Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – A Canvas of Fading Lives

There are games you see coming from miles away. The ones that, backed by a vast arsenal of financial and structural support, promise from the very start a grand, unforgettable adventure. And then, there are the surprises—the ones you could never have anticipated. In many ways, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has felt like an anomaly ever since its reveal. It was during the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2024 that the debut title from the studio Sandfall Interactive was unveiled through a breathtaking trailer. Despite the presence of heavyweights like Doom: The Dark Ages or the next Flight Simulator, all eyes turned toward this unexpected newcomer. And for good reason—everything was crafted to dazzle. The first images revealed a game with a meticulously refined aesthetic, steeped in iconography reminiscent of Belle Époque France, carried by a mesmerizing score composed by Lorien Testard and elevated by the hypnotic voice of Alice Duport-Percier. The visuals, worthy of the most prestigious productions, combined with a dynamic turn-based combat system featuring parries and dodges, and a UI as polished as it is intuitive—on par with Atlus’ finest—immediately captivated anyone glued to their screen. The presence of Ben Starr, now beloved for his performance as Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy XVI, sent expectations soaring, allowing this French title to seize the hearts of JRPG lovers everywhere. It is within this rich context of expectations and promises that this critique of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 finds its place — a process that borders on analysis, as the title demands to be examined closely, both in form and in intent.

The French nationality of the studio behind the project is, in fact, one of the elements that adds to the magnetism of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Sandfall Interactive hails from Montpellier, a city that, slowly but surely, has established itself as a fertile ground for video game creation. Between Ubisoft’s historical roots, BlueTwelve’s artistic daring (Stray), DigixArt’s narrative sensitivity (Road 96), and the poetry of Game Bakers (Haven, Furi), Montpellier is a hive where technical ambition and auteur visions coexist. Expedition 33 finds its place in a creative surge, where the boundaries between independence and the demands of production blur in favor of a search for meaning, style, and emotion. However, while the French video game industry is currently thriving, we are still unaccustomed to seeing games of this kind emerge from our territory, with such a bold visual ambition. The fascination only grew when Sandfall Interactive began introducing its team, consisting of about thirty people. There was a mix of admiration and doubt: how could such a small team, within a still-unknown studio, possibly live up to the promises made? Was the leap too high? The expectations, fueled by the media’s tendency to compare the game to heavyweights like Final Fantasy or Persona, were they not at risk of backfiring on this young team? It was with these questions in mind—tinged with rare excitement—that I threw myself headfirst into this expedition.

Let’s not beat around the bush, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a great video game. A true demonstration of craftsmanship, and a symbol of hope for a video game industry too often tangled in projects with poorly executed ambitions. With a small team, Sandfall achieves a thunderous debut and establishes itself as one of the highlights of 2025. But more than that, this game has the stature of a monument. It possesses all the qualities to leave a lasting mark on future works in the JRPG legacy. I come away dazed, still haunted by its final moments, convinced that the strength of its narrative makes it one of the most beautiful ever told by our medium.

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes it visible.

Choosing a title for a work is often a complicated task. Some exude class, others intrigue us, and then there are those that carry within them the promise of a message, a vision, almost a philosophy. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 belongs to the latter category. Unfortunately, it is often reduced, for the sake of convenience, to its secondary name: Expedition 33. I must confess that I, too, conveniently referred to it this way in the months leading up to its release. It’s a regrettable simplification, as the choice of Clair Obscur as the first part of the title stands as a crucial key to understanding the work. It is not merely a poetic ornament or a stylistic flourish: it is a statement of intent.

This game, in all that it unfolds—visually, narratively, emotionally—fully embraces the idea of clair-obscur. The name itself doesn’t merely describe; it embodies. It encapsulates in two words the deep contrasts that run through the heart of the experience: light and darkness, beauty and ugliness, hope and fate, softness and violence. These tensions shape the staging, certain gameplay mechanics, and above all, the narrative. To forget Clair Obscur is to miss the very essence of the project. It is to overlook the perspective that Sandfall Interactive seeks to share with us on the human condition, on the tragic, and on the sublime. But to truly grasp the significance of this title, one must first understand the richness of the term from which it draws inspiration.

Chiaroscuro is an artistic technique we inherited from the Renaissance. This method of painting involves emphasizing the contrasts between light and shadow to create an effect of volume, depth, and drama. It is not just a technique but a visual language that transcends the surface. In renowned artists such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, or Georges de La Tour, chiaroscuro is particularly highlighted because it draws the eye, guides emotion, and dramatizes the scene. Light is never gratuitous. It reveals and sometimes unveils the truth, but it also deliberately leaves in shadow what cannot or should not be seen. This play of contrasts creates a tension between the visible and the invisible, the spoken and the unspoken, the real and the spiritual. Chiaroscuro is an aesthetic of paradox, a quest for truth through ambiguity. It is a way of depicting humanity in its rawest complexity. And it is precisely this artistic tradition that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 extends, transposes, and reinvents in another medium.

In the game, this tension between light and darkness is not only manifested in the artistic direction, which shifts between pastel dreamscapes and nightmarish visions. It also permeates the characters, the story being told, the moral dilemmas they face, as well as the expertly handled tonal shifts that move effortlessly from laughter to tears. It sneaks into the gameplay, the staging of combat, the always-precise silences of the characters, and the looks magnified by close-ups that perfectly capture the dramatic weight of the dialogue and the emotions that run through our heroes. Clair Obscur is not just a name: it’s a prism, a lens through which to view the work, an aesthetic and philosophical manifesto. To forget it is to miss the beating heart of this creation. It becomes clear, just from a few shots, that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not just a game with a distinctive style, but rather an artistic breakthrough of rare ambition, where every beam of light cuts through reality with surgical precision, and every shadow seems to carry the weight of an unspoken truth. It is not about simply “looking beautiful,” but about offering a new way of seeing to reveal the nature of a troubling and captivating world.

This image of Gustave, the male protagonist of the game, beautifully embodies what I described earlier regarding chiaroscuro. He stands, slightly illuminated by a hellish, glowing light that seems to pour from the heavens, in an environment that is both perceptible and yet vaguely defined, all surrounded by dark, organic forms that are terribly menacing. The setting is both majestic and chaotic, echoing the apocalyptic reality of the world we traverse to defeat the Paintress, as if everything around us is slowly burning in a divine light. This is not just a dramatic effect: it is the expression of chiaroscuro incarnate. The character himself, frozen in a nearly statuesque pose, seems to have stepped right out of a painting. His costume, rich in textures—leather, metal, and soiled fabric—bears witness to a manic attention to detail. The wear and tear, the war, the road are all visible. His gaze betrays the ambiguity of his mental state. He is neither fully resigned nor triumphant.

Where Sandfall Interactive truly shines is in how this artistic identity is reflected even in the combat, offering particularly striking contrasts. After encountering a wandering enemy, we shift into a battle that feels almost hallucinogenic, between our protagonists and the colossal creatures swarming across the map. The arena seems unreal, almost liquid, saturated with suspended petals, bright glows, splashes of matter, and sparks. The enemies, with their carved curves, adorned with patterns that are almost Incan or stylized African motifs, seem to emerge from a primitive and mystical world. There is a sense of ballet in this fight—brutal, certainly, but choreographed—where every visual burst becomes a gesture to integrate, where every impact serves as a graphic punctuation. The movement is as if frozen in the image by the turn-based system, yet it is vibrant with dynamism, as though the moment has been captured at the boundary between reality and dream.

It becomes clear that the name Clair Obscur is not a throwaway reference, but the very heart of the artistic work carried out since the start of the project. Sandfall does not seek cold hyperrealism, nor detached abstraction. It offers an aesthetic of the threshold. A middle ground. A world that is both tangible and impossible. The colors, often desaturated or twilight-like, allow, by contrast, sacred-like bursts of light to emerge. The game works with light as a material: it shapes, it cuts, it burns. It is sometimes hostile, sometimes salvific. But always meaningful. Finally, we must acknowledge the uniqueness of this artistic direction, which does not simply draw from the Japanese imagery of classic JRPGs or overexploited pop culture, but intersects it with a European sensibility. The influence of the Belle Époque and Art Nouveau is hinted at in some environments and ornaments, but never in a pastiche manner. It’s a reinvention. A hybridization. The game embraces its French identity, not as a label, but as a hue, a filter, a taste.

It is difficult for me to discuss the artistic craftsmanship behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 without dwelling on the nightmarish visions that punctuate the adventure. These are moments suspended in an aesthetic that is both sharp and evocative. Here, Sandfall Interactive dares to make a bold, almost radical choice: a grainy black and white, confined to a 4:3 aspect ratio that immediately evokes another time. This formal shift acts as a tear in the visual continuity of the game. It is a breach opened in the thickness of reality. We are no longer entirely in a video game; we slide into the language of cinema, into that of memory and trauma. The use of the 4:3 format, narrow and claustrophobic, isolates and forces the image to contain the essential. It is no coincidence that filmmakers such as Robert Eggers or Pablo Larraín have used this format to convey obsession, psychosis, or memory frozen in sorrow. For Sandfall, this technique captures the psychology of the characters, how their fears take shape, their brutality, and their lack of escape. The frame itself becomes a prison, a sealed mental room where the image can no longer breathe. And this is the genius of this staging: to make the pressure felt without having to explain it.

The black and white, for its part, cleanses the image of distractions, leaving only the shadows and the light. In these sequences, we have an absolute contrast. The use of this color scheme does not signify nostalgia, but tension, harshness, and raw truth. In these sequences, Clair Obscur becomes a space of evocation, unease, and eerie strangeness. Every appearance, every face, every gaze becomes spectral. We are no longer in the tangible world of the game, but in the wavering world of a psyche struggling against collapse. What is fascinating is the accuracy with which these visual breaks converse with the rest of the work. They are not mere flourishes, but inverted breaths, dives inward, where a silent anxiety lies hidden. It is also, perhaps, a way of saying that true darkness is not outside, lurking in the depths of a dungeon or in the shadow of a monolith, but within us. Suddenly, the title Clair Obscur takes on a new depth: it is no longer just about light and shadow in the world, but in beings. Again, the game does not replicate the visible. It makes it visible. It is precisely because it dares to dive so deeply into the intimate that its gaze upon the world is all the more overwhelming.

The melancholy of a ruined world.

The world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a world that dies slowly. Not in the tumult of a sudden apocalypse, but in a slow agony, eaten from within by a mysterious curse that has fallen upon it. Every year, a supernatural entity, known as the Paintress, awakens at the foot of a monolith as dark as it is imposing to paint a new number. This number is not just a ritualistic calligraphy: it seals the fate of all those whose age matches it. The moment the final brushstroke is made, these individuals vanish in a ballet of ashes and petals, as if memory itself refuses to keep their trace. This year, it is the turn of those aged 33 to be swept away by what the inhabitants of Lumière call “The Erasure.” Faced with this plague, humanity has organized itself around mourning rituals and the famous expeditions, the last defense against the Paintress, hoping to break this cycle. From the first moments, one truth becomes clear: this world wavers in a tragic ballet where resignation and defiance intertwine, like a body at the point of death, whose final spasms are mistakenly taken for signs of life.

The shadow of the Paintress looms over everything. In the streets of Lumière, her effigy is omnipresent, reproduced endlessly on walls, in posters celebrating past expeditions, transformed into faded icons of a hope long past. These posters blend the imagery of propaganda with that of cult, making this entity a living myth, both muse, executioner, and cruel goddess. It is as if the city has tried to tame its terror by giving it a face. It is in this twilight context that we meet Gustave, on the very day of the Gommage ceremony — and on the eve of the departure of Expedition 33, of which he is a part. This ceremony, a farewell rite before disappearance, reveals a deeply transformed relationship with death. The inhabitants of Lumière have integrated their imminent end into the very cycle of their existence, as if it were a seasonal celebration, a ritual as codified as Christmas or Halloween. The number painted on the monolith, visible for an entire year before being replaced, acts as a latent threat, a morbid reminder that humanity now lives under the absolute rule of an elusive entity. Still shaken by the mourning of the last ones erased, the expedition of our heroes — among whom Gustave, Maelle, Lune, and Sciel quickly emerge as central figures — sets off on a high-risk, perhaps suicidal mission, following the failed attempts of their predecessors. What was supposed to be a rescue becomes a quest for truth, an initiatory journey on the border between the real and the symbolic, in a world where the ruins are not only architectural but also profoundly human.

This world on the brink of the abyss, eaten away by an implacable fatality, could have been painted in the dull tones of a generic post-apocalyptic landscape, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 takes the opposite approach. It chooses to elevate decay, to make the collapse an artistic material, and to sculpt grief in the light. This is where the game reveals one of its most unsettling signatures: it summons a profoundly European, more specifically French, imagination, without ever falling into easy illustration or postcard-like scenery. The influence of the Belle Époque serves not only a decorative role. It is an aesthetic and symbolic matrix. The Belle Époque is not just a historical period. It is an era of artistic exuberance, technological optimism, and faith in the future. It is the Paris of Haussmann, the World Expositions, the salons where the paintings of Mucha and the melodies of Debussy mingle. An era of refinement, light, and luxury. But it is also an era just before the fall. Just before the chaos of the Great War.

This is precisely what Clair Obscur captures with rare accuracy. The architectural remnants that make up the city of Lumière, such as this deformed Eiffel Tower, like it has melted into a metallic nightmare, or this Arc de Triomphe ripped open, cracked from end to end, are not mere ruins. They are symbols of a past grandeur, of a corrupted golden age. Their alteration is not just physical: it is mental, almost dreamlike. They are the dreams of an era disintegrating, eaten away from within by a terrible tragedy. The Eiffel Tower, once a demonstration of pride, a symbol of progress, seems to collapse inward, as if time, or an invisible force, had broken it. The Arc de Triomphe, a monument of memory and victory, becomes a fractured threshold. This distorted urban landscape shows the confrontation between the glorious memory of an idealized past and the tragic reality of a world in ruin.

Visually, this translates into theatrical excess: the Art Nouveau arabesques, the delicate ironworks, the decayed gilding, all this visual language that once evoked lightness and beauty, is here twisted, blackened, eroded. The game does not imitate the Belle Époque; it extracts its soul, distorts it, questions it. It turns it into a broken myth. There is something profoundly sad and dramatic in this vision. As if Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 refuses to settle for simply showing us a fantastical version of our beautiful capital. The game speaks to us of a future haunted by its past. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does not merely show a world: it makes us feel it. It transforms every setting into a stage, every light into tension, every character into a figure. This is where one of its true strengths lies.

This melancholy, this taste of ash in the light, does not stop at the disjointed streets of the city of Lumière. It seeps into every corner of the world we traverse, every fragment of architecture and land torn from the earth and suspended in the air as if the universe itself refused to collapse completely. The landscapes we journey through during the adventure have something unreal about them, as if they float in a liminal space, frozen in a moment out of time. This is not a destroyed world. It is a world awaiting its demise. An open-air purgatory, an antechamber to hell where the sky has emptied of its promise. In the distance, always, the black monolith stands, a silent sentinel of a death cycle that repeats. It is like a vertical scar on the horizon, a dull threat whose mere presence poisons the air. Even the most majestic landscapes are tainted by this presence. The sublime is always tinted with menace. But this threat, as supernatural as it may be, finds an organic, almost tactile echo in the very landscapes. Death is everywhere. It crawls, literally, in the form of vegetation that, in certain areas, seems to have taken the shape of human bodies frozen in agony. Silhouettes of twisted vines, knotted roots, form scenes of silent torture, as if nature had absorbed the souls of the vanished. The entire world then becomes a living cemetery, a reliquary where oblivion rubs shoulders with memory.

And then there are the very real corpses. Those of the previous expeditions who didn’t vanish like the victims of the Gommage, but who have been frozen like stones. The ground is littered with them. Not in a grotesque or gratuitous way, but as so many misplaced memorials, traces of those who tried. These bodies we discover, curled up or abandoned in mid-motion, each tell a story. Some of them left behind journals, fragments of thought written in haste, or in the strange serenity of those who accept the inevitable. These texts give flesh to the stones and a voice to the silence. Through them, we learn a great deal about this continent. In a way, they allow us to weave the intimate map of a world that each generation rediscovers knowing it might never return. This mechanism, brilliant in its simplicity, gives an almost testamentary dimension to the adventure. We do not walk only toward the Paintress. We walk in the wake of our dead. Each discovery, every ruin explored, every journal found resonates with the motto engraved in the heart of each expedition member.

Even if we fail, we lay the trail for those who will come after.

Expeditioners creed

This sentence resonates like an incantation in the face of the absurd, a way of giving meaning to a mission that everyone probably knows is doomed to failure. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not about victory. It is about transmission. About memory. About the necessity of not sinking alone, but of leaving behind something to guide others. In this, the game shares a kinship with La Horde du Contrevent by Alain Damasio, in which a group of characters crosses a world swept by an omnipresent wind, on a quest destined to fail, but pursued with an almost sacred fervor. Both works share this absence of a salvific promise. The horizon is not a deliverance, but a vertigo. The goal is not to reach salvation, but to continue, together, despite the absurd and the loss. Expedition 33 and La Horde du Contrevent are two stories of human connection in the face of the inevitable, where hope is never shouted, but simply lived.

Lorien Testard’s music doesn’t just accompany, it sculpts the world. It’s a living, vibrating material that gives shape to what images can’t say. Floating layers, recurring motifs and suspended breaths reinforce this sensation of derealization. In his compositions, there is the pain of memory, but also a kind of momentum, tenuous, broken, but persistent. It’s a music that seems to have been written for a world that could fall into oblivion or awaken to take its destiny in its own hands. The entire set seems to be bathed in this paradox of frozen movement. Exploration. What Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does is unify its aesthetics, its universe and its mechanics around a single affect: the beauty of a breathless world. There’s not a place, not a piece of music, not a lighting effect that doesn’t carry this tragic tension between what was, what is, and what will be no more.In a world where beauty wavers under the weight of grief, there’s only one thing left to hold on to: the other. Faced with the shadow of Paintress, with the erosion of memories, bodies and landmarks, it’s not weapons, armor or cleverly devised plans that keep us standing. It’s the bonds forged in adversity, the glances shared in silence, the gestures stretched between two precipices. If Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is about ruins, it is above all about what remains when everything else fades: the people we choose to love. It is in the intimacy of relationships that the last resistance is played out. A fragile, flickering, but irreducible humanity. Now it’s their turn to speak: Gustave, Maëlle, Lune, Sciel… and all the others. Those who move forward, together, on the broken line of the world.

The ties that bind us

The JRPG has always cultivated a savoir-faire found in virtually no other genre: that of the group. It’s not simply a matter of accumulating fellow travelers to help the hero on his quest, but the art of composing a living band where each member, with his or her flaws and flashes of brilliance, enriches a common dynamic. This ability to create bonds, conflict and comfort – sometimes even love – in the interstices of peril is one of the most important signatures of Japanese role-playing. Although sometimes mocked for its naive impulses and grand speeches about “the power of friendship”, this know-how is nonetheless frighteningly effective. Beneath this overused formula lies a universal, almost elementary truth: that in the darkness, it’s not weapons or magical artifacts that save us, but each other. Promises kept, or broken. The bonds forged in pain and in joy. Perhaps this narrative recurrence is not insignificant. In fact, it’s highly likely that it’s rooted in the trauma of the post-World War II era. To rebuild, Japanese society relied on cohesion and group harmony (the famous “wa”). It’s a social philosophy that can now be found in many works of Japanese popular culture.

Whether through the ideological debates between the members of Final Fantasy VII or the adolescent energy that unites the group in Persona 5, these games have understood that players must first be able to believe in the characters they embody if they are to believe in the story being told. After all, it’s often in the intimacy of optional dialogues, in evasive glances, in innocuous little arguments and whispered confidences sheltered from the hustle and bustle that the great moments of these epics are played out. This is why so many JRPGs have succeeded in inscribing their gallery of characters in the pantheon of video game history. What’s more, even when everything falters, even when a game seems unfinished, fractured in its construction like Final Fantasy XV, it’s this fragile intimacy between the characters that saves everything, that saves us from total disappointment. There are many things to criticize, but no one has forgotten the peregrinations of Noctis, Prompto, Ignis and Gladiolus, and their last moments shared around a fire at the twilight of their long initiatory journey. Each character is more than a class or archetype. They are the bearers of a world, a memory, an inner struggle. And if these games make such an impression on us, it’s because they remind us, through their imperfect choir, that the only way to move forward in a broken world is not to walk alone. Clair Obscur: Expédition 33 follows in this precious and deeply human tradition, with a respect and sensitivity that compel admiration.

In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, each character bears a facet of humanity’s relationship with death. They embody hope and resilience. Our expedition group is more than a collection of stereotypes. It functions as a constellation of wounds and contradictions, all united by the same need to move forward despite the inescapable. In Lumière, a large part of the population embodies a form of lucid acceptance of death. There’s the idea that fate can’t always be fought head-on, and that we have to learn to live with the ephemerality of our existence. And yet, deep down, there’s still a flame, otherwise expeditions would stop attracting so many volunteers every year, and there wouldn’t be so much effort put into research to improve living conditions. In a sense, there’s a whole section of the Light People who aren’t necessarily fighting death, but indifference. Conversely, some, like Gustave, refuse to give in and remain convinced that it is possible to change the reality of their world. He is that breath of muted anger, that intimate revolt against a fatalistic world, convinced that things can only change thanks to the stubborn. Where others surrender to nihilism, he clenches his fists, even if it means opposing orders, even if it means losing his most cherished bonds. He is, in his own way, an anti-authoritarian poet: he believes in intimacy, in the warmth of a face rather than the coldness of protocol.

Lune quickly established herself as the other key face of this early adventure. She’s straight in her boots, imbued with the Expeditions ideology. She represents the obsession with duty and the rigor of commitment. She’s a quiet force who advances whatever the cost, even if it means keeping her wounds to herself. Yet beneath this armor, cracks appear. For death, when it comes suddenly, tears even the most hardened apart. Everyone, at one time or another, will experience it. The Scrub, terrifying as it is, is not the only threat. Death is still death, brutal, dirty and unjust, and can still occur in combat or an accidental fall. This constant confrontation with all aspects of death is underlined by the regular appearance of the Nevrons, creatures from the Paintress. They are both menacing and strangely peaceful. Their behavior evokes that of animals defending a sanctuary rather than true antagonists. As if they, too, had been perverted by a deranged natural order. As if this whole world had been forcibly enrolled in a funereal logic whose source and meaning nobody knows any more.

Then, without giving away any of the plot, there’s the character of Verso. A troubled, fascinating being, radiating a strange aura. He’s without doubt one of the most striking characters I’ve come across in recent years in the videogame medium. His relationship with time, the body and memory makes him a literary, almost mythological figure. He observes, he knows, but says nothing. He moves forward with a paradoxical gentleness, as if he’d seen the world die a thousand times. Yet even he, in his own way, continues to hope. It’s in this tension that the play finds one of its finest impulses: it doesn’t oppose hope and lucidity. It makes them cohabit. Ben Starr’s performance is overwhelming in its restraint and depth, infusing this character with a melancholy grace that continues to haunt me as I write these lines.

Every moment of respite is a jewel box. Throwing a pebble into a lake becomes almost a ritual. The dialogue, natural and never forced, offers a space where humor, tenderness and even awkwardness find their place. The change of tone is always controlled, never dissonant. A smile after tears, a tease on the brink. What makes these bonds so tangible, so right, is the way the game invites us to build them. Through camp mechanics, Clair Obscur allows us to deepen our relationships with each member of the expedition. Around the fire, masks come off. We listen to childhood memories, buried regrets, unfulfilled dreams. We discover flaws, doubts and wounds. We laugh sometimes, between two sorrows, and this laughter is in no way artificial. It’s a laugh of fatigue, comfort and survival. The player is not just a witness: he becomes a confidant, a friend, an accomplice. It is these suspended moments, these dialogues stolen from the night, that give flesh to this adventure.

This intimacy gives rise to a deep, almost musical melancholy. Some of Lorien Testard’s scores, with the delicate sound of a music box, sometimes touch the moment. Themes emerge and repeat, haunting like memories we can’t shake off. Flowers recur in the décor as a recurring motif and a discreet tribute to ephemeral beauty. This aesthetic sometimes evokes NieR, in its way of telling the world with silences through ruins and tiny gestures. The game doesn’t tell us what to think: it invites us to feel. And that, no doubt, is what makes it so impactful. The bond between the members of the group is forged not only through the ordeals, but through the little things that punctuate the adventures. Despite the omnipresence of death, they carry on. Together. For if one falls, the others will walk on. Not out of heroism. But because we must give meaning to those who are no longer with us. As Major Erwin so aptly put it in Attack on Titans, “We die hoping that those who survive us will give meaning to our existence.” But to reduce Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to its plastic beauty or the strength of its dramaturgy would be to overlook the fact that it is also a truly magnificent playful proposition. Beneath the wisps of ash and the mournful silences, there’s a game that breathes, that invents and reinvents itself. A game that takes pleasure in challenging, surprising and keeping the player awake with its demanding, sometimes even daring, design choices.

The art of playing

Despite the constraints of the turn-based combat system, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 manages to make each member of the expedition unique to handle. Rather than imposing archetypes or simple combat roles, the game forges its own logic for each one, almost an intimate syntax. You don’t just change your abilities: you change your tempo, your momentum, your relationship to the world. Gustave’s overloading, Maëlle’s sharp postures, Monoco’s unpredictable metamorphoses, Lune’s elemental runes… all these mechanisms translate a singular relationship to action. You don’t use the characters: you inhabit them, you feel them. Gameplay thus becomes a narrative extension. For example, Gustave is a central character, not because he occupies the light, but because he supports its structure. He is the engineer, the man of the concrete. His fighting style blends saber, pistol and overkill: an energy he accumulates as the player methodically strings actions together. The mechanics speak volumes about him. Gustave is methodical, measured and disciplined. He’s not a flamboyant fighter, but a pillar of strength. His fighting style shows that he embodies reliability, but also the silent wear and tear this implies on his enemies. In contrast to this brotherly figure, Maëlle is more elusive. Her initial narrative arc is based on a desire to be elsewhere. She’s built like a character on the run and, like a symbol, she wields a rapier, with a posture mechanic that allows her to apply different effects, such as increasing her defense, or increasing the effect of her attacks by 200%. Here again, the gameplay echoes the narrative: Maëlle doesn’t stand still, she adapts, she looks for the loophole. She’s strong, but never stable.

The attention paid to the uniqueness of each character is reflected in the way Clair Obscur organizes its world. Where so many modern games sink into the pitfall of the endless open world devoid of surprise, saturated with hollow points of interest and unnecessary paths, Sandfall Interactive’s title chooses a tighter, more precise approach – almost old-school in form, but terribly modern in intent. By opting for a world map, in the manner of 90s JRPGs, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 gives in neither to dispersion nor to the obsession with geographical continuity. Instead, it embraces stylization and abstraction, playing with scale and restoring the evocative power of travel. This map of the world is not a simple in-between, but a breathing space and a projection of the adventure to come. In a way, it’s almost like a mental theater that lends itself to poetic and musical contemplation. Each place we reach carries a dramatic charge, a fragment of a world saturated with meaning, whereas contemporary open worlds often dilute narrative intensity in their vastness. We travel less to get somewhere than to find someone, or to confront something. Nothing is left to chance: the shortcuts we unlock, the forgotten areas we revisit, the secrets we glimpse – everything is part of a world that is both vast and deeply embodied, without ever losing sight of what makes it so strong: its characters, and the traces they leave on the roads they tread.

Like its illustrious Japanese models from the first PlayStation, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 makes exploration progressive. This progression is embodied by Esquie, an enigmatic character to whom the game entrusts the keys to travel. Through him, forgotten roads and inaccessible heights are gradually opened up. There’s nothing insignificant about this choice: entrusting exploration to Esquie means making mystery itself the driving force behind the journey. Esquie is a being of transition. He connects without explaining, enlightens without revealing. His bonhomie and modesty make him a precious presence, not just because he reassures, but because he questions. As a character, he is an enigma never solved, and his playful function doubles this nature: opening up the world, without ever closing it. This relationship to mystery, to progressive discovery, doesn’t stop with the landscape. It infuses every nook and cranny of the game system, right down to its most technical mechanics. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 never reveals everything at once – it suggests, proposes, lets the player assemble the pieces of a shifting puzzle. And this logic of openness, of non-linearity, finds a particularly strong echo in the Pictos and Lumina system: another means, this time strategic, of shaping one’s progression according to one’s own intuitions.

Pictos add an extra strategic dimension to the game. Not only do they increase a character’s stats, but they also confer passive abilities in the form of Luminas, which can prove decisive in the most demanding battles. This system encourages experimentation, as each Picto combination can be mastered. Once mastered, it is possible to retain passive effects on characters, rather like the weapon skills in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth when a weapon is 100% mastered. The advantage here is that when a character achieves mastery of a Picto, its effect applies to the whole group. The Lumina system is far more than a simple power-building exercise; it’s a system that encourages tactical thinking. One of its great strengths lies in its flexibility: after many hours, you can build a character capable of regaining hit points with each successful parry, counter or dodge, or of recovering the Action Points essential to the use of skills, without systematically relying on the basic attack to recharge them. Luminas allow you to constantly reinvent roles within the group, while opening the way to ever finer personalization, as you can increase the number of Luminas you memorize. This freedom is not limited to passive abilities: it extends right down to character equipment. Weapons, like Pictos, are not simply instruments of power.

Each weapon has an elemental affinity or set of unique characteristics that influence not only damage, but also the tactical approach to combat. Understanding the weapons available is crucial to maximizing group efficiency: a weapon that may appear more powerful on paper may, in reality, not be suited to a character’s strengths, nor to the enemies present in the environment we’re traversing. Weapons can be upgraded via the Curator. Weapon choices and upgrades greatly influence the pace of the game and the tactics employed in battle, offering a strategic depth that rewards planning and adaptability. That’s why the character progression system in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fits perfectly with that of weapons. It provides fertile ground for customization, borrowing heavily from FromSoftware’s Souls. With each level-up, characters gain three attribute points, which we must allocate to increase their combat stats. The fact that certain attributes are prioritized according to the affinities of the weapon equipped allows us to create unique builds, capable of adapting to a wide variety of situations. This reflects the spirit of the expedition itself: a quest based on individual choices, but never limited to raw power alone. What’s more, the presence of Renewal items, which allow for the complete redistribution of attribute points, encourages experimentation by offering the possibility of going back on one’s choices without penalty.

The dynamic between equipment and individual power progression doesn’t stop there. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 takes personalization a step further, with a skill system as rich as it is malleable. Each character, in addition to his or her statistical build, has a talent tree that refines his or her specialization. The system encourages players to change skills as the situation demands. This means keeping in mind the power of the various skills, the Action Points required to cast them, and therefore, indirectly, the Luminas equipped. This encourages players to focus on strategy and create formidable combinations. These skills are not just isolated abilities, but elements that interact with each other to create a collective momentum with the charge of the Gradient Attack. These attacks, unlocked as the relationships between our characters evolve, add an extra layer of strategy. Added to this is the Counter Gradient system, which inflicts far more damage than a normal counter. This progressive complexity, where each choice feeds into the next, weaves a system that values upstream thinking as much as real-time adaptation. But Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doesn’t just evolve its mechanics in depth: it also puts them to the test. Beyond the numbers, it’s in the field that everything comes down to the second.

Taken separately, none of these systems – skill trees, statistical progression, customizable equipment – is fundamentally new. What sets Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 apart is the way these mechanics are articulated around a nervous and demanding core: the system of parries, counters and dodges. An obvious heir to Dark Souls, this choice testifies to Sandfall Interactive’s love of games where execution is as important as strategy. Where many turn-based JRPGs lock players into an abstract optimization loop, Clair Obscur requires them to sense tempo, read enemy gestures and anticipate. This willingness to bring unbridled action back into turn-based play is not without consequence: it gives the game a clear-cut identity, both cerebral and reflexive, but which could also throw off the purists of the genre, especially those seeking strategic comfort. Unless you opt for the most accessible difficulty mode, Sandfall’s title demands a certain degree of skill with the controller, and it is in this requirement that perhaps one of its greatest singularities lies.

Sandfall Interactive is not content to follow in the prestigious footsteps of the games that have shaped the imagination of project director Guillaume Broche. With boldness and sincerity, the French studio is immediately sitting at the table of the greats. I can’t help but envy the younger generations who will discover the game as they would a seminal work. I’m convinced that the years will see it become a true milestone and a lasting imprint on the videogame landscape.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is much more than a journey. It’s a plunge into the human soul. Through its characters and their inner struggles, the game holds up a mirror to us: that of a fragile, contradictory, shattering humanity. No protagonist is made of pure light. No antagonist is entirely doomed to darkness. Everything here resists easy morality. The entire work confronts us with this duality, where light and shadow coexist without ever annihilating each other, and where redemption lies in the acceptance of this ambivalence.

The story doesn’t unfold in a heroic quest. It wanders between the suspended beauty of certain moments and the abrupt cruelty of a world in perdition. It doesn’t seek to guide us. On the contrary, he confronts us. He looks at his characters as he looks at us, with infinite tenderness and at the same time with great lucidity, inviting us to embrace paradoxes and recognize our own cracks.

For me, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is more than just a video game. It’s a murky mirror in which everyone can recognize something of themselves – a flaw, a light, a pain that we thought was buried. This is a world not to be conquered, but to be crossed and listened to. It speaks to us of wandering, bonds, grief and enduring hope. It reminds us that it is in the darkest recesses of the soul that we seek – sometimes in vain – a spark to move forward.

At the end of this journey, all that remains is this fragile, stubborn and heart-rending plea:

Continuer à t’aimer


Continuer de peindre


Tendre la main et t’implorer


Reviens !