Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been awarded Game of the Year 2025. One reason for this is the original combat system, which head Guillaume Broche revealed in an interview regarding how the idea came about.
Why is the combat system in Clair Obscur the way it is? In an interview with the Japanese magazine Denfaminicogamer.jp and Hiroyuki Kobayashi, founder of the development studio Binary Haze Interactive, which develops the Ender series, Clair Obscur head Gillaume Broche discussed the combat system of the successful game.
It was also mentioned that CO: Expedition 33 is inspired by classic JRPGs and how it significantly differs. In typical JRPGs, much of the combat system relies heavily on luck and chance. Players can respond to the opponents’ actions to some extent – but planning ahead and avoiding dangers is only feasible to a certain extent.
This leads many players to frustration, and that is exactly what they wanted to counteract, as Broche explains:
The reason why dying in typical turn-based RPGs is frustrating is that often luck is involved. For example, the boss might just attack the wrong character, and there’s nothing the player can do about it, or the boss has a random behavior pattern that cannot be countered. Such deaths lead to dissatisfaction among players.
The reason for the inspiration from JRPGs is mainly the level of challenge that it offers the player, and Broche personally enjoys it very much.
In Western games, it is rather unusual to encounter really difficult bosses early in the game. However, in his view, this also creates hurdles that one wants to overcome, creating an “irresistible feeling” when one masters the challenge and then becomes significantly stronger.
This is exactly the feeling they wanted to deliver with Clair Obscur, but without the frustrating luck factor.
“A game where you can defeat the final boss at Level 1.”
How was this goal achieved? The biggest problem with classic JRPGs with turn-based combat systems is that players may try their hardest to figure out the game, but there’s still the element of luck that can ruin the best strategy. Therefore, the developers worked on a system that would allow players to react directly to all incoming actions.
This resulted in a hybrid of turn-based combat with real-time elements in the form of parry and dodge mechanics, allowing the player to completely avoid damage in a round and even deliver powerful counters. The developers asked themselves with every fight, “Can a boss using this mechanic be defeated without taking damage?” If the answer was “no,” the corresponding mechanic was discarded.
Broche wanted to ensure that the game could be completed without taking any damage at all. On his YouTube channel, Broche shares videos of his no-hit runs and proves that his team has done a great job.
Broche explains that Clair Obscur should be a game that can theoretically be completed at Level 1 if one masters the patterns and the combat system – without random components undermining that skill. However, it should not become too easy.
This is also a type of challenge that he loves in other games and which he wanted to perfect with Clair Obscur.
Meanwhile, other players prove that the reverse version is also quite possible. Instead of dodging all incoming attacks, a YouTuber took on the challenge of simply taking every possible hit and still completing the game without dying. You can read about how that went here: YouTuber plays in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 the opposite of a no-hit run, completing the game on the highest difficulty
