Summary
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33andBaldur’s Gate 3share quite a lot of similarities, one of them being how they both propelled relatively niche genres into the mainstream eye. JRPGs and CRPGs have their loyal fans, but they’re nowhere near as common as shooters and platformers when it comes to massive blockbuster successes. Even big JRPG franchiseslike Final Fantasy cast off the genre for real-time combat.
Former Dragon Age writer David Gaider put it best whenhe said that Clair Obscur is “to JRPGs what Baldur’s Gate 3 was to CRPGs, and ina recent interview with GamesRadar, he went a bit deeper into those comments and what he actually meant.
Sometimes “Mass Appeal” Isn’t The Way To Go
In the interview, Gaider talks a bit about how publishers shouldn’t treat certain audiences as a “finite number of people”, and that they should be more focused on making games like Clair Obscur and Baldur’s Gate 3 that do a good job of “expanding the audience” instead. He also talks a little bit about “mass appeal”, and how publishers can sometimes take the magic out of games by trying to cater to everyone.
“They want mass appeal,” says Gaider. “They don’t care about appealing very, very strongly to a specific audience. They want mass appeal. They want to feel comfortable, de-risk it by imagining how the appeal translates to many different kinds of audiences, which I think often kind of ends up diluting the very specific things a game can do.”
He does add that he sometimes understands why publishers chase mass appeal, as many are “operating under a lot of financial pressure” and are trying to make as much money as possible, but both Clair Obcur and Baldur’s Gate 3 have proven that you may cater to specific audiences and have a mega-hit at the same time.
It’s a valid argument too, especially when more safe andgeneric fantasy titles like Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperform so drastically, and you have studios chasing live-service trends that weren’t even trendy five years ago. Here’s to Clair Obscur, Baldur’s Gate 3, and all the other unique experiences in the future that make gaming better.
