Fans worried Oblivion Remastered could drown out Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but Bethesda itself is cheering it on with 7 Adoring Fans: "We can't wait to play"

The surprise launch of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered threatened to suck the air out of the industry for at least the rest of the week, with indie publisher Raw Fury noting how "everything more or less gets buried" under a shadow drop like this.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a new turn-based JRPG and the debut title from developer Sandfall Interactive, launched today, April 24. This followed a few days of concern mixed with word-of-mouth promotion from devs and hopeful players who didn't want to see the game slip through the cracks. We can now add Bethesda to that list of devs.

"We can't wait to play!" a post from the Bethesda Game Studios Twitter account reads, featuring freshly minted art of seven of Elder Scrolls' Adoring Fans hyped to start their run of Expedition 33. It doesn't get much more adoring than that. Publisher Kepler Interactive even responded with a plate of recognizable sweet rolls, as if to say, 'oh, how sweet.'

Per our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review, the game itself is absolutely brilliant – a razor-sharp, achingly gorgeous turn-based RPG with a kinetic, reactive bite. We're not the only ones saying so, either. It's now one of the best-rated games of the entire year, and it certainly seems to be doing well for itself.

At the time of writing, Expedition 33 is on the coveted front page banner of Steam and has already passed 2,000 glowing reviews on Valve's storefront alone. According to the estimations of Steam marketing expert Chris Zukowski, Landfall has instantly made it to the promised land of "real Steam" and is on track to ride the algorithm to considerable success.

It's also getting a boost on Xbox and PC via Game Pass (though Oblivion Remastered is surely eating some Game Pass time budgets right now), which never hurts and often helps immensely.

But a good game does not guarantee a successful game. We've also seen surprise launches from big publishers bury indies before. And even if the two games are generally aimed at different audiences, in post-Oblivion purgatory there was some reasonable trepidation around the odds of Expedition 33 cutting through the noise.

Kepler itself joked that this week's RPG pairing was "like Barbenheimer," referencing the box office pairing of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Publishing director Michael Douse of Baldur's Gate 3 studio Larian threw support behind the game as well, struck by the fact that "this game was made by a team that has fewer people than I have years."

Fortunately, it seems those pre-release worries have passed. Expedition 33 looks like a bonafide banger and a certified hit – quite the debut for a studio largely assembled from ex-Ubisoft devs.

Folks, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 might be prestige television – I was surprised to find this RPG is perfect to play in shorter bursts.