Expedition 33 – Looking Back at a New Level One Year Later

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a year in the rearview mirror now, and it comes with a lot of thoughts. It’s a game near and dear to my heart, successfully rekindling the love I had for JRPGs growing up in the ’90s and delivering an unforgettable experience. It also raised many questions about what happened to the state of the industry.

How did this studio produce something so big, and have Hollywood-level talent behind it? How did a JRPG sweep the Game of the Year awards? And where will the JRPG genre go from here, considering that Clair Obscur has managed to show how to blend the past and the present in a way that no other game has?

We’ll see if we can answer some of those questions in this Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 retrospective.

Greetings to the Elders

Tales of the Past, Dreams of the Future

That’s no secret Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 inspired by classics of this genre. Specifically, Final Fantasy encoded, with everything from the slow-paced narrative in Final Fantasy 10 to the uniform Final Fantasy 8-inspired Expedition. Even Verso’s outfit was inspired by Squall Leonhart’s costume.

But in that gift comes something incredibly original. This amazing world, with many unusual things and some challenges, is something inspired by none other than the developers of Sandfall. They didn’t copy someone else’s homework, they reimagined it, spiced it up, and combined the DNA of many different games to create a medley that managed to capture the imaginations of many.

But it’s not just the world, the gameplay that inspires that ancient feeling. It’s like playing Final Fantasy for the first time, or maybe a JRPG in general. That sense of adventure is evident in the first minutes of the game and sends you on a nostalgia trip if you remember the golden years of the genre, and if you’re new to it, it might set the bar for you going forward.

Its Mark Now

Explosive Star

When Clair Obscur was released, JRPGs were sitting in an interesting place. While there were modern successes like Metaphor: ReFantazio and well-received titles like Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and Legends of Resurrection, there was still nothing that felt like that old-school JRPG brought to modern times. Rebirth took full action with its combat, Tales of Arise did the same, while Metaphor basically gave us a medieval Persona; good for some, but the social aspects of the game felt unnecessary and ruined the experience for others.

We had lost that Square Enix feeling. While JRPGs have always focused on anime-inspired ideas, they didn’t look that way when 3D games first came along. Look at Final Fantasy 8 and Final Fantasy 10. Those were realistic looking games, and that was a beautiful thing. Anime JRPGs are their thing, but they’ve never been what defined the genre for me.

The best part of a JRPG has always been when the games feel like a melting pot of ideas. Movie quality visuals with stories that only Mpumalanga can tell. This was my kind of JRPG. This one felt like an event again. This is what everyone was talking about. One who does something special. That moment had been silent since Final Fantasy 10 was first released, and thankfully, after a journey of twelve years and from an unlikely place, it has finally returned.

But Was It Fun?

How to Make the Old New

I think the biggest question about Clair Obscur won’t be its story, or its graphics, because both were the attraction before the game was released, but rather its gameplay. How would you feel playing? Was this just a arcade-based game with a great story that felt short but was nothing more than a blip in terms of its overall quality? The game had to answer the call, and thankfully, it did. The combat was fun, mixing turn-based gameplay with real-time dodging and parrying mechanics.

It managed to satisfy the Souls-like crowd in a big way, with heartwarming stories like Dualiste and, for the true sadists out there, an optional super boss Simon. To back it all up, there were incredibly deep and interesting instruments for each character, as well as the ability to build them in any way you choose. You could have Maelle as the perfect nuke during gameplay and Sciel as the star of the show between the two, it all depends on what you like.

Clair Obscur allowed a lot of different builds to happen along with tons of tactics and an amazing range of moves that put every JRPG I’ve ever played to shame, all of which went into creating a combat loop that never ended the entire game.

Besides fighting, there was a lot to do, from exploring the beautiful open world, to discovering secret areas, uncovering common stories, competing in arena tournaments, completing side quests, and finding amazing weapons. Clair Obscur wasn’t just a story game or a fighting game. It was a complete package on all points.

But about that story…

A Narrative Work of Art

The Story of Books

Storytelling in games has long been controversial. Are games better for focusing more on story, or are they better for being teenagers instead of true art? Clair Obscur ended that debate with a compelling and rich story, and with cleverly written characters that carry the action throughout. It simply changed the game for the RPG genre as a whole. The bar has finally been raised after so many years of misguided or misguided stories.

Clair Obscur navigates this well by building stealth as you go. The first pull is The Paintress, but it quickly moves to Renoir’s mystery, who Verso and Maelle really are, in the end, that the world indeed. It’s this constant raising of stakes that holds you every step of the way, and while some twists and revelations may be more predictable than others, it’s the way it’s delivered, with amazing voice acting, animation, and set pieces that sell the story time in ways that other games often fail.

Then two conclusions follow. Each depends on your point of view of the story and really, nothing else. There is no good ending, and there is no bad ending. There are endings that show the world that just happened. It caused a real fight on Reddit and for good reason. This game has increased love for people I haven’t seen in a long time. These characters feel alive and real. No over the top anime-isms or MCU horrors. This conversation finally felt like real people and in a genre that abandoned that feeling long ago.

The endings mattered because these characters mattered, and no matter what you choose, you give up something. You sacrifice someone’s freedom or force a damaged person to face some truth. It’s so bad, it’s so powerful, it’s so good.

He hesitated after

Where Are We Going Now?

So, where does Claire Obscur leave the genre? It’s an interesting question and one that I think is already being answered by one of the most important engineers in the space. Square Enix seems to have Sandfall studios under their wing as advisors and collaborators, as they were really happy with the success of Clair Obscur, and that praise could reshape what the future holds for their cash cow, Final Fantasy.

But in the next year or so, we’re already seeing some so-called JRPG games that seek to combine real-time and turn-based combat while using artistic beauty, such as one of my most anticipated titles, Lost Hellden. With a powerhouse like Square Enix buying what Sandfall is selling, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see other JRPG studios also start to change their ways.

Maybe we’ll see JRPGs that lean less on anime and more of that hybrid world style we had with games like Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, Legend of Legaia, and Vagrant Story. Maybe we’ll see a few more “Teenage boy saves the world” types and more JRPGs that are about adults and have tone and dialogue to match.

If the genre is going to stay focused on anime, maybe we could see it shift to more Seinen and less Shōnen. Something a little more for everyone and not just the younger crowd. Just look at what Attack on Titan did. Can we get a JRPG with that kind of tone, maybe? A Fantasy game with that kind of maturity? A Persona game that isn’t set in high school? I can dream, right?

Time will tell, but one thing is certain: Clair Obscur has planted the flag. It’s a flagship that has put a genre that was in the midst of a resurgence firmly into the mainstream. Flag has collected more game of the year awards than any game ever. And it is a flag that tells us that the future is bright for this genre, as now we have another company that can deliver popular titles.

Released

April 24, 2025

The ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Sexual Themes, Violence

Engineer(s).

Sandfall Interactive

Publisher

Kepler Interactive