Over a year on from its monumental launch, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche has been looking back on what he and his fellow devs at Sandfall Interactive were told before their RPG’s release – namely, that “no one’s going to like” it.
The mere concept of that seems completely impossible now that the game is out – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 became the second ever game after Baldur’s Gate 3 to collect all five major Game of the Year awards last year, after all. But speaking to Konbini in a new episode of Video Game Club on YouTube (below), Broche says the devs were warned about their plans for the RPG’s combat.
“With Clair Obscur, there are plenty of design decisions that are fundamentally flawed,” Broche begins. “What we heard a lot before we released the game was: ‘You’re making a game that mixes the challenging aspects of an action game – with dodging and parrying – with turn-based gameplay. No one’s going to like it. Turn-based players like turn-based games, and action players like action games.'”
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Of course, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wasn’t the first game to experiment with mechanics like this. Look at 1996’s Super Mario RPG, which blended real-time action with its turn-based system – perfectly timed button presses make your attacks hit harder or blocks absorb more damage. A lot of players love this blend, and the Clair Obscur devs were no different when they were making their own game.
“We didn’t care,” Broche says of the warning Sandfall had received. “We think it’s cool, we play it, and it’s fun. We combined the two, and it worked. But fundamentally, there are a lot of design decisions that, from an outside or business perspective, make no sense at all.”
In the same video, Broche explains that he thinks “imperfections” in games add to their charm, while “games that try to be perfect, that try to fix all their flaws – they’re usually just really boring.” By his own admission, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn’t perfect, either – just look at its “unbearable” minigames.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director thinks devs will eventually “be able to churn out a game in 5 seconds with a prompt,” but he hopes they’re not any good.
