Review – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

“Tomorrow will come.” With this simple but striking phrase, rookie developer Sandfall Interactive seeks to guide a bold experiment: an RPG by shifts with production values ​​generally dedicated only to cinematic shooting games. Praise this proposal with praise in all its technical aspects.

However, this same Clair Note: Expedition 33 adds a layer that goes beyond the mere definition of quality product and penetrates the definition of art, inside and outside its narrative. What I experienced over these dozens of hours was a world full of wonders. What I experienced was losing my breath, choking the cry, exploding laughter, a multimedia poem that invites to be unraveled.

Avante, children of the homeland

In a world that looks like ours, but it is not ours, there is a city that looks Paris, but it is not Paris. This city is called Lumiére. It is the last bastion of the human race, the only known settlement. Lumiere and its inhabitants have been separated from the continent by the break and now live under the relentless look of the monolith. In the monolith, there is a colossal number painted from phosphorescent gold. It is impossible for any citizen to be older than the number painted in the monolith. Once a year, all those who have the age equal to the number painted in the monolith are disintegrated immediately. Once a year, the craftsman wakes up, erases the previous number and paints a smaller and smaller number.

We are 33 now. Time is running out for the inhabitants of Lumiére. Year after year, those who are about to die enlist for a suicidal expedition. The purpose of this mission is to navigate to the craft and destroy it. No expedition has managed. No expedition returned. This is the history of expedition 33.

Clair Obscu: Expedition 33 does not hurry to introduce us to its universe. The painful initial moments are there with a purpose: to expose to the player all the weight of this reality. They are undone families, they are broken loves, they are annual attempts of hope for a better future. As they say to themselves, “Tomorrow will come.” The player already departs from Lumiére cheering for his protagonists, invested with a purpose rarely seen in other games.

What Sandfall Interactive translates to its work is a fear inherent in the human condition itself. Our numbers are already defined. There is no monolith with this number painted explicitly, but the truth is that time is told for everyone. What the developer seeks to ask is: How far would you go to ensure that this number no longer exists? How far would you go to defeat your own death?

Much deeper themes disguised as great adventures are a tradition of RPGs, especially JRPGs, the main source of inspiration for Expedition 33. There are not few games that put such human and fragile characters meeting the call to defeat elementary forces from their own reality. This boldness is not exclusive to the Japanese or any other people, but a rail will fight to the end and triumph. However, few titles can retell this story with such mastery. In the name of the collective, giving up themselves, expedition 33 advances “for those who will come.”

The bloody banner is raised

The strength of this narrative could be lost without almost obsessive concern about the details. It is remarkable that Clair Obscu: Expedition 33 is a work of love of the Sandfall Interactive. For this story to work, they build a magical universe that enchants since the first minute of the odyssey of this expedition. These are stunning landscapes, not only from the graphic point of view, of how many effects a GPU is able to process simultaneously without catching fire, but also in its art direction, which seeks in all arts the inspiration to build unexpected scenarios.

Side by side with expeditioners and their allies, we cross places of charm and danger. We then have ruins of the ancient civilization that was obliterated by the break, amid environments that challenge logic, gravity or even sanity. We explore and revisit the interior of an extreme luxury mansion that will be critical to understanding this plot, an architectural puzzle that is slowly revealing itself. An abandoned train station on the ice. The remains of a colossal war locked a long time ago. A coliseum dedicated to dance.

Allied to this visual shock, Expedition 33 still features a soundtrack that oscillates between the epic and the melancholy in equal doses. All of this contributes to building a title that is close to being one of the most bittersweet that have ever been in front of me. I opted for the original voice acting in French (with Portuguese subtitles), to preserve the cultural aspect of its creators, and I didn’t regret it. My mastery of language is practically null, but its sound added even more to the glamor of the work, as well as its distancing from my comfort zone.

Expedition 33 is venturing more deeply on the continent and its mysteries. Even the rescue and evolution points of the game fit the way to tell the story: they are flags raised by expeditions that came before, those who paved the way. In this trajectory, we also find diaries of other expeditioners, as well as corpses, many and many corpses. With each step, the game reminds us that the mission is a race against death and that victory is unlikely.

To weapons, citizens

Clair Obscu: Expedition 33 brings to the combat mechanical table that refers to, to stay in a recent example. These are shift -fighting games, however, that require the player to have the right reflexes to react to battle events. In the case here, moments of dodge or trim will be charged to survive the attack of enemies. Unfortunately, this is the only low point in a title that is impeccable in every other senses. Supposedly, hitting the timing of these events would produce more effective results for battles. In practice, making mistakes is a death sentence for the absolute majority of struggles.

So what we have is an extremely complex title in their combat strategies, with various parameters that can be adjusted, powers that can be unlocked, advantages that can be customized, approaches that need to be calculated, but at the time of confrontation itself, they can fall apart before a poorly executed dodge.

It is possible to put the difficulty in history mode, but this reduces the challenge to ridiculous levels. It is nothing that a post-launch correction cannot resolve, but there is a warning to those who expected a purely shift game or where real-time actions had a lower impact on results (as in Sea of ​​Stars).

That said, I won’t deny that the fight ended up addicted me. It alternated among the characters to try all possible combinations, caused unnecessary struggles with optional bosses just to test my limits. Although the game insists that it is better played with control, as always, kept my trust on the keyboard and the mouse. I do not regret it, but I admit that my fingers no longer has the lush of youth and it may have come out of some dodge sessions in the last second with joint pain.

Each of the controllable characters has its own mechanics, which could yield a separate whole game. The learning curve can be a bit steep, but nothing that a few hours of practice don’t solve.

Another point that could be improved, but it is not a complaint, is the balance between moments of combat and moments of dialogues. Clair Obscu: Expedition 33 presents maps with long sequences of successive fights before pulling the hand brake in a camp and bringing long dialogue sequences. Obviously, the concept of balance can range from player to player.

Glory Day has come

Clair Obscu: Expedition 33 surprises in every curve of his narrative. There are new mechanics being presented even long after the journey is started. There are extremely important characters presented even long after the journey begins. There is time to cry, there is time to laugh. There is also time to have many doubts about the nature of this universe. Hardly, the player will be able to see where these paths will follow and perhaps the arrival is the least important point.

In the company of unforgettable and beautifully written friends, the supreme challenge remains, the boldness of the Sandfall Interactive takes shape and the player emerges from the other side. “Tomorrow will come.”