How Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Became a Gaming Tour de Force (Gift Article)

Without a blockbuster budget or much experience, the creators of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 astounded the industry with an emotional narrative and old-school design.

Two years ago, Guillaume Broche stepped into a small theater on the back streets of Paris armed with motion-capture equipment and an angsty script about a mythical being known as the paintress who has the power to kill anyone with a flick of her brush.

The actors who rehearsed with iPhones strapped to their heads, capturing every eyebrow twitch and stifled smirk, were not staging a play. They were filming scenes for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a role-playing video game that has been celebrated for its engaging turn-based combat and an emotional story with more twists than a French braid.

Broche, 33, had come a long way since leaving his brand management job at the large game studio Ubisoft at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, but he had little formal training in developing video games. He frequently turned to the internet to fill any knowledge gaps.

“I would not be an artist without YouTube,” Broche said in a video call from Montpellier, France, where his company, Sandfall Interactive, now has offices. “With the internet, you can learn pretty much anything.”

That includes an unorthodox approach to making one of this year’s best games.

Broche took directing lessons on YouTube and assembled his creative team with strangers. The lead writer had originally answered a Reddit post looking for voice actors. The game’s composer, whose soundtrack has topped the classical music charts above albums by Andrea Bocelli and Yo-Yo Ma, was discovered from a post on SoundCloud.

President Emmanuel Macron of France gave his endorsement on social media after the game’s release in April, describing the studio as “a shining example of French audacity and creativity.”

Clair Obscur has sold more than five million copies and received 12 nominations for this week’s Game Awards, where it is a leading contender to win the top prize. But nobody within the industry — including the game’s own creators — expected the game to become an immediate hit. Investors were initially hesitant to back the project.

“We had been ditched by venture capitalists,” François Meurisse, Sandfall’s chief operating officer, said. “They were interested in the metaverse and applications that could quickly scale. So we ended up pitching friends and family.”

Both its narrative pitch and business proposition were enticing.

In Clair Obscur, players drop into Lumiere, an imagined version of Belle Époque-era Paris that has experienced unimaginable loss. One day, the paintress appeared on the horizon and drew a number on a menacing monolith. Everyone of that age died in an instant. Each year, a new expedition sets out with the goal of defeating her before they, too, are erased.

Sandfall wanted to prove that indie studios were capable of making prestige games at a fraction of the budget and personnel of larger studios. It is difficult for even best-selling games to recoup their costs; the development costs for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 were about $300 million, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million.

Sandfall, which said the budget for Clair Obscur was less than $10 million, conserved resources by avoiding the open-world trend. It borrowed an old formula for role-playing games, with beautifully rendered levels that are essentially large corridors and characters who are transported to a battle arena when they collide with enemies. The overworld map is a miniature version of the explorable realm, allowing players to feel the expanse without forcing designers to render every small detail.

“We have the tech now to make those games with a relatively small team,” Broche said. “Games like this are coming. We are lucky to be early.”

The indie developer Billy Basso, who released the popular game Animal Well last year, said that in an unstable industry, many workers were developing their own creative projects and starting studios to serve audiences looking for something new. Astro Bot, which won last year’s top prize at the Game Awards, was made with about 65 developers.

“You don’t need to fill your game with hundreds of hours of checklist content,” Basso said. “People like more straightforward games.”

After securing funding from a publisher, Sandfall increased the core team to 30 people, outsourcing battle animations to a small team in Korea and using external studios for support functions such as localization and marketing. It was also transparent throughout Clair Obscur’s development cycle, posting demos on social media that helped it earn some early support. When a polished version arrived, gameplay clips circulated on social media and attracted more interest.

“A good game doesn’t necessarily look like a good game when you start working on it,” said Tom Guillermin, the company’s chief technology officer.

The heroes in Clair Obscur — at least those who survive an early massacre — go on a journey to discover the true nature of their world. Broche said his team fine-tuned the early moments of the game to ensure that players connected with the tragic protagonists. “It kept evolving right up until the final stages of production to make sure everything felt absolutely perfect,” he said.

But there are lighter moments that allow players to take a breather from the dramatic storytelling, including an immortal puppet named Esquie who learns to fly, baguettes that double as weapons and a series of creepy mimes.

“We don’t take ourselves too seriously with the mimes,” Broche said with a shrug. “The writing is very French.”

Clair Obscur leans into French clichés for laughs in the same way that Japanese role-playing games like Final Fantasy and Persona have integrated elements of mythology into their gameplay. (The Persona series includes a toilet demon named Belphegor and a 12th-century war general named Yoshitsune.) But there was something novel about making a game with references to Impressionism and Haussmannian architecture.

“The presence of mimes in France is very overblown,” Broche said. “That is how people see France, even if it is not true. It is so French that it has become a meme.”

But for all the bells and whistles added to the game — or, rather, berets and stripes — the developers had an unambiguous goal.

“The vision was always clear,” said Broche, who partially attributed the game’s success to its refinement of cheaper design formulas. He said the studio would continue to prioritize quality over quantity.

“It is about finding a project that you want to make with your whole soul,” he said. “We are trying to find this place of truth and honesty again.”

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