Playtime: 110h.
Hats off to the best video game I have played in my adult life.
It’s no joke. No superlative. It is so good that I think I’ll have to go back and decrease the rating of other games that I’ve rated 4 or 4.5 stars. They shouldn’t be so close to Expedition 33.
I completed it 100%, got all achievements, and yet I keep desiring for more of the magic and dopamine hits this game kept on giving. I’m constantly listening to the soundtrack, watch any making of video I find… I’m an Expedition 33 stalker at this point.
I’m even trying to convince my wife to play it (with my help on the hairier combats), just so I can enjoy her reaction to it and re-visit the plot with the benefit of foresight.
This is a game that came in barely noticed, it did look polished and had some famous voice actors, but there was not much buzz around and got sabotaged by Micro$oft shadow-dropping the Oblivion Remaster 2 days before its debut. But that all barely mattered because anyone who played it was more than enthusiastic to recommend it to anyone else.
I thought it was just media hype. But when more and more of the reviewers I respect kept giving it accolades left and right, I became hopeful. So it got slotted to the top of my queue, to be played just after I finished GoW Ragnarök.
And, boy oh boy, even with all the media buzz setting my expectations high up, I wasn’t ready for how big of a treat I was in for.
I only remember being this in love with a cultural phenomenon when The Lord of the Rings received its movies adaptation. It is such a shame that I believe that this game won’t receive the same amount of recognition. Gaming is mainstream, but not as much as movies. And being a JRPG, this is a niche game.
You don’t believe me? Well, the best I can do to besides forcing you to play it is to link you the video at the end of the post (don’t worry, you don’t need to watch the whole 1h43m, just start it, and I think you might end up wanting to).
Plot
Yes, we’re going back to structured sections for this one, it is that good. You thought the above was the review? Sit down, chap, it was just the preamble.
A beautifully created world. Dark, sad, with an existential threat hovering and visible at all times. Yet full of light, hope, and love. The characters are motivated to make things better. And if they can’t save themselse, at least for those who come after.
The characters are so grounded, deep, with meaningful pasts, that more than justify their actions. You can’t help but feel for all of them. Even the ones you might not initially like or understand will make sense at some point, likely pulling your heart strings at that.
All the problems I complained about in GoW Ragnarök? Non-existent here!
The voice acting? Masterclass. It’s no wonder that 3 out of the 6 nominees for The Game Awards - Best Performance are from this game. And can you believe that frigging Andy Serkis (yeah, Gollum!) beautifully plays an important part of this game and wasn’t nominated? That’s how good the other actors were (that and I suspect that TGA must have a rule against more than half of a category’s nominees being from a single title).
If I could pick at something, it would at the lack of lip syncing to the voices. But seeing the making ofs, I see it was a result of the mocap happened with different actors (except for Esquié, I think) and before voice acting. Anyway, some sort of automatic lip syncing like CP2077 had would’ve been amazing, but this was a game made on a tight budget.
And the game plot itself? Oh, so dog damned good! An adult plot, that doesn’t overexpose trying to explain every bit to you, but respects your intelligence to put the pieces together instead. That was a breath of fresh air from my recent experiences.
Gameplay
Alright, character animation when moving around levels can be quirky, and some of the platforming feels funky. But that’s not what we’re here for.
The combat is what keeps you entertained in between story bits (as if we needed anything else, really, this game is absolute cinema).
Who could’ve thought that adding dodging, parrying and quick time events to good old fashioned turn based JRPG combat would’ve been such a hit?! Thank you, Guillaume Broche.
I don’t know how I can explain it, but combat never feels repetitive, even though you only play with a handful of characters. It is so satisfying to string the correct moves, from the exact pieces, in the order you need to unlock some devastating effect, or to parry every hit of an enemy’s combo to deliver a counter-attack that can shift the balance of a battle, or to see your almost invincible opponent succumb to your arduous strategy of stacking burn and surviving, turn after turn…
Every single character you play with has an exclusive game mechanic. It isn’t just some spicing on top of “attack or use a skill”, but a completely different thing. Each is a fully fleshed system, so intricate in and of itself, that still can be completely customized by your character’s selection of skills, the weapon they’re using, the pictos and/or luminas they’re equipped with, combos with other teammates, and interaction with the current enemies!
Some encounters can be extra daunting - be it if you’re up for the optional challenges or if you’re just trying to break the game’s progression by tackling the hard stuff before it’s time -, but it was nice for me to be able to choose to do that in order to feel challenged and rewarded for my triumphs.
It shows that the developers knew some battles are so much fun and that they liked playing the game themselves, because they made at least the more satisfying of them all replayable without having to reload a save.
Graphics
As an UE5 game using Nanite and Lumen, I actually expected more of it. Noticeable LoD changes and pop-ins happened too often for a game using Nanite. Lighting could look very unstable, specially in the Manor, and there was no hardware Lumen option, just the software fallback. Both of these were a shame, but the artistical direction was so tight, and the execution so impressive that I can’t really complain about it.
I did mod the game to have better LoD, disable sharpening, improve frame pacing and fix pre-rendered cutscenes cropping on my monitor, but I could have lived without any of that.
The game’s a looker and a dazzler. I’ve only a few screenshots because I wouldn’t dare to spoil it.
Music
The game’s soundtrack has made into my regular rotation. It is full of feeling and a very distinct identity.
Lorien Testard and Alice Duport-Percier deserve all awards and recognition they got, and then some more.
The music blends so well with the game, and serves as much as the graphics as an indication of what’s happening in the game: you’ll feel the crescendo and the goosebumps before a dramatic piece or boss fight comes to be.
The sound design also lends itself to the immersion: it is incredible how much suspense, dread, tension and discomfort the simple sound of lamps turning on can cause. If you know it, you know it.
If I can suggest only one track for you to get a notion of the whole OST, this’d be it:
Performance
The game ran very well, and the settings could be scaled down to lower hardware requirements. You could dial your settings in and pretty much forget about performance during your playthrough.
It did have plenty of traversal stutters, though. True, they happened outside cutscenes or combat, where they could have ruined the immersion during a sentimental moment or made it harder to time parries or dodges, but they were there.
I managed to forget about and forgive Sandfall for them. This time.
Conclusion
At this point, you either think I’m a lunatic or you’re sold and it should come as no surprise to you that Expedition 33 is now the most nominated title in The Game Awards. Rightfully so!
As I put in the intro, this game joined my Hall of Fame, alongside the likes of Super Mario World, GoldenEye 007 and Ocarina of Time. Those games left their mark on me when I was a child, easily impressionable and unexperienced. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 managed to break through all the shields I put around my feelings and beliefs as an adult and leave an impression that I believe I’ll carry for life.
While Split Fiction was able to bring back my child-like joy of gaming, Clair Obscur validated my belief that gaming is also an adult artform, of which it is a masterpiece.