Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being developed by SandFall Interactive, a company founded in 2020 by Ex Ubisoft employee Guillaume Broche taking along Tom Guillermin who also worked at Ubisoft. The game is made with Unreal engine 5 and is set to release around spring 2025 on all platforms bar the switch.
The pictures and media that SandFall released showcase a France based on the “Belle Epoque” paintings that were coming during the 1870s era, where it was an era of optimism and peace. But in Expedition 33 that peace and prosperity is marred by the supernatural and grimm “painter”.
There is a piece of stone that is seen from the city with a number etched onto it and as per the trailer for the game, every year the “painter” etches a new number in a decreasing order, everyone who is of that age hereafter perishes. Thus every year an expedition is planned to kill this “painter” so that peace may return to this era.
A World With A Mix Of Fantasy With 1870s France
“Once a year, the Paintress wakes and paints upon her monolith. Paints her cursed number. And everyone of that age turns to smoke and fades away. Year by year, that number ticks down and more of us are erased.”
As per an interview with IGN, the inspiration was JRPGs but he wanted the game’s characters to follow a unique style thus the characters themselves have a fashion that is a mix of old Europe with fantasy elements mixed in.
Mr. Broche also mentioned that he wanted to bring more skilled based input into the turn-based style of play thus the idea came to allow the player to give input in the right time to parry incoming attacks from enemies or dodge them outright, much like how it is in FromSoftware’s Sekiro. Going more into this addition, players will also have to aim whenever they choose to do a ranged attack like using spells or guns, this again puts pressure on the player to aim at weak points or such to get maximum damage.
Quick Time Events (QTE), start to occur more when complex moves are chosen, keeping the player’s attention to press the right button at the right time to ensure maximum damage gets inflicted on enemies. The combination of these QTEs and the ability to essentially be able to dodge any incoming attack basically allows for the possibility to do no-hit runs in the game.
The General Loop Of Expedition 33
While games from established genres are trying to reinvent the experience, like Final Fantasy shifting to an open world system, this game is targeting a linear experience but each area will have lots to explore and discover including finding optional bosses.
Additional loot locked behind puzzles and we may even find NPCs that will either join our party or provide more story elements. The trailer also gives the message that this game will be a dark tale, full of death and scenes showing tragedy and pointlessness in fighting for a future free of pointless death.
A Twist On Turned Based Combat And A Compelling Story
What is an interesting fact is the voice talent on the game is top tier to say the least, the cast includes Daredevil’s Charlie Cox, Kirsty Rider who worked on Sifu, Shala Nyx who voiced Farida Nazeri from Cyberpunk’s Phantom Liberty DLC, Jennifer English who voiced Shadowheart from Baldur’s Gate 3, Andy Serkis the actor who brought Gollum to life in the big screen and finally Ben Starr the voice of Clive Rosfield from Final Fantasy 16.
It is genuinely surprising to see such a group of veterans coming together to lend their skills and talent, for a video game no less, proving that the Triple A games industry is stepping more and more into the role of being a mainstream artform standing alongside the traditional movies and TV shows we know.
This cast makes the wait for Expedition 33 to be all the more agonizing as their performance can really set the stage for the range of emotion and nihilism that the story seems to be about ultimately, alas we have to wait till the spring of 2025 to experience the game and see for ourselves what closed beta players and journalists are praising the game about.
