The incredible experience of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's core story might be one of the main talking points when it comes to the hit J'RPG, but Sandfall Interactive also filled its debut title with plenty of side content to complete, something one lead dev didn't think most players would finish before rolling credits.
From the various optional side bosses to the notoriously tricky Gestral Games, there's no shortage of things to do in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, most of which you can access before taking on the RPG's final boss. Doing so, of course, inevitably leads to you being a higher level than you would have been had you simply pressed on with the main narrative. Speaking to Edge magazine for issue 419, lead game designer Michel Nohra says "the only thing I regret is not making it clearer that if you want the intended difficulty for the boss, you have to go beat it now."
Nohra explains: "Often, people don't want to finish the game, so they do all the side content before finishing it, because once the story is over, you're usually less motivated to do the side content. And that's something I underestimated, which made people that wanted a challenging end boss fight feel a bit disappointed. I don't regret doing it the way we did it, but [we could have] had more explanation about your choice [in Act 3]."
However, lead programmer Tom Guillermin thinks this was partially driven by "humility," with the devs at Sandfall Interactive truly not expecting their game to become the hit it was.
"We weren't sure if our game was going to be that good," Guillermin says. "And if it's not, people may just want to see the story, and go directly to the end of the story. So it was a surprise for us [that] people were doing every single thing there is to do in the game before going to the final dungeon. We're happy about that, but we didn't see it coming."
Perhaps that's something that Sandfall Interactive will keep in mind when making its next game, whatever that might be. One thing's for sure: the devs are still going to be guided by "what we think is cool" rather than being swayed by trying to please everyone.
Before Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 swept The Game Awards, Sandfall was betting it might scrape an 80 Metacritic score.
