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Sandfall Games’ Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an upsetting game from its starting Gommage scene to the multiple endings. There are stretches where the game isn’t entirely depressing, but the turn-based RPG manages to pack some real gut punches during its run that are impossible to forget.
Following Maelle actor Jennifer English’s comments on how hard some of these scenes were to perform, Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche explained that the game’s multiple endings were both designed to give players “an impossible choice”, a choice that breaks everyone’s heart.
Speaking to YouTuber Behind the Voice, Broche explained that every ending in the turn-based RPG was designed to make players stress over the choices they had. While we won’t discuss exactly what those endings are, less someone complains about spoilers, they definitely aren’t easy.
Broche explained that the endings offer players “the possibility to choose how to conclude the story, you know, which is an impossible story. People who are so messed up by grief and a ton of other things that they take very wrong decisions for very good reasons.”
One of the most impressive things about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the quality in which those emotional scenes are displayed. Despite being a AA game with a smaller team size (that has no plans to expand), Broche explained that everything could’ve gone very wrong if it didn’t come together as it did.
“It’s rare in video games that you try to transmit every emotion through the acting, the music, the cinematography rather than dialogue,” the creative director explained. “Especially the ending. I think it was a very bold move that could have gone completely wrong. I’m happy it did not.”
As for the quality of the ending itself, the creative director explained that the lack of dialogue in the ending was “important” for the emotion to really hit home. And it did. Thanks, Sandfall. Thanks, Broche. You really know how to make a man cry.
“The fact that there is no dialogue also leaves a lot open to interpretation, and people can project what they want on the ending, and I think it’s something that is really, really important,” Broche continued (transcribed by GR). “But also it’s something that we can only do in games, like to give a choice to the player, and it was really crucial for us to… It’s an impossible choice, basically, like so complicated, there are so many layers of good and bad in both endings.”
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