This week: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

My social feeds have said enough—it's time. No spoilers for the game below!

Screenshot: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Once again, no spoilers below.

There’s a great saying in Russian: “все побежали, и я побежал“, which loosely translates to “everyone started running, so I did too.“ I like this gentler version of “if your friends jumped off the bridge, would you?“ much better; besides, it describes precisely how I feel about starting Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Last week, I reflected on how we make gaming choices. Clair Obscur was the inspiration.

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How do we choose the video games to play?

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Were it not for my friends, acquaintances, and peeps in the gaming community singing the game’s praises, I wouldn’t even have known it existed. I rely on word of mouth to discover my next favourite game, and the community came through this time, big time.

First impressions

I started sobbing ten minutes into the Prologue, and each significant scene after that was a crying fest too. Incredible writing is incredible because it’s invisible when good, and it makes you feel so strongly about the state and the rules of the universe you had no idea existed mere minutes before.

If you know the premise, you understand the themes I mean. I found them so viscerally heartbreaking, so impossible to accept, that the brutality that follows shortly is a different kind of surprise.

Clair Obscur is a horror game in the beginning, and no one can convince me otherwise. As I took my tentative first steps on The Continent, scared of every shadow and running at every foe screaming to get that First Strike advantage, survival was the only thing on my mind. It was remarkable how quickly I felt I was walking in Gustave’s shoes.

Some magicians worked on Expedition 33, truly.

Spoilers, sweetie?

It’s hard to talk about Clair Obscur without spoiling it. Not even the story spoilers—those are easy enough to avoid, I think—but the little delights and surprises and yes, horrors, the game throws your way. Some people wouldn’t mind knowing about them, while others, like me, would absolutely prefer to learn on their own.

I went into it determined to discover the game without any prior knowledge.

It’s not easy for me to do, at all. I can count on one hand the number of games I played where I didn’t look up guides, solutions, or combat tips. The desire to min-max is strong, and weird—I’m not competing with anyone, I don’t have anything to prove—but I think it has something to do with the fear of failure and not being able to progress in the game despite my best efforts.

Has it happened yet? No.

Do I need to get out of my head? Yes.

Combat and bosses

The thing is, with Clair Obscur, the fear of failure isn’t unwarranted: the fact that users tagged its combat as “soulslike“ despite it being turn-based should tell you something.

That’s how I feel about bosses, too.

I’m only 10 hours in, and I already fought five bosses. They’re all huge, aggressive, and do tons of damage in ways that make learning to dodge and parry all but obligatory to survive. That was the biggest complaint that reverberated through the community: that combat was tough because the timing of dodges and parries was difficult to gauge, as there are (barely?) any cues.

I admit: I agree. It’s hard. I was frustrated. I tried guessing. I tried button-mashing. Sometimes I even succeeded by accident.

Then, I decided to no longer treat boss battles as something to do in one try. I understood, or maybe realized, that I needed to observe and learn first, be patient, and not think about dying once as a failure. Sounds just like another Tuesday for seasoned gamers, but it was a light bulb moment for me.

I tried counting beats before hits while fighting Évêque. It worked. Timing the dodges right was so satisfying, I finally understood the appeal. That feeling of triumph that can only come from parrying a death blow of a creature three times your size? Yeah, that’s nice.

Not that I’d play a Souls game after Clair Obscur, but I get it guys, I get it.

Onwards!

I won’t say much more because, again, spoilers.

Visually, the game is absolutely beautiful, but you know that.

The music is fantastic.

The game does throw a lot at you combat-wise. Weirdly, I see it as a positive. In contrast to, say, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, its convoluted skill trees and weapon options, in Clair Obscur, overwhelming at first means options later.

I’m not that far into the game at all, but I already trust its creators to continue to delight, surprise, and yes, horrify.

Can’t wait to see where it leads me.

Have you played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?

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