After the success of the step-by-step role-playing game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 French studio Sandfall Interactive gave an interview to the popular Cohhcarnage YouTube channel, which discussed the development, art design, gameplay plot and much more. For convenience, we made a summary with all the information from the conversation, dividing into sections. The general director and creative director of Sandfall Interactive Guillaume Book and art director Nicholas Maxon Frankomb answered questions in an interview.
Team and development
- Clair Obscur: Expections 33 developed by Sandfall Interactive. The publisher was Kepler Interactive, which also helped to attract famous voice actors to the project.
- The main team consists of only 30 people. Guillaume Broke emphasized that these are mainly young employees, and for many this game is the first. He attributes success to the “absolutely crazy team” in of talent and enthusiasm.
- The game began as a solo project by Guillaume Brosh. He noted that his clear creative vision was preserved throughout the development.
- The basic principle of development is “to create a game that we ourselves want to play.” The team still plays with pleasure in Expections 33, is looking for new builds and try to sleep off, unlike many developers who get tired of their projects.
- The success of the game, according to the developers, is a direct result of love and ion embedded in the team. They believe that it is felt through the screen. The focus was to create a magnificent game, and not just on the financial result, which, in their opinion, comes by itself with the right approach.
Art-style
- The Victorian style was originally considered, but they refused it, because it is already often found in games. As a result, we dwelled at the unique mixing of Parisian architecture (Osman style), the elements of the Ar-Deco and the aesthetics of the beautiful era.
- The key idea was the idea of how the style of a beautiful era could evolve in isolation on the island for almost 100 years without external influence.
- The team sought to find unique textures and things that rarely or never met in games, experimenting a lot of trial and error.
- The “retro -futuristic” style of equipment of the expedition participants is associated with the Lor of the game: in the world there is a certain blue substance that is found everywhere in Lumiere. It is used to nutrition of technologies, which gives them a look in the spirit of the inventions of Tesla.
Gameplay mechanics
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a step -by -step RPG. The developers wanted to create a game in this genre with high -quality graphics, since, in his opinion, since Lost Odyssey and Legend of Dragoon have almost no such projects.
- The game integrates the elements of real time, including the protection/parrying system. Inspiration was drawn from the action of the game, such as Devil May Cry, Nier and especially Sekiro. The prototype of the protection system immediately showed its potential, completely turning over the perception of step -by -step battle.
- The task was to maintain the strategic depth of the step -by -step system (progression, builds, combo), while adding the dynamics of real time.
- Players can build buildings around the perfect parrying, but can also create a protective build if it is difficult for them to master timings, and practically ignore this mechanics.
- The developers are sure that fans of step-by-step games and action games are often the same people, and these genres are not incompatible, contrary to the opinion of some publishers.
Castomization of characters
- The developers deliberately separated the characteristics of the characters from the appearance. The throat hates with Guillaume when in RPG the sake of the best stats has to wear absurd armor. He believes that cosmetics is a “real endheim” in any RPG.
- All Katsets render in real time, so the characters appear in them in the clothes that the player chose. This adds reactivity and creates funny moments (the interviewer mentioned his Gustav in a baguette costume in a serious stage).
- The developers joked that they are French, so they love fashion.
Plot and characters
- The characters were created in close connection with the world of the game and its basic concepts.
- When developing the game, the team focused on creating believable, mundane characters who already have their own history and life in this tragic world. These are not typical young heroes ing the path of growing up.
- The creators strove for the most natural dialogues where characters could interrupt each other and show emotions. Much of this was born thanks to the improvisation of the actors during the recording of the seizure of movements, which they decided to save.
- The interviewer and chat noted that the first 30 minutes of the game are a very strong “hook”, which emotionally involves the player.
Voice
- Most of the actors were chosen through “blind” auditions, where the developers did not know the names of the actors. The exception was Andy Serkis and Charlie Cox.
- The publisher of Kepler Interactive helped to attract Andy Serkis and Charlie Coks, offering a list of actors. They were the first in the list of the desired candidates for developers.
- The developers highly appreciated the involvement of the actors who read the characters, the entire script before the recording began, asked many questions and were very attached to their roles. Jennifer Bergen (screenwriter and producer of voice acting) played an important role, providing actors with many materials.
- The interviewer noted that voices are ideal for the characters, and he did not hear a single unsuccessful hit. The chat mentioned that Charlie Cox is now associated with Gustav no less for them than with a lover.
Music
- Music was written by Florian Estar. Guillaume Throw found him quite by accident, seeing his post with a track at a little-known French forum of indie developers. He simply wrote to him, and he agreed to cooperate.
- The composer is incredibly talented and productive – he wrote 154 tracks for the game. Guillaume Broch said that Florian could send an “absolute masterpiece”, saying that he had spent a couple of hours on him and considers the track not very good. The developers were delighted with the soundtrack and have been listening to it for 5 years.
Reaction and success
- The game was sold with a circulation of 1 million copies for the first 3 days after the release.
- The authors describe their feelings from success as “complete denial” and “surrealism”. Success of this scale and such a positive technique was a complete surprise for them.
- The developers are actively monitoring the streams and reaction of players, including on the Discord channel. They are deeply touched by messages from fans, in which they tell how the game influenced them and helped survive difficult moments. For them, this is the point of creating games and art.
The structure of the game
- It was made a conscious decision to make the game focused on the plot, avoiding unnecessary fillers so that the story was seized and not let go.
- The main plot takes about 30 hours. However, for those who want to explore everything, find all the secrets, complete side tasks and defeat super -bears, will take full age from 60 to 100+ hours. This turned out to be longer than the developers themselves expected (they expected about 60 hours maximum).
The future of the game
- At the time of an interview, there are no specific plans for DLC or other content. This will depend on the long -term success of the game. The developers themselves do not yet know what will happen next.
- Developers are actively reading Reddit (Sabredit R/Expegedation33). Due to the unexpectedly popularity of the game, they plan to strengthen their presence on social networks and interaction with the community in the near future.
- The question was asked about plush toys. The developers confirmed that they discussed this just in the morning on the day of the interview and agree that such toys are “absolutely necessary for the world.”
Conclusion
At the end of the interview, the developers thanked the players and streamers for , modestly noting how difficult it is to believe that their work really causes interest. They emphasized that the success of the game was the result of the efforts of the whole team.
