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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche has always been happy to go down the entire shopping list of titles that influenced his turn-based JRPG, but Broche hasn't gotten particularly sentimental about his gaming history before a new interview with Denfaminicogamer.
In the Japanese interview, translated to English by Automaton, Broche explains that his love of gaming doesn't begin with Final Fantasy or another turn-based classic like you'd expect – it actually belongs to the chunky Sega Genesis and the 1988 beat 'em up Altered Beast.
In western Paris, where Broche grew up, video games used to be dismissively thought of as a "form of entertainment for nerds" – they certainly don't relate the same easy decadence as popular French products like cigarettes and high-fat butter, I'll admit that. But Broche says his family home actually defied the norm and contained several gaming consoles, including the Sega Genesis his father gifted him.
On it, he'd play Altered Beast, which is almost a prototypical God of War; it's a side-scroller with only basic jump, punch, and kick controls, but you play as an impossibly sinewy Roman champion, brought back from the dead to defend the Greek gods.
As magnificent of a quest as that may be, for Broche, it was just the beginning. He tells Denfaminicogamer that, after the Sega Genesis and Altered Beast, he got more interested in PlayStation titles like Final Fantasy and the Atelier RPG series, and later Shinobi for PS2. It's interesting for a great, burgeoning director to lay out his personal timeline with games – which he notably disclaims didn't include many by Nintendo – in the sand like this. It makes it feel like Expedition 33 was decades in the making.
