Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
If you're anywhere near the world of video games discourse, first I'd like to apologize (in general). Also, you've definitely heard of Clair Obscur. It's the rare game that seemingly came out of nowhere and released to almost universal acclaim. The usual semantic arguments* and people trying to push an agenda** are out in force, but the game itself has really lodged itself into the public consciousness.
Its success reminds me a bit of Baldur's Gate 3's success a couple of years ago. Turn-based RPG's generally don't hit big, not in a "massive sales numbers and dominating the online discourse" way. Same for sprawling, complex RPG's based on Dungeons & Dragons. It's nice to be surprised, in a good way.
Right off the rip, if you look at Clair Obscur you'll notice 3 things:
It's a turn-based RPG
It's melancholy as FUCK, fam
It's French. Like, baguettes and berets French
The game's premise is that, once every year, an enigmatic woman known as The Paintress appears and paints a number on a distant monolith. First she erases the previous number, and everyone of that age is erased (or gommaged). The next number is one tick lower, so it acts as an agonizingly slow doomsday timer.
When the game begins, the Paintress erases the number 34 (killing everyone who is 34 years old) and writes the number 33. This event coincides with an expedition - people who have one year left to live may opt to join an expedition to find and defeat the Paintress in an attempt to end this cycle. It's a sort of (anti?) holiday in the game world.
Right away, the game treats this all in a realistic way. Some people think the expeditions exist only to provide false hope, others believe they are a worthy expenditure and that some hope - however faint - is better than giving up. Neither side is framed as wholly right or wrong. The topic of parenthood comes up early and, if you think about it much, that is a complex subject in a world with an accelerating expiration date. Some folks want to experience family and parenthood and recognize that without children we can have no future. Others believe that having a child who will 100% be orphaned is cruel and selfish.
Again, there's room for reasonable people on both sides of this.
Gameplay-wise, it's the most challenging turn-based RPG I've ever played. It's a strange thing to grapple with. Genres are blurred so much at this point, calling it an RPG requires an explanation. The one thing that sets its systems apart is that the combat requires dodging and parrying in the way that a FromSoft game does. Every enemy attack can be dodged or parried. And even run-of-the-mill enemies frequently hit HARD. If you're consistently missing your dodges and parries, you're going to have a very tough time here.
Expedition 33 is not the first game to add timed button presses to turn-based combat. The Paper Mario and Mario RPG games have been doing this for years. While those games make hitting the prompts feel like icing on the cake, Clair Obscur puts this mechanism front and center. And, unlike those games, this one does little to help you figure out if your prompt is too early or too late, and doesn't give you much in the way of obvious timing cues.
Enemies do the Dark Souls thing of approaching you, hesitating, drawing the sword back for...1 steamboat...2 steamboat...3 steamboat...4 st-FUCK I missed it again. Every enemy has its own timing for each of its various attacks and abilities. Sometimes they have useful audio cues, and it helps to think of the combat like a rhythm game in those cases. Other times there might be a flash or a shake to cue on. Sometimes it's just vibes, man.
There were many moments where I felt like I was 10 years old again, yelling at the TV that the game cheats and I definitely hit that button and fucking C'MON. This is counterbalanced by how incredibly powerful you feel when you successfully parry all of an attack and trigger a high-damage counterattack. Or when an enemy attacks your whole party and you parry it, you get a team retaliation. EXPEDITION 33 PERFORMS A COUNTER HNNNOOOHHMYGOD.
This is not to say that the game's systems outside of the timing-based combat are plain or half-baked. Each character in your party has their own unique fighting style, which will either be a selling point or a drawback depending on your point of view. For me it's the former. One character changes fighting stances, each of which has its own abilities, buffs, and weaknesses. Another builds up elemental charges and spends them to power their abilities. A third has a tarot card system with sun and moon abilities. It's a lot to learn. There's also a system where you equip gear called Pictos, each granting a unique bonus or ability along with a stat boost (somewhat similar to Final Fantasy 7's materia system). Everyone also gets a selection of weapons, each with its own boons and hindrances. It can be overwhelming, but for me? It's one of my favorite things about the genre. Give me a big toolbox and let me customize.
I found myself thinking of Elden Ring quite a bit while playing this game. The punishing, timing-focused combat is an easy connection to make. The game's vibes are also similar. It's a big, weird, mysterious world that isn't always going to explain itself to you. It all has an ethereal, dreamlike quality to it. The game also has a few ill-conceived platforming sections. Neither game is at its best when it's asking you to jump with precision.
In fact, that's one of my few criticisms of the game. I can count on one hand the number of times Clair Obscur asked me to do any tricky jumps, but I enjoyed none of them. Likewise for the game's climbing sections or "Press X to launch yourself across this chasm onto a grappling point with technology or magic or whatever" stuff. Those things aren't bad, and you could argue that they add a little variety to the traversal. They just feel vestigial to me.
Likewise for the game's map system. Or lack of map system. Like Hollow Knight, I understand that this choice was made for lore reasons (they are on an expedition into uncharted lands, of course they don't have a map). My tendency toward getting easily very lost in a 3D game world made this tough for me, but it was more of a minor annoyance than a major hindrance. The critical path is generally lit by lanterns or something similar, but I would often find myself forgetting which direction I was moving after a combat.
But all of this is tiptoeing around the real draw here: the worldbuilding and the story. The writers were nuanced in their depiction of game's themes of trauma, loss, hope, and life's cruel choices. I will not go into detail as you should experience the game for yourself (or at least watch a playthrough if the combat system is a bridge too far). I'll say that I was moved to tears probably at least 3-4 times in my ~35 hour play of Clair Obscur. The game featured a rare "I need to set the controller down and take a walk" moment for me. I can understand everyone's perspective in the story, and it's a tale without villains - only victims.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is going to stay with me for a long time.
For those who come after.
*Is it a JRPG? Can a game made by a French developer be a JRPG? What if you add challenging dodges and parries? IS CLAIR OBSCUR THE DARK SOULS OF RPG'S? IN THIS VIDEO ESSAY I WILL ATTEMPT TO-
**See, a small team of just 30 people at an indie developer can make a game just as big and popular as a AAA studio!!