Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Developer(s)	Sandfall Interactive
Publisher(s)	Kepler Interactive
Director(s)	Guillaume Broche
Producer(s)	François Meurisse
Designer(s)	Guillaume Broche Michel Nohra
Programmer(s)	Tom Guillermin
Artist(s)	Nicholas Maxson-Francombe
Writer(s)	Jennifer Svedberg-Yen Guillaume Broche
Composer(s)	Lorien Testard
Engine	Unreal Engine 5
Platform(s)	PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox Series X/S
Release	24 April 2025
Genre(s)	Turn-based role-playing
Mode(s)	Single-player

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a 2025 turn-based role-playing video game developed by French studio Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive. Taking place in a dark fantasy Belle Époque setting, the game follows the volunteers of Expedition 33 who set out to destroy the Paintress, a being causing the yearly Gommage, erasing those above an ever-decreasing age. Played from a third-person perspective, the player controls a party of characters, exploring areas and engaging in combat. Coupled to its turn-based mechanics are real-time aspects such as quick time events and timed actions in combat.

The developers sought to create a high-fidelity turn-based role-playing game, which they felt had been neglected by AAA developers, and took inspiration from Japanese RPGs such as the Final Fantasy and Persona series. Development began with Unreal Engine 4 and later switched to Unreal Engine 5, providing various rendering improvements.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S on 24 April 2025. The game received critical acclaim and sold 2 million units within 12 days of its release.

Gameplay

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based role-playing game with real-time elements. The player controls a party of Expeditioners exploring a fantasy world. As the player navigates an overworld and various areas, they can engage enemies to begin a turn-based combat encounter.

On their turns, players select whether to use an item, perform a melee attack to gain Ability Points, or spend accumulated Ability Points to use ranged attacks or Skills. Ranged attacks are aimed freely, similar to a third-person shooter. When using a Skill, a quick time event can be completed for improved effects. During enemy turns, the player can dodge, parry or jump over attacks in real time to avoid damage. Parrying is more difficult than dodging, but provides Ability Points and the opportunity to counterattack. A stamina system allows players to "Break" enemies, temporarily stunning them. As players progress, the game introduces new attacks and parries including Gradient Attacks, Gradient Counters, and Gradient Skills. If the combat party is defeated, reserve characters may be called in to continue fighting. Combat ends when either side has no remaining combatants.

Characters have unique skill trees, weapons and gameplay mechanics. For example, the mage Lune's Skills generate elemental "Stains", which can be spent to enhance her Skills. Meanwhile, the fencer Maelle switches between Stances which alter her Skills, damage and defense. Characters are further customized with equipable "Pictos" and "Luminas" which add a variety of perks.

Combat encounters reward experience points, currency and upgrades. At checkpoints known as Expedition Flags, players heal their party, restock items, and allocate attribute and skill points. Resting at an Expedition Flag respawns most enemies.

The game has multiple difficulty options and a New Game Plus mode.

Plot

Premise

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 takes place in a dark fantasy Belle Époque setting. Every year for the past 67 years, the people of the isolated island of Lumière have suffered an event called the "Gommage", where an entity, known as "the Paintress" (Tracy Wiles), paints an ever-decreasing number, and all humans with an age above that number disappear. Every year after the Gommage, Lumière sends an Expedition of volunteers to head to the mainland in an effort to slay the Paintress before she can paint a new number. Expedition 33 is the latest to set out.

Members of Expedition 33 include: Gustave (Charlie Cox), a resourceful engineer who only has a year left to live; Maelle (Jennifer English), the youngest member of the Expedition and Gustave's foster sister; Lune (Kirsty Rider), a brilliant scholar and mage; and Sciel (Shala Nyx), a calm and cheerful warrior. As the Expedition traverses the mainland, they encounter various individuals, including: Renoir (Andy Serkis), an old man driven by ruthless determination; Verso (Ben Starr), a mysterious stranger who keeps watch of the Expedition; Monoco (Rich Keeble), a Gestral who lives in the mainland and is associated with Verso; and Esquie (Maxence Cazorla), a local mythical creature also living in the mainland.

Plot

On the day of the 67th Gommage, 32-year-old engineer Gustave bids farewell to his former lover, Sophie, who has turned 33 and perishes alongside everyone else of the same age. With only a year left to live, Gustave joins Expedition 33 in hopes of slaying the Paintress. However, Expedition 33 meets catastrophe shortly after making landfall, when they are ambushed by an old white-haired man leading an army of monsters. Nearly the entire Expedition is massacred, while its survivors are scattered amidst the chaos. After recovering, Gustave manages to find three other survivors: scholar Lune, his foster sister Maelle, and warrior Sciel. Maelle, in particular, receives visions of the white-haired man and a masked girl accompanying him, who seems to know Maelle and that she will cause disasters in the future. Realizing they need to cross another sea to meet the Paintress, the party enlists the aid of one of the local creatures, Esquie, to take them across. However, before they can set off, the white haired man attacks again, killing Gustave. A man named Verso intervenes and prevents the white haired man from chasing the rest of the party, allowing them to escape.

Verso later catches up with the party, explaining that he is actually a surviving member of the very first Expedition, Expedition 00. He reveals that the white-haired man is actually Renoir, the commander of Expedition 00. For reasons unknown, both of them stopped aging upon arrival on the continent. Renoir has come to believe his immortality was granted to him by the Paintress, so he eliminates the other Expeditions to protect her. Verso, meanwhile, has grown tired of his immortality and joins the party to lead them to the Paintress. After the party crosses the sea and pays their respects to Gustave, Verso recruits one of his friends, a local Gestral named Monoco. Verso then leads them to Old Lumière to find the Paintress' heart, which they need to destroy to disable the barrier protecting her.

The party reaches the center of Old Lumière, where they find Renoir's mansion. Verso admits to the party that he is Renoir's son, and the masked girl is his sister Alicia. After a brief battle, Renoir teleports the mansion and the heart away, thwarting Verso's plan. Instead, Lune suggests crafting a weapon powerful enough to pierce the barrier, though they would need to hunt highly dangerous Axons for their hearts. The party manages to craft the weapon, pierce the barrier, and enter the Monolith where the Paintress resides, killing Renoir along the way. They confront the Paintress, who is revealed to be Verso's mother Aline, and manage to kill her, erasing the number on the Monolith. The party returns to Lumière as heroes, but Verso reads a letter from Alicia revealing that Aline was trying to protect the people of Lumière from the real Renoir, who is actually responsible for the Gommage. Without Aline's protection, the entire population of Lumière vanishes, including the party.

In a flashback to an alternate reality, it is revealed that Alicia and her family are magic users called Painters, possessing the ability to create worlds within magical Canvases. The real Aline and Renoir are battling over Verso's Canvas, which contains Lumière, as Aline uses it to live with a false Verso, since the real one died saving Alicia from a fire. Clea, Alicia's older sister, advises her to enter the Canvas and destroy it to stop their parents' bickering so they can focus on their war with a rival faction called the Writers. Alicia enters the Canvas, but is overwhelmed by Aline's power, and her identity is overwritten as Maelle. The flashback ends here.

With Maelle's "death", Alicia regains her memories and reunites with the false Verso, who wanted to defeat Aline to expel her from the Canvas for her own good, even if it means letting Renoir completely destroy it. Alicia tries to convince Renoir to change his mind now that Aline has been banished from the Canvas, but he remains adamant about destroying it to prevent Aline from finding a way back. Alicia decides to defy her father and uses her Painter powers to revive the party as well as all of the slain Expedition members to battle him for control of the Canvas. After a climactic battle, Renoir relents and allows Alicia and Verso to decide the fate of the Canvas.

Alicia and Verso now come into conflict, with Verso realizing that Alicia does not plan to leave the Canvas, which will eventually kill her if she stays too long. The ending diverges based on the character the player chooses to play as in the final battle:

• If the player chooses Alicia, she rebuilds Lumière and revives its people, but decides to live permanently in the Canvas against Verso's wishes.
• If the player chooses Verso, he banishes Alicia from the Canvas and destroys it, forcing Alicia and her family to come to terms with the real Verso's death.

Development

The ideas behind Clair Obscur originated with Guillaume Broche, an employee of Ubisoft, around 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Broche had an idea based on one of his childhood favorites, the Final Fantasy series. He sent out some requests for help to craft a demo to a group of other developers he knew as well as posts on Reddit. With the demo, Broche was able to secure funding from Kepler Interactive, and subsequently left Ubisoft to form Sandfall Interactive with a core team of about thirty developers, including about twelve fellow developers from Ubisoft. Some of the voice actors for the demo gained more prominent roles in development, such as Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, a voice actor that became the game's lead writer. Lorien Testard, the composer, was discovered through posts on SoundCloud. The funding also allowed Sandfall to bring in about 50 additional developers through outsourcing, as well as to pay for professional voice actors including Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis and Ben Starr. Broche said one of the goals of Clair Obscur was to create a high fidelity turn-based RPG, which he felt had been neglected by AAA game developers. Besides Final Fantasy, Clair Obscur took inspiration from other Japanese role-playing games, including the Persona series. Broche also considered Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, JRPGs developed for Microsoft's drive to bring the Xbox consoles to Japan, as an influence, particularly their use of quick time events during combat. According to producer François Meurisse, the game drew inspiration from SquareSoft's Final Fantasy VIII, IX and X in particular, while the dodge and parry mechanics were influenced by FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Development initially began in Unreal Engine 4 and later switched to Unreal Engine 5 to take advantage of Unreal Engine 5's improvements in rendering and animation. The switch to UE5 was motivated by its Nanite and Lumen features, allowing for higher-fidelity assets and more-realistic lighting, respectively. The adoption of Lumen necessitated reworking the lighting for most environments. Additionally, UE5 brought better character creation support, allowing them to switch from Character Creator. The developers also make use of ready-made assets for background objects such as rocks, which allows them to focus on creating "hero assets", i.e., large-scale assets that make an impression on the viewer. Broche credits the simplicity of modern game engines to help bring the product together.

Film adaptation

In January 2025, Story Kitchen announced a live-action adaptation of the game with developer Sandfall Interactive.

Reception

Reception

Aggregate scores

Aggregator	Score
Metacritic	(PC) 91/100 (PS5) 92/100 (XSXS) 91/100
OpenCritic	97% recommend

Review scores

Publication	Score
Destructoid	9.5/10
Eurogamer	4/5
Game Informer	9/10
GameSpot	9/10
GamesRadar+	4.5/5
Hardcore Gamer	4.5/5
IGN	9/10
PC Gamer (US)	70/100
PCGamesN	8/10
Push Square	9/10
RPGamer	5/5
RPGFan	99/100
Shacknews	9/10
The Guardian	4/5
VG247	5/5

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 received "universal acclaim" from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. OpenCritic reported a top critic average score of 92% across all platforms; as of April 2025, it is the highest-rated game of 2025 on the site.

Sales

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sold 500,000 units within its first day of release and sold 1 million units within 3 days. The game had sold 2 million units in 12 days since release. On achieving these sales metrics, President of France Emmanuel Macron celebrated the game's achievement, stating it was "a shining example of French audacity and creativity."

The game's soundtrack reached the top position on Billboard's Classical Music and Classical Crossover Music charts during the first week of May 2025.

External links

• Official website