Expedition 33

''Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'' is a 2025 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 as they set out to destroy the Paintress, a being causing the yearly Gommage, which erases those at or above an ever-decreasing age. In the game, the player controls a party of characters from a third-person perspective, exploring areas and engaging in combat. Coupled with 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 was neglected by AAA developers. They 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 rendering improvements.

''Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'' was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 24 April 2025. The game was widely praised for its story, characters, music and mechanics, and has sold over 3.3 million units so far.

Gameplay

''Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'' is a third-person turn-based role-playing game with real-time elements. The player controls a party of Expeditioners exploring a fantasy world. 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, all of which deal devastating damage. The use of gradient attacks is monitored by a gauge shared by the party. It will slowly fill up when the party uses skills in combat. The Expeditioners and enemies can also apply various status effects on each other, boosting or impairing either side's combat efficiency. Some enemies have weak points that can be targeted, or may be vulnerable to certain elemental attacks. If the combat party is defeated, reserve characters may be called in to continue fighting. Combat ends when either side has no remaining combatants, or when the player decides to flee the battlefield when they are facing with minor enemies.

The game features six playable characters, with each having unique skill trees, weapons and gameplay mechanics. The mage Lune's Skills generate elemental "Stains", which can be spent to enhance her Skills. The fencer Maelle switches between Stances which alter her Skills, damage and defense. The scythe-wielding warrior Sciel can use a set of magical cards to apply and stack "Foretell" to enemies, and then consume them to inflict maximum damage on enemies. Gustave and Verso deal more damage to enemies the more they attack them. Verso, in particular, gains "Perfection" ranks upon landing hits, and has increased damage output when he reaches a high Perfection rank. The Gestral Monoco can transform into enemies and use their abilities against them. Some of his abilities are further enhanced by his "Bestial Wheel", which spins whenever Monoco uses his abilities. When the party is not exploring or fighting enemies, they can rest at a camp. Assuming control of Verso, players can converse with other members of Expedition 33 and raise their relationship levels, unlocking new cinematics, skills and quests.

Combat encounters reward experience points, currency and upgrades. Each time a character levels up, they will gain three attribute points, which can be spent on increasing five core character stats: Vitality (maximum health), Might (attack power), Agility (frequency of attack), Defense (damage reduction), and Luck (critical rate). The abilities of the Expeditioners are further customized with equipable "Pictos" which add a variety of perks and further improve a character's stats. Each character can equip three Pictos at a time. Players can master the use of Pictos after using it in combat several times, unlocking its passive bonuses (known as Luminas) for other Expeditioners to use. Each character also has Lumina Points, which dictate how many Luminas they can equip at a time. As players level up, their maximum Lumina Points will increase, and players can also find additional Lumina Points as collectibles during exploration. As players explore, they will also collect "Chroma Catalysts", which can be used to upgrade weapons to higher levels at the camp. Higher-level weapons deal more base damage to enemies and offer additional gameplay perks.

While the game is set in linear levels, players can explore off the beaten path where they will find hidden resources, side quests, collectibles, character outfits, Gestral merchants, and optional bosses. Each level also has several Expedition Flags, where players heal their party, fast travel, restock items, and allocate attribute and skill points. Resting at an Expedition Flag respawns most enemies. Levels in the game are connected by an overworld map known as "The Continent". Eventually, the Expeditioners will meet Esquie, a mythical creature who helps the party to travel across the Continent. Esquie will acquire new transversal abilities as players progress, allowing it to swim, fly, and dive underwater. These new traversal abilities are essential for players to advance the story and access optional zones. 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 equal to or 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 with a mechanical arm; 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 a 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 Gommage, 32-year-old Gustave bids farewell to his former lover, Sophie, who has turned 33 and perishes along with everyone else of the same age. With only a year left to live, he joins Expedition 33 in hopes of slaying the Paintress. The Expedition meets catastrophe shortly after making landfall, when they are nearly wiped out by an old, white-haired man leading an army of monsters. After surviving the attack, Gustave manages to locate three other survivors: Lune, Maelle, and Sciel. Maelle begins receiving visions of the white-haired man and a masked girl; they warn that she will cause disasters in the future. The party enlists the aid of the mythical creature Esquie in order to cross another sea to reach the Paintress. The white-haired man attacks again before they can set off, and Gustave dies defending Maelle. A man named Verso intervenes and allows the rest of the Expedition to escape.

Verso catches up with the party, explaining that he is a surviving member of the very first Expedition, and that the white-haired man is Renoir, their commander. Both stopped aging upon arrival on the continent. He asserts that Renoir has come to believe his immortality was granted by the Paintress and wishes to protect her at all costs. Verso, meanwhile, has grown tired of his immortality and joins the party. After crossing the sea and paying their respects to Gustave, the Expedition recruits Verso's friend, Monoco.

The Expedition reaches Renoir's mansion in Old Lumière in search of the Paintress' heart, which they need to destroy to disable the barrier protecting her. Verso admits that he is, in fact, Renoir's son, and the masked girl in Maelle's dreams is his sister, Alicia. After a battle, Renoir teleports the mansion and the heart away, thwarting Verso's plan. Lune suggests that they instead forge a powerful weapon from the hearts of the Axons, highly dangerous ancient beings created by the Paintress, which they use to pierce the barrier. The party enters the Monolith afterwards, killing Renoir along the way. They confront the Paintress, revealed to be Verso's mother, Aline, and manage to kill her, erasing the number on the Monolith. The Expedition returns to Lumière as heroes. Verso reads a letter from Alicia, revealing that Aline was trying to stall the real Renoir, who is in fact responsible for the Gommage, and the number on the Monolith was a warning to those about to die. Without Aline's protection, the entire population of Lumière vanishes, except for Verso.

In a flashback to the actual reality in early 20th-century Paris, it is revealed that Alicia and her family are Painters, magic users possessing the ability to create and inhabit worlds within magical Canvases. The real Verso died saving Alicia from a fire, but Alicia was left disfigured and mute as a result. Grieving the death of her son, Aline inherited Verso's Canvas, which contains Lumière and "painted" copies of Verso, Alicia, and Renoir. The real Renoir seeks to destroy the Canvas by gradually purging its oldest creations in an attempt to help her move on and bring her home. Frustrated by the stalemate, Clea, Alicia's older sister, advises her to enter the Canvas and destroy it so the family can focus on their war with a rival faction, the Writers. Alicia obliges, but is reborn as Maelle after being overwhelmed by Aline's power.

With Maelle's "death", Alicia regains her memories and awakens in what remains of Lumière. She reunites with the painted Verso, who had been trying to expel Aline from the Canvas to end his immortality and find oblivion. Wanting to protect the Canvas world, Alicia uses her newly discovered Painter powers to revive the Expedition and battles her father for control. After a final confrontation, Renoir explains that, as precious as the Canvas is to him and his family, destroying it is the only way to bring Aline and Alicia back to the real world so they can finally end the cycle of grief and move forward. He eventually relents and promises to "leave the lights on" for Alicia's eventual return.

Realizing that Alicia does not plan to leave the Canvas and will eventually die due to her prolonged stay, Verso reaches out to the last remnant of the real Verso's soul, attempting to remove it and thus destroy the Canvas. Alicia interjects, insisting that she would have a better life within the Canvas. The ending diverges based on the character the player chooses to play as in the final battle between the two:
* If the player chooses Alicia, she rebuilds Lumière and revives its people, including an unwilling Verso. She decides to live permanently in the Canvas and begins to show signs of decline.
* If the player chooses Verso, he banishes Alicia and removes the piece of his soul, destroying the Canvas and everything in it. Back in reality, Alicia and her family come to terms with the real Verso's death, although Alicia faces an uncertain future herself.

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, and additional studios outsourced for animation, quality assurance, audio and sound design, and localization.

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. Of the latter series, Broche praised ''Persona 5'' for its user interface and use of camera work during battles, "making it feel like you're watching a movie". 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 under the codename as "Project W", and was first known as ''We Lost'' around the time that Broche sought for help on Reddit. The initial trailer that Broche used showed a steampunk setting based on Victorian era England, with more science fiction elements including zombies and aliens. About six months into this approach, potential investors into the project suggested that Broche should "think bigger", leading him to reset the entire narrative, though had kept some of the characters they had already developed. The new setting was based on a painting that Broche had admired about a painter entering her own work, as well as a short story that Svedberg-Yen wrote.

Development had begun using Unreal Engine 4 at early stages and later switching 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 Reallusion's 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.

The game went gold on March 22, 2025, coincidentally 33 days before the game's release. Physical version of the game was distributed by Maximum Entertainment in North America and Bandai Namco Entertainment in Europe.

Film adaptation

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

Reception

''Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'' received "universal acclaim" from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. It was also highly rated by users of Metacritic, and as of May 2025, was the highest-rated game of all time by users. 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 24 hours from release and sold 1 million units within 3 days. The game sold 2 million units within 12 days of its release. , the game had sold 3.3 million units 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 mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse, also congratulated the team on their successful launch in May, stating it will be "a reference in the international history of video games".

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.

Notes

References

External links

* {{official website, https://www.expedition33.com/

2025 video games
Dark fantasy role-playing video games
Fiction about grief
Kepler Interactive games
PlayStation 5 games
Post-apocalyptic video games
Single-player video games
Turn-based role-playing video games
Unreal Engine 5 games
Video games about death
Video games about families
Video games about siblings
Video games developed in France
Video games set in France
Video games featuring female protagonists
Windows games
Xbox Cloud Gaming games
Xbox Series X and Series S games
Video games with multiple endings