Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Frenchness is a key part of its identity. In humorous ways, like Gustave having an outfit that comes with a baguette strapped to the back like a sword, and in more fundamental ways, like the setting drawing on the Belle Epoque era of France, this is a game that feels like it was made by people with love for the culture. The setting, the music, and the characters’ names all build on that French identity.
Developer Sandfall Interactive is based in Montpelier, and it shows up in the work. But, the game was almost set in a setting we’ve seen represented far more often in media.Writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen told TheGamerthat in the game’s initial iteration, then titled ‘We Lost’, “The gameplay would have been similar, but the story was completely different. It was set in a steampunk Victorian England with zombies, aliens, and various things.”
Newly unearthedearly screenshots and a trailer bear that out.
Building Closer To Home
Additional backing money allowed the team to make the more unusual, more personal game we ultimately got. Thank God (or, thank… the Paintress?) it did. But that shouldn’t be this rare. We semi-frequently see indie games that attempt to bring the developers’ experience to the screen. Though Night in the Woods stars talking animals, it’s set in a distinctly human setting, a Rust Belt town left reeling from the loss of its manufacturing industry. Games likeVenba,Thirsty Suitors, andDetective Dotsonare similarly the result of small teams attempting to pay tribute to their cultural backgrounds in interactive form.
But this rarely happens with bigger games.Assassin’s Creed Shadowsmay be set in Japan, but its development was led by Ubisoft Quebec — not by the support studio at Ubisoft Tokyo.Grand Theft Auto’s satire of American life is made by Rockstar, a studio founded by Brits.The Witcher 3wasn’t even made by people from the Continent. Okay, that last one is a joke but, whenCD Projekt Red did make a game set on Earth, it chose Los Angeles, not Poland.
Props to fellow Polish developer,Bloober Team, for making games set in Poland with Observer, The Medium, and the upcoming Cronos: The New Dawn.
Can’t Fake The Lived-In Feeling
There’s nothing wrong with this. If developers put in the work to get the details right, I don’t care if they’re actually from the place their story is set. But there’s an undeniable difference that you can feel when a team does have that personal connection. It’s part of the charm of theLike a Dragon/Yakuzagames.
Ryu Ga Gotoku has devoted two-plus decades to telling stories set in the city where their studio is based. Like in Clair Obscur, the inspiration shows up in ways both big and small, in the environmental assets Kiryu might pass (or wield as weapons) in the city streets, in the items on the menu in a restaurant where Ichiban might stop off for a meal, and in the layout of the city, sprawling but cluttered.
But it’s incredibly rare for big-budget games to do this (and in the realm of triple-A games, RGG’s games tend to be at the smaller end of the budgetary scale). Part of that is due to the fact that games aren’t often set in the real-world at all — as evidenced by the fact that Clair Obscur, an example of a game obviously inspired by its developer’s home country, isn’t set in our world at all, but one inspired by it.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been a huge success, and is proof that a game being resolutely French isn’t a turnoff for a massive mainstream audience. Hopefully, it can be a clarion call for developers of ambitious, triple-A games to embrace the specificity of their homes as they venture out on the journey through their next projects.
