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Speedrunners work fast - it's kinda part of the territory - and despite Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being out less than two months, the completion record is down to sub-90 minutes. That's a pretty incredible feat for a story-dense action-RPG, and Ben Starr, one of the voice actors, poked some fun at the notion of someone glossing over all the narrative elements.
A fundamental element of any speedrun is skipping as much as humanly possible. In Clair Obscur, there's a lot of cut-scenes to bypass, vastly reducing how much of the plotting and performance work the player encounters.
During an episode of Devs React to Speedrun on IGN focusing on the French game, the cast got to see speedrunner Oh Snap do his thing with Expedition 33, for which he's currently fifth in the world for completion time. In the demonstration, they chat about seeing players already carve out such impressive records, leading Starr to sprinkle in some sarcasm.
"Thank you so much for respecting our work, it really is amazing," he says, adding on a more sincere note: "It's so cool to see the ways in which audiences have engaged with this. [Director] Guillaume [Broche] has said himself, he wants to see people do no-hit runs."
Starr goes on to state there are multiple ways to enjoy something like Clair Obscur: "This game is obviously a really beautiful narrative and an amazing, immersive world, an amazing story, but also it's a playground for fun."
He then makes another lighthearted jab as Oh Snap clips through a bush. "It's just really cool to see people play the game the way that it was intended," Starr laughs.
Speedrunning gives a whole other perspective on most games, as people demonstrate wild ways of traversing any given release. Clair Obscur is a gorgeously presented, incredibly deep RPG, and it's positively cartoony to watch someone quite literally fall through parts of it to make progress.
Achieving these outrageous runs takes a lot of discipline and granular knowledge. If you just want to enjoy a game, playing the regular way, with all the cast doing their thing in full, is advised.
