Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is already considered one of the best games of all time. However, it could have been a completely different game where you would have fought against zombies in a steampunk setting. The developers were encouraged to “just go for it” – and you know the result.
This is how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is received: On Metacritic, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the highest-rated games considering the user score. And also on Steam the role-playing game is very well received – about 94% of nearly 50,000 ratings are positive. The game is the debut work of the developer studio Sandfall Interactive. And that’s why no one was as surprised that the game would succeed as the developers themselves.
The editorial team at MeinMMO also greatly appreciates the artistic and emotional role-playing game. Jasmin has detailed her assessment of the game in the review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. There you will also find additional opinions from the team.
As has now been revealed, the role-playing game was originally supposed to have a completely different feel. And it sounded… quite bizarre.
“All right, restart. We start from the beginning”
What was the original plan? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 takes players on an emotional and unique journey – packed with unusual locations and quirky creatures. But originally, everything was planned quite differently.
According to Narrative Lead Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, not much would have changed in the gameplay – however, the story would have been entirely different. “It took place in a Victorian steampunk England, with zombies, aliens, and all sorts of strange things,” she revealed in an interview with TheGamer.
This led the developers to rethink: After the team had worked on the version for six months, everything changed. The investors motivated the developers to think bigger. They were told not to hold back just for fear of financing – and just to go for it.
Svedberg-Yen recalls the decisive moment: “If you could write freely – what would you do?” And the Game Director Guillaume Broche then said: “All right, restart. We start from the beginning.” And that’s how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was born.
The new version of the game was based according to Svedberg-Yen on a painting and a short story she was currently writing. It is about an artist who dives into her own paintings. Names like Maelle, Verso, and Lune as well as some gameplay ideas made it from the steampunk zombie project into the final version.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 succeeds in evoking a lot of emotions in the players and impresses with smooth gameplay, a great story, and wonderful art style. According to MeinMMO demon Cortyn, this is partly because it skillfully combines familiar mechanics and elements from other games. You can read more about it here: Expedition 33 is so good because it has “borrowed” almost all content.
