiced dialogue but not others. There’s a bit long text box that you’d see in CRPGs during dialogues. There are also odd things you can interact with like the many normal trash cans that are just there. I love that when it’s not in a cutscene, Expedition 33 is unapologetically a video game.
In some ways, it adds to the charm of Expedition 33, that it isn’t trying to make the whole game cinematic (like say, how the new God Of War games have the design goal of presenting the game as one single-take shot). It separates game and cutscene like an old-school video games do so. And it’s oddly refreshing to see.
Go Play This Game Already
As I’ve basically walked you through what happen in the prologue of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I hope you see what I’m saying here. The world is beautifully set up for a grand adventure. And the gentle depiction of death here really sets up the big shocking scene that begins Act I.
And I haven’t said a word about the fantastic music the scores the prologue! It’s also really, really good!
The opening hours of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 really sets up a high bar for any player starting out on this highly-rated RPG. And as someone who’s just starting out on the Expedition, a little later than many outlets who have reviews out already, I look forward to see where this journey ends up.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is out now on PS5, PC (Steam, Microsoft Store), and Xbox Series X|S. The game is also available as part of Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass subscription.